Coaches Hot Seat Basketball Blog

“Life all comes down to a few moments.  This is one of them.”  Bud Fox, Wall Street (movie).  What Dennis Felton and the Georgia Bulldogs did by winning the SEC Tournament cannot be overstated.  To often in life we are looking off to things that are going to happen in the future or what has happened in the past, and both of those things distract us from the most important item of all, which is THIS VERY MOMENT.  When you hear basketball coaches talking about what they did in past seasons or what might happen next year to justify why they should keep their job, you know you are dealing with an excuse maker.  There is a saying in golf that you are only as good as your next shot, which is a fancy way of saying that once the current shot is struck, it is over and done with and it is time to move on.  Tiger Woods is the preeminent example of a great athlete that completely lives in the the current moment, which also happened to be the strongest trait of Tiger’s only challenger for the greatest golfer of all time, Jack Nicklaus.  It is not a coincidence that Woods and Nicklaus are the two greatest of all time and that they both supremely focused on the here and now, not the future nor the past.  Whatever Dennis Felton and Georgia found to propel them to the SEC Tournament championship, the achievement of that title should be celebrated for the very significant achievement that it is.  Congratulations to Coach Felton and the Bulldogs, and now it is time for them to focus entirely on their first-round opponent in the NCAA tournament, Xavier.

Is there anything better than this time of year?  The NCAA Basketball Tournament, baseball spring-training underway, the PGA Tour is moving towards The Masters, NASCAR is in full swing, and in California it is 70 degrees and sunny!  Okay, college football season is better, but we digress…  Spring arrives early in the Golden State, which means the greatest spectacle in sport, the NCAA Basketball Tournament is about to get cranked-up.  No one here at Coaches Hot Seat is an expert in the world of “Bracketology,” but it surely must be difficult to pick 65 teams out of the few hundred that play I-A college basketball.  Picking the at-large teams must be especially difficult when there are only 34 slots available after the automatic qualifiers have filled up the brackets, and we are often amused at coaches that claim their team should have been in the tournament.  If a coach wants his team to play in the NCAA Tournament then he needs to win more basketball games, because there is ample opportunity with 65 teams in the tournament for all teams that deserve to be in it, to play there way into it.

With the regular season over we have taken another look into at the Coaches Hot Seat Rankings, and the first big shake-up was Dennis Felton moving from a very Hot Seat to way down the Rankings.  As for the top of the latest Rankings, here are the Top 5:

1.  Bill Carmody - Northwestern officials must be looking around college basketball and wondering, can Northwestern be a basketball power?  The answer to that questions is, YES!  If Stanford, Gonzaga, Notre Dame, Georgetown, Duke and many other of our finest educational institutions can field top college basketball teams, Northwestern can as well.  It will always be very difficult for Northwestern football to compete at the highest levels of college football, but there is no reason that Northwestern cannot have a first-rate basketball program.  Can Bill Carmody make Northwestern into a first-rate program?  That is the question that needs to be answered by NU officials.

2.  Matt Doherty - When the word Matt Doherty enters our brains here at Coaches Hot Seat the first image that flashes before our eyes is a tough and gritty basketball player at North Carolina.  That image is never going to change, unless Matt Doherty changes it himself by proving that he can coach the game of basketball.  Matt has the energy, he has the passion, he has the knowledge, but as Paul “Bear” Bryant said, “No coach has ever won a game by what he knows; it’s what his players know that counts.”  Doherty had great talent at North Carolina, but he struggled mightily to win basketball games in Chapel Hill, and he only has mediocre talent at SMU, but the struggles continues.  That is a trend, and it is a trend that Doherty must break in 2009.

3.  Norm Roberts -  If you are over the age of 40 then you know what St. John’s basketball is all about.  There is always great basketball being played in the high schools and playgrounds of New York (a couple of us have been in those NYC pick-up games and they are fantastic) and there is no reason St. John’s basketball should not own college basketball in the greatest city on the earth.  Roberts just completed his 4th season at St John’s and his record is 48-67 (.417), and if that is acceptable to the people running Red Storm athletics then St. John’s basketball is dead.

