ESPN Men's Basketball

Originally Published: April 26, 2005

Leitao should be wary of Doherty's path

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By Pat Forde
ESPN.com

Dave Leitao is said to be a student of history. The chance to make some as the first African-American coach in any sport at Virginia was apparently part of the allure of that job.

Leitao is a good coach with a reasonable chance to succeed in Charlottesville. But the history he might want to peruse at this point is the career path of Matt Doherty.

Both were lead assistants to top-shelf coaches at premier programs – Leitao to Jim Calhoun at Connecticut, Doherty to Roy Williams at Kansas. Both left those positions for struggling midwestern Catholic programs with strong pasts – Leitao to DePaul, Doherty to Notre Dame. Both had begun the turnaround process when they were lured away by the siren song of the Atlantic Coast Conference – Leitao to Virginia, Doherty to North Carolina.

Here is where Leitao had better hope his path veers in a different direction.

Today, two years after being fired at Carolina, Doherty is finally back in the coaching business. He's freshly hired at Florida Atlantic – a long way down the food chain from coaching Sean May, Raymond Felton and Rashad McCants in front of 21,000 fans in the Dean Dome. And understand this: Doherty walked into a better situation at Carolina than Leitao inherits at Virginia.

APBoca Raton is a long way from the Chapel Hill sideline.

When the deal went down in 2001, you couldn't blame Doherty for leaving Notre Dame after one season for his alma mater, which also happened to be one of the game's flagship programs. But now that he's whiffed on a bunch of jobs and landed in the Atlantic Sun Conference, do you think Doherty ever wishes he'd stayed in South Bend?

And, by extension, could there come a day when Dave Leitao wishes he'd stayed longer than three years at DePaul?

In today's coaching climate, loyalty to your school lasts about as long as the average TV timeout. Every coach comes to his job pledging endless allegiance – while keeping an eye on what else is going to come open, and how much it might pay.

Commitment is something schools and players are expected to make to coaches, not the other way around. Coaches will spew righteous indignation if a player wants out of his letter-of-intent – but how many of them want out of their contract if another job comes along?

Jean Lenti Ponsetto is the athletic director at DePaul. She hired Leitao, and she watched him walk away from an improved program on the verge of a move to the Big East for an ACC also-ran. She's not thrilled to lose a coach who had won 20 games in back-to-back seasons, but she is a pragmatist. She knows how the game is currently played.

"I'm not angry, I'm not disappointed, I'm not frustrated, I'm not hurt," Ponsetto said. "I really understand that this is the nature of the business we're in. Candidly, we've created this in higher education. We've allowed for there to be bidding wars for coaches.

"But you have freedom of movement. That's one of the great things about living in America: You get to do what you want.

"There was a time when coaches like Ray [Meyer] and Al McGuire and Louie Carnesecca and John Thompson were almost like tenured faculty members at their institutions. I think those days are over. The younger generation of coaches perceives their stops to be shorter in tenure."

That certainly seems to be true. But ladder climbers should be forewarned: Your haste to upgrade to a bigger conference, bigger salary and bigger corner office could result in a bigger pratfall.

Ask Doherty. Or ask Buzz Peterson, who skipped out of Tulsa after one year for Tennessee. After he failed to earn an NCAA bid in four years, Tennessee fired him this spring. Now he's the head coach at Coastal Carolina.

A few other ambitious climbers are under pressure as well.

Tommy Amaker left bad feelings simmering when he fled Seton Hall after four years for Michigan. In Ann Arbor, he's failed to get the Wolverines to the NCAA Tournament. Probation hurt the program badly, but that excuse has expired. Northwestern is the only Big Ten school with a longer streak of missing the NCAAs than Michigan, which last went in 1998.

Stan Heath put in one season at Kent State before jumping to Arkansas, where he's yet to earn an NCAA berth in three seasons. Good recruiting could pay off in a breakthrough next season, but Heath should know that his boss, Frank Broyles, does not overflow with patience. He once fired his football coach after losing the season opener.

And even though Missouri's Quin Snyder has had only one head-coaching job, he batted his eyes at Washington three years ago before agreeing to stay in Columbia. Since then his program has neither followed the rules nor fulfilled its potential.

Of course, if any of those coaches is fired next year, he'll probably walk away with a handsome settlement. Contracts tend to be as one-sided as Fox News, in favor of the coaches.

Rick Pitino and Tubby Smith are both $2 million-a-year men at Louisville and Kentucky, respectively, and it could easily be argued that they're worth it. If they walk for another job, they don't owe their schools a dime. If either school decides to terminate its coach, it would have to pay a fairly scandalous sum in buyout money.

"Obviously, the contracts have typically been more favorable to the coaches than the universities," Ponsetto said. "But coaches want the security because we put too much emphasis on winning. That's cultural, that's societal, that's American. Somewhere along the way, between the 1940s and 2005, there's been a progression of change that's made winning a much higher priority.

"Coaches used to be considered to be much more part of the faculty and staff. Ray [Meyer] would go away for the summer to Three Rivers, Wis. He'd be gone for three months; you wouldn't see him. Now, it's a 12-month grind. That's another reason coaches are anxious to make money where they can."

It's often easier to make big money by moving around than settling down. But as Matt Doherty can tell Dave Leitao, sometimes the new job comes with a trapdoor beneath it.

Pat Forde is a senior writer for ESPN.com.