As we pour over training camp practice reports, tweets, and any other nugget of info that might grant us further insight into Pitt football and the season that awaits, Pitt basketball has been something akin to an oasis of positive goodness.
Coach Dixon comes in for some more love and answers why he keeps turning down Pac-10 jobs despite being from California.
“I don’t want to downplay loyalty because loyalty is a great thing, and I don’t think there’s any better thing to be called than loyal. But I’m not staying at Pitt out of loyalty,” Dixon told me during a poolside reception this weekend at Dana and David Pump’s annual Collegiate Business Conference. “I’m staying at Pitt because we have everything, and because the administration is second to none. I’m staying because of the fans and the players we have. I’ve got everything I need.”
Translation: Pitt is a great basketball job.
Imagine that.
Or better yet, don’t imagine.
Just keep reading.
“We’ve sold out every game [at the 12,500-seat Peterson Events Center], and we have a waiting list of 5,000 [for season tickets even though] … we’ve raised ticket prices like 600 percent in the past five years,” Dixon said. “It’s a great sports town, and we’ve given them something to get behind.”
That’s the result of eight consecutive NCAA tournaments.
Ben Howland is responsible for the first two.
Jamie Dixon got the next six.
Which is why the 43-year-old married father of two has emerged as one of the nation’s most sought after coaches. He has never not won at least 20 games in a season, never not won at least 10 Big East games in a year, never not made the Field of 65. Career record: 163-45. Career Big East record: 70-30. But a funny thing happened while Dixon was compiling a body of work good enough to produce opportunities to move closer to home; the Pitt administration designated the resources necessary to allow its program to grow with its coach, and suddenly Dixon didn’t have as many reasons to leave as he did reasons to stay.
An excellent point. It isn’t just that Pitt has maintained a comptetive salary for Dixon — though that is important — it is that the athletic department and Pitt administration made the commitment to the basketball program. It can be debated whether the commitment came first and then the right coach, but I think it was a fortuitous timing of both coming at the same time.
Plenty of programs have made the commitment, but hired the wrong coach. Result: failure and nothing changes. Start over, again.
Others have had the right coach but lacked the commitment. Result: coach moves on to another job, program retreats back to obscurity/mediocrity.
Few are the programs that make the commitment and get the right coach. Arizona got that lucky with Lute Olson. Pitt to made the commitment with the right coach and were lucky enough to hire the right guy to follow and truly grow the program. Don’t kid yourself. There is an element of luck and timing involved in all of this.
Dixon could have been hired by Wright State the year before. Would the school have taken a chance on him with only one year of head coaching experience, and no longer the assistant at Pitt after Prosser turned Pitt down?
I also like the article for the candor from Dixon. He has professed his love for Pitt and Pittsburgh, but does not deny there is a natural pull to home and family. After all, so many “Pitt guys” and Pittsburgh natives speak of such, why wouldn’t there be pulls for others.
“There is a natural pull,” Dixon acknowledged. “Anybody who would say differently wouldn’t be telling the truth.”
For Dixon, that pull revolves around the fact that he’s from the Los Angeles area, and that his parents still live in the Los Angeles area. Meantime, his wife is from Hawaii, and her parents still live there. So it would’ve made sense on a lot of levels for Dixon to jump at the chance to coach at California, Arizona or USC. But when he weighed the pros of moving to the Pacific time zone against the cons of leaving Pitt, he simply concluded that it wasn’t a wise career choice to abandon a nationally relevant program to rebuild closer to home.
Thus, he’s still far from home.
Or is he?
“Does home have to be one place?” Dixon asked with a smile. “I don’t know where that was written.”
Hopefully his home will remain in Pittsburgh for a long time.
But to Joel, I respectfully disagree 100000000%. I talked to Ben Howland (by pure blundering luck walking from the Pete to Sutherland Hall) the night before he left Pitt. I watched or listened to every game he coached at Pitt. The guy did not want to leave Pitt. He would not have left Pitt, except for the UCLA job. His family loved Pittsburgh. His daughter loved Pitt (and wound up going to Pitt). He was happy. Its not that Howland just “went home” to where he grew up. He grew up watching the GREATEST COACH IN SPORTS HISTORY at one of the greatest programs in basketball history (if not sports history) in an unprecedented level of domination in his home town. John Wooden at UCLA is something special. It was something transcendent. That’s what Howland chased (and continues to chase). And I could never begrudge him that.
And I hope (and think) he is truly happy. But I also know he’ll always have a spot in his heart for Pitt. He cared. A lot. (And don’t forget he was establishing ownership over NYC, not a bad recruiting backyard.)
I don’t think there’s a real parallel for Jamie. He’s younger than Ben, and UCLA may not have the same allure to him. (Though it might.) I think the general “west coast draw” thing intrigues him, but its not nearly as mystical. And recruiting/coaching against Howland probably doesn’t sound like fun either. I would say the best bet for such a “dream job” for Jamie might be the Lakers. And he’s not getting that offer unless he wins at least one national title, and wins it right around when Phil hangs it up. Even then, probably not getting that offer.
The northern Pac-10 schools in Cal and UW are already led by successful coaches in Mike Montgomery and Lorenzo Romar. And I believe Oregon has named a successor to Ernie Kent.
The remaining schools – Stanford, Oregon State and Wazzu – are clearly inferior to Pitt in basketball.
So I think Coach Dixon is going to be around for many years to come and I’m all the more happy for it.
That type of money would be hard to turn down.
I never did buy into any excuse Ben said on leaving Pitt [family- dream job]. At UCLA he had a huge recruiting city something that is not at Pitt.