4.  Mark Gottfried - CM Newton and Wimp Sanderson built Alabama basketball into a perennial power and in Gottfried’s 10 seasons the Tide has turned into a mediocre backwater.  Save one trip to the Final 8 a few seasons back, Gottfried has put a mediocre record up at Alabama, and most shockingly Gottfried is 81-79 in the SEC and 20-60 on the road in the SEC in his 10 years at Alabama.  20-60 road record in the SEC?  Just an amazing number, but as we have mentioned before, it is hard to pin down just what the expectations are for Alabama basketball.  The Tide football program so overshadows all other athletic teams at Alabama that basketball sometimes gets lost in the shuffle, and Gottfried can be thankful for that lack of respect, because it probably saved his job in 2008.  We don’t know exactly what Alabama and its fans expect of Mark Gottfried, but from our point of view he should have the Crimson Tide in the NCAA Tournament every year.  There is plenty of basketball talent within 3 hours of Tuscaloosa to build and maintain a high-quality basketball program, and now in his 10th year Gottfried has missed the NCAA Tournament for the 2nd straight season.  Our eyes and ears in Tuscaloosa tell us that Gottfried is about to be put on notice.  It is either return Alabama to the top echelon of the SEC and make the NCAA Tournament in 2009, or the Gottfried era in Red and White will be brought to a close.

5.  Ed DeChellis - If they closed down the Penn State basketball program would anyone care?  Since Ed DeChellis is 57-92 (.383) in 5 seasons in Happy Valley the obvious answer to that question is: NO!  It seems only yesterday that Big Ten basketball used to be something, but when you put a point on that thought, basketball in the Big Ten hasn’t been a great in years.  Within this mediocre basketball conference, Penn State is double mediocre, if not downright bad at times, and from what we are told DeChellis could put up .500 records from now until the sun goes  supernova and not worry about his job security.  That is sad, and says a lot about the commitment to excellence to anything beyond football at Penn State.

What causes a team to run through the SEC Tournament like Georgia just did?  What causes a Pittsburgh football team rise-up and beat potential National Champion in West Virginia last season?  How is it teams that play very bad all season suddenly turn things around and win games they are not supposed to?  Excellent question, and the answer to that question is, COACHING!  When coaches feel like they are against the wall they can either panic, or they can double-down and work like the devil to find the problems and then turn around their team.  Therein lies the difference between the Coach K’s and Pete Carroll’s of the world and average coaches.  Great coaches are doubling down and working like hell all of the time, and Coach Felton (and Pittsburgh’s Coach Wannstedt last season against West Virginia) should note exactly what they did during their upsets and apply those lessons year round to their programs.  Andy Grove, one of the founders and later the CEO of Intel corporation had a term and wrote a book with the title, “Only the Paranoid Survive.”  Great coaches, and great leaders for that matter, are paranoid about everything, and their work reflects their concern that if they do let up for even a moment that the game they are coaching will pass them by.  All coaches would be wise to understand the lessons of Andy Grove, and the importance of applying consistent attention to all the important things that go into building a winning athletic program.

Let’s have a great 1st week of the NCAA Tournament!

The hypocrites gathered in Indianapolis, Indiana and they have picked 65 teams that will now play for a legitimate National Championship in the NCAA Basketball Tournament.  Where are these same people when college football is floundering around with one of the most asinine ways to determine a champion (the BCS) since man started drawing pictures on the walls of caves?  These men and women, and their enablers in the media are jamming the BCS down the throats of college football fans everywhere, when even a first-grader can understand the utter hypocrisy of this group of people and the BCS system.  Stupid?  Yes.  Dumb?  Yes.  Will be here forever (the BCS)?  Not a chance! 

Before we get to the final Game Championship Series (GCS) Rankings we must first announce the dates that the 5 GCS Games will be played.  No, the GCS Games will not be played a week after the end of the regular basketball season.  No, the GCS games will not be played two weeks after the college basketball season.  No, the GCS Games will not even be played three weeks after the end of the college basketball season.  No, in order to fully understand the incredible absurdity and lunacy of the Bowl Championship Series, the Game Championship Series will tell all the teams picked for the GCS to go home for several weeks and then report for 1 GCS National Championship Game and 4 meaningless GCS exhibition games.  That is what the BCS does every year, and if there is still a sane person on the planet that can defend the BCS, please step forward and let us shine the light of stupidity upon your face.  The GCS is an absurd idea, and the BCS is an absurd reality, and in the end the BCS will be eliminated and replaced with a legitimate way to determine the college football National Champion, because something so absurd as the BCS cannot be allowed to stand in the United States of America.  Alas, we digress….

