Did Coach Dixon meet with Oregon officials boosters while he was in NYC to do studio work for CBS College Sports? Technically, no one knows for sure. Coach Dixon won’t address it. Oregon denies it — like it denies offering Turgeon, Few, Smith and others. Really, the fact that the guy heading the Oregon search — Kilkenny — is not an actual employee of Oregon really improves everyone’s deniability.
Coach Dixon was asked that question on the radio, but dodged the question, as expected. Lee at EoaP is a little concerned that this will start to alienate some towards Dixon since he is at least listening. While he says he isn’t bothered by the fact that Dixon listens, he does seem a touch concerned.
I don’t mind so much, in part because I’m a little jaded about the whole coaching carousel. It really doesn’t seem to matter how entrenched and successful a coach is at a place. Tom Izzo is a Michigan native. He was a longtime assistant for Jud Heathcote at Michigan State. He has had amazing success as head coach. Over 20 years at Michigan State. Yet, his name keeps popping up each year. Whether delusional or not. It will keep happening for coaches until they reach a certain number of years at a school (Boeheim, Krzyzewski) or age (Calhoun). Some school, somewhere will believe they have enough money, facilities, fertile recruiting, history, etc. to lure a coach.
(Honestly the number of schools that can truly meet those first four are very limited — Kentucky, Kansas, UNC, Indiana, Duke. Some schools like Texas and Florida simply have so much of the first three, they can probably skip the history part. A school like UCLA lacks the truly big money part because of state laws. Everyone else has to either compensate or lower their expectations of who they hire.)
I also don’t mind Dixon listening, because you never know when someone is going to offer that crazy money you can’t refuse. That or you have that moment of absolute clarity and realize that you want to stay where you are. It doesn’t hurt to listen.
[As a personal example. I get contacted by blogging networks and collectives trying to get me to move this site several times each year. I have no interest in joining them, but I listen. Part of it is to get an idea of what objective value is placed on this site and what I do. But there are other factors that go into why I listen. Whether it is because of a relationship with the person contacting me, or simply because I don’t know if they are going to offer a deal that is simply too good to refuse. I’m sure many of you do or have done the same in your career.]
The terms of the contract (i.e., money) remain unknown at this time. I’m sure at some point over the next 12 months it will get out. Then casually mentioned in stories like everyone had common knowledge of it. In the meantime, it is speculation.
What I am fairly certain, is that like last year with Arizona, Coach Dixon took less money to stay. Arizona was willing to start at $2 million last year. That wasn’t enough, and Pitt didn’t have to redo his contract once more. This year, it is safe to assume that Oregon was probably willing to start at around $2.5 million per year. Coach Dixon, instead, stayed for 2 more years and very assuredly less than that over the length of the contract.
To me that says how much he prefers to be at Pitt, and just how crazy the money would have to be for him to leave. As Dokish points out, this is at least the 10th different offer from another school he has rejected.
It also means he believes that Pitt can win it all.
I’ve always wondered why pittblather never went to sbnation.
HTscriptP
I agree Pitt looks like to be his best shot but I have to agree with a previous post that points out that Dixon still is a bit ackward regarding his media interviews.
Dixon has made great strides regarding his growth as a headcoach but his overall persona is lacking at times regarding taking control of a situation.
The Mountaineers’ most recent Graduation Success Rate (GSR), 44 percent, is by far the lowest among the teams competing in the Final Four in Indianapolis, according to an annual NCAA study and a report by the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport.
West Virginia’s Bob Huggins was one of those coaches during his time at Cincinnati, where his teams reportedly had a 28 percent graduation rate over 16 years, one of the lowest in the nation. Four times at Cincinnati, the graduation rate was zero. Those numbers might be somewhat better under today’s standards.
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Does this surprise anyone from the ‘University’ thand handed out an MBA to the governor’s duaghter? I read that in the 7 years Dixon has been at Pitt, 22 scholarship players received degrees … I’m wondering if Huggins had 22 players graduate throughout his entire career!
But of course, as long as his teams continue to back in the Final 4, Huggy Bear will be ordained as one of the great caring guys .. as portrayed in one of the 11 pm local nescasts last night by Duquesne Coach Earhart.
(granted we’ll see how these freshmen play and get adjusted to big east)
This is reminiscent of this issue raised last year about Calhoun’s salary at UConn, a stae school. You may remember that Calhoun’s salary was actually a small percentage of the revenue that the basketball program brought in. My guess is that the same goes for the Pitt coaches.
