Mammoth Blog

As he read a statement yesterday announcing the firing of Georgia men's basketball coach Dennis Felton, school athletic director Damon Evans said to assembled reporters, "Many of you may be wondering, 'Why now?' "

They weren't the only ones.

Felton, a former head coach at Western Kentucky, yesterday became the second Southeastern Conference coach to be replaced during this season, the third since last year.

On Monday, embattled Alabama coach Mark Gottfried, who'd previously coached at Murray State, agreed to resign. LSU fired John Brady last February.

"It's disturbing to me," Trent Johnson, the current LSU coach, said on yesterday's SEC coaches' teleconference.

He wasn't alone in expressing dismay about in-season coaching changes, which Kentucky coach Billy Gillispie called "a trend that's probably gaining momentum."

"I don't really understand why they do it midseason," Auburn coach Jeff Lebo said. "Maybe there's a reason. I don't know. You'd have to ask those people that do that, I guess."

Former Mississippi State athletic director Larry Templeton once was one of those people.

Though he said he has a "mixed reaction" to this SEC mini-trend, Templeton in 2003 announced a football coaching change at midseason, after he and then-Mississippi coach Jackie Sherrill decided in-season that Sherrill would not return the next year.

"We just didn't think we ought to mislead everybody once we reached that decision," Templeton said yesterday. "That worked well for us. It let us put our plan into action so as soon as the season was over, we were ready to move in our search for the new coach."

But Templeton noted that his situation was easier, given that the decision was mutual, and that Sherrill finished out the season.

Brady and Felton were fired, and Gottfried was pressured into resigning, and those changes took place immediately. Templeton didn't want to comment on those specific coaching changes but said that when only one party is agreeable to a change, "the situation can be more difficult."

Making a change in-season creates new challenges for the interim coaching staff and for the players, SEC coaches suggested yesterday.

"You feel for the student-athletes in the sense that, what kind of pressures are they under?" Tennessee coach Bruce Pearl said. "What kind of pressures are you putting them under?"

Pete Herrmann, an assistant to Felton who will serve as the interim head coach at Georgia, said that the remaining staff doesn't feel "that it's in the best interest of the team and the players and everyone in preparing for games when a decision is made like this."

So why make it?

Why break the mold -- the vast majority of college basketball coaching changes are made after the season and before the Final Four, which is a hot spot for job hunters -- and make a move in-season?

At Alabama, athletic director Mal Moore cited a downward trend in on-court performance and attendance as key factors in making a decision to ask Gottfried to resign. Yesterday, Evans cited the need not only for a long-term fix for a struggling program but for new leadership immediately.

"I think the stakes have gotten a lot higher," Florida coach Billy Donovan said. "The games are on TV. There's a lot of money in college athletics."

There's also a competition for coaching candidates, and a midseason firing might give some schools a head start in the hunt for a replacement. Evans said that Georgia might not hire until after the season but that firing Felton now affords him the opportunity for "some early identification" of prospective candidates.

Templeton can vouch for that advantage. Though Templeton said he didn't speak to football coaches until after the 2003 season, the announcement that Sherrill wouldn't return the next year allowed him to speak freely to representatives of prospective coaches, who in turn could give him "more honest answers."

Still, Templeton wasn't certain that a midseason change is what's best for a program.

Most SEC coaches seem to think it's not.

Gillispie said he understands the midseason moves -- though he doesn't necessarily like them.

"We're all making a lot of money, probably more money than anyone ever thought that they would probably make (in coaching)," Gillispie said. "There's a lot of different things that happen. I understand the nature of the business ... but it doesn't mean you don't have a great deal of sympathy for it happening to anyone in your profession." source>>>