Dates for the Game Championship Series (GCS) Games:

The Moron Game- Los Angeles, California (with a parade!) - Friday, April 18, 2008, 7:00 PM EST
The Idiot Game - Phoenix, Arizona - Saturday, April 19, 2008, 7:00 PM EST
The Really Stupid Game - New Orleans, Louisiana - Friday, April 25, 2008, 7:00 PM EST  
The Asinine Game - Miami, Florida - Saturday, April 26, 2008, 7:00 PM EST
GCS Championship Game- Los Angeles, California (without a parade!) Monday, April 28, 2008, 7:00 PM EST

There you have it, the dates for the Game Championship Series (GCS) Games!  Does that sound really stupid to suspend the basketball post-season and to give teams playing in the GCS over 4 weeks off before the games are played?  Yes, it is incredibly stupid, and that is exactly the point! 

On to the Final Game Championship Series (GCS) Rankings!  No, we do not have a committee drawn from people all over the country to pick the 16 teams in the Final GCS Rankings.  No, we have a group of buffoons voting in a poll, we combine that with a coach’s poll, and then we throw in computer rankings for good measure to emerge with our final GCS Rankings.  You say that sounds stupid?  Yes, it is stupid, but that is exactly the point!

On to the Final Game Championship Rankings (GCS)!

1.  North Carolina
2.  UCLA
3.  Kansas
4.  Memphis
5.  Tennessee
6.  Duke
7.  Wisconsin
8.  Texas
9.  Georgetown
10.  Notre Dame
11.  Xavier
12.  Butler
13.  Louisville
14.  Pittsburgh
15.  UConn
16.  Gonzaga

There they are, the Final Game Championship Series (GCS) Rankings!  Since all of us have been a victim of the BCS during these past 10 years, we all know exactly what the above rankings mean.  Even though there are several teams who have a claim to the top spot, and that there are at least another 15 to 20 teams that could win the NCAA Basketball National Championship, the GCS will do exactly what the BCS does and call an abrupt and incredibly stupid end to the post-season right now.  The top two teams, North Carolina and UCLA will play in the GCS National Championship Game, and then we will pick 8 other teams to play in meaningless GCS exhibition games.  Yes, this is the STUPIDIEST system ever devised by man, but THAT IS THE POINT!  Here is how the GCS games shake out!

The Moron Game - Notre Dame vs. Wisconsin
The Idiot Game - Texas vs. Georgetown
The Really Stupid Game- Tennessee vs. Duke
The Asinine Game - Kansas vs. Memphis
GCS Championship Game - North Carolina vs. UCLA

There you have it, the Game Championship Series Game Match-ups!  This is pure genius pairing the top two teams, and then playing 4 meaningless exhibition games!  Yes, this is what man has come up with 40 years after he first walked on the moon!  Yes, the brightest minds in the world have dreamed up this GCS and we will fight like hell in defending it, even though we know that it is indefensible.  Yes, we are arrogant, we are selfish, and we would destroy the game of college basketball and the legitimacy of its National Championship, just so we can keep our cushy jobs running a series of meaningless exhibition games.  We are bigger than the game of college basketball and everyone else can go to hell, especially the players, the coaches, and most especially THE FANS!  Yes, the fans can go to HELL, as we hold our fancy parties and laugh as they buy up tickets like fools to watch meaningless games and a joke of a game for the National Championship.  Hold it, this is college basketball, not college football, and we will actually get to see 65 teams playoff on the court to determine the champion on the field of play!  That is the American way, that you win championship on the field of play.  From Little League baseball to the Super Bowl, there is only one way to raise a championship trophy, and that is by earning it on the field of play!  All of course but for the disaster that is college football’s post-season.  Yes, these adults on the NCAA Basketball Committee. many who claim the BCS is the only way in football, give a damn about college basketball, the players, the coaches, and the fans, and thank goodness for that.  As for the BCS crowd, shame on every one of you, because you are everything that is wrong about sport and in our country, because you most of all put your selfishness above the game, and history will note who has stood by the bankrupt and incredibly foolish BCS.  The BCS is a fraud and will always be a fraud and there is not a damn thing that anyone can do to change that fact.

Of course, if we suspend disbelief again, we can all forget about college basketball for 4 weeks, because it is that long until the Game Championship Series are played.  Sound stupid?  It is, and that is exactly the point!

Thank goodness for college basketball and the NCAA Basketball Tournament.  As for the BCS crowd, watch and learn in the coming weeks and learn about what winning a championship is all about.

There are very few things on this earth that can give adults that giddy feeling they had during the run-up to Christmas every year, but the NCAA basketball tournament is one of those things.  College basketball is a terrific sport, because it combines great regular season passion with a fantastic post-season that crowns a legitimate National Champion.  The college basketball games from the past week have been everything from astounding to stunning, and we are only getting this party cranked up.  With the conference tournaments and then the big enchilada, the NCAA tournament only a week away, sports fans everywhere are looking forward to a distraction from the economy and politics.  Unfortunately, there is a sport that not only does not have a legitimate way to determine its National Champion, the way it goes about determining its champion is absurd and an affront to sports fans that realize the importance of winning a championship on the field of play.  With that in mind, we are back with the Game Championship Series (GCS) Rankings for college basketball, which by its very existence shows the incredible absurdity of the way college football determines its champion.  This is the next to the last GCS Ranking, with the final rankings being posted on “Selection Sunday” so that the NCAA Tournament Committee will have the opportunity to throw out the NCAA tournament and adapt an absolutely stupid and incredibly absurd way to determine a National Champion, the GCS!  Since many people on the NCAA basketball selection committee defend the BCS like it is their first-born, we then arrive at the obvious conclusion that when the tournment selection committee gets together this weekend there will have never been a bigger group of hypocrites gathered together since Congress was last in session. 

We also would like to address one of the most asinine features of the BCS, which is the time between the end of the college football season and when the BCS bowls are played.  Last year the period between the final games of the teams that played in the BCS Bowl games varied between 51 and 32 days, which shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that the BCS is one of the greatest frauds that has ever been conceived by man.  Just imagine that if at the end of the basketball conference tournaments a group of hypocrites gathered (that already happens) together to announce the match-up for the GCS Games, and they also added that these games will be played approximately 40 days from now, which would be sometime in the middle of April!  Yes, that would be pure genius, to allow basketball teams to take 30 to 50 days off to play their next game, let the players get out of game shape, and then play a series of exhibition games capped by a game that crowned a “mythical” National Champion.  If there is a red-blooded American that can defend the BCS system as a way to determine a champion, then they are either making money off the BCS or they are so far in the bag to the BCS that they have surrendered their right to comment on anything that has to do with sport in America.  In America championships are earned on the field of play, and that goes all the way from Little League Baseball to the Super Bowl, but we have this one odd little corner of sport, college football, where a group of power hungry, greedy, love to have their asses kissed, care little about the game of college football, don’t know shit about college football or what American sport is all about, hypocrites tell us that they have a better system to determine a champion.  What?  If the damn BCS system is so great then why doesn’t every other sport adopt a BCS-type format then?  Answer:  Only a moron, a moron of a high order, would ever dream up a system like the BCS, or would ever defend a system like the BCS.  The BCS is a fraud, and if you see someone defending it you can be assured that they have a “financial or personal interest” in continuing the existence of the BCS, because there is no defending a system that debases what sport and what America is supposed to be all about.

On to the latest Game Championship Rankings (GCS)!

1.  North Carolina
2.  Memphis
3.  Tennessee
4.  UCLA
5.  Texas
6.  Kansas
7.  Duke
8.  Wisconsin
9.  Georgetown
10.  Stanford
11.  Xavier
12.  Butler
13.  Notre Dame
14.  Louisville
15.  UConn

Now that we have these new GCS Rankings, which we determined the same way the BCS does by combining polls (one poll which has a group of buffoons voting in it, and believe us it was hard to find 100 buffoons!) and computer rankings, we can move on to the GCS Games.  Stupid you say?  Yes, very stupid, but please follow along with us, because it gets stupider!  With a group of morons now gathered a table, we move onto the GCS Games, which matches up the No. 1 and No. 2 teams in the GCS Rankings for the National Championship in basketball, and then the group of morons will pick from the rest of the above teams to match-up teams that will bring the most money to their towns to play in exhibition games.  Yes, this is really stupid!  On to the GCS Games if the season ended today!

1.  The Moron Game - This game will be played in Los Angeles, California (and will be preceded by a parade!  Yes, stop the presses!  A parade!) on Saturday March 22, 2008 and will match up two teams that are randomly pulled from a hat, from the GCS Rankings!  We are sooooo smart! 

2.  The Idiot Game - This game will be played in Phoenix, Arizona on Saturday March 22, 2008 and will match up two teams that are randomly pulled from a hat, from the GCS Rankings!  What genius!

3.  The Really Stupid Game - This game will be played in New Orleans, Louisiana on Sunday March 23, 2008 and will match up two teams that are randomly pulled from a hat, from the GCC Rankings!  Somebody make me a Hurricane!

4.  The Asinine Game - This game will be played in Miami, Florida on Sunday March 23, 2008 and will match up two teams that are randomly pulled from a hat, from the GCS Rankings!  Let’s hit South Beach!

5.  The GCS Championship (This is dumbest idea since man stood up on his two hind legs, which was about 4 million years ago!) Game- This game will be played in Los Angeles, California (no parade for this one, but we can all go to the Kodak Theater together!) on Sunday March 30 and will match up the two top teams in the Final GCS Rankings!  The idiot that thought this up would do well to run for Congress, because as Mark Twain said, “Suppose you were an idiot.  And suppose you were a member of Congress.  But I repeat myself.”

The Game Championship Series Game Match-Ups!

GCS Championship Game - North Carolina vs. Memphis
The Moron Game - Duke vs. Texas
The Idiot Game - UCLA vs. Kansas
The Really Stupid Game- Stanford vs. Notre Dame
The Asinine Game - Wisconsin vs. Georgetown

There you have it, the match-ups for the GCS Games if the season ended today.  If this seems really, really, incredibly stupid, then you get the idea.  The BCS is really, really, incredibly stupid and in fact is a disgrace to the great game of college football.  College basketball is building momentum to post-season tournament to determine its National Champion right now, instead of sending all teams in the post-season home for 40 days before they play again.  College basketball determines its National Champion on the field of play, not in the back rooms and on computer hard drives, but again we repeat ourselves.  THE BCS IS FRAUD and no amount of talk is going to change that.  If you don’t think its a fraud, then we fully expect to see calls for a BCS to be instituted in every other sport in collegiate athletics, but if someone actually made that proposal they would be laughed out of their job. 

Thank goodness for college basketball, and for people that have the guts to stand up and state the fact that the BCS is a FRAUD! 

It is going to be great fun to watch the conference tournaments this week, and very entertaining to watch a group of hypocrites pick 65 teams for a tournament to determine a National Champion in college basketball!  Bring on the college basketball!

Hello from Los Angeles as Coaches Hot Seat College Basketballhas decamped to LA for the Stanford-UCLA game on Thursday night!  Does it get any better than this?  Stanford travels to Pauley Pavilion to play the mighty (and very well coached) UCLA Bruins, and Coaches Hot Seatwill be courtside to take it all in!  Call us giddy, because we are, and what a joy it is to see a school like Stanford going toe to toe with one of the best teams in the college game. 

Now on to the Week 3 Coaches Hot Seat Rankings:

1.  Mark Gottfried- Now in his 10th year at Alabama, Mark Gottfried to us looks like one of the worst coaches in the game.  It is good to see Gottfried show some passion at the end of the Ole Miss game, but it is too late now to get one’s pulse rate up after the debacle of the 07-08 season.  The word out of Tuscaloosa is that Gottfried’s buyout ($3 million dollars) is too rich for the Bama fatcats, especially for basketball, which is really the problem here isn’t it?  At Alabama, football is KING, and basketball is little more than a diversion between the end of football season and the spring football game.  It matters little to us if Alabama doesn’t care if its basketball coach is one of the worst coaches in the game, but it should matter to Alabama alumni and fans.  The sad fact is, it doesn’t.

2.  Matt Doherty- After 5 straight losses, Doherty and SMU got a much needed win against UTEP in overtime, and you have to give it to the SMU players for not giving up in that game.  The bad news is that the Memphis Tigers are coming town tonight which should be highly comical to watch, and then SMU travels to play a 3-24 Rice team.  Doherty doesn’t have the talent to play with Memphis, but they should beat Rice on Saturday, and the Mustangs badly need to end the regular season on a winning note.  Doherty has a “Hot Seat,” but he will be returning next season to SMU, and a winning record next year will be a must.

3.  Bill Carmody- After getting a big win over Michigan, Northwestern stumbled against Purdue and Iowa, and now they have Wisconsin coming to Evanston to wrap up the regular season.  The real question for the people doing the hiring and firing at Northwestern is:  Can Northwestern have a winning basketball program?  Answer:  If Stanford can, Northwestern can as well.  There are plenty of great young coaches out there that would walk to Evanston for the chance to coach in the Big Ten, and Carmody’s .436 record at Northwestern is not worthy of what that school should be achieving in basketball.

4.  Norm Roberts- After losing 5 straight games, Norm Roberts and St. John’s got a win over Seton Hall, but now comes a trip to Notre Dame and a game against West Virginia to finish the season.  The powers-to-be at St. John’s said this past week that Norm Roberts’ job is safe, which says a lot about what the people running St. John’s think about their basketball program.  With a 48-65 (.425) record in 4 seasons in Queens, this is not your Daddy’s St. John’s basketball team.  Lou Carnesecca proved to us that St. John’s can be a national power in basketball, and it is sad that the expectations of the Red Storm (we really wanted to right Redmen!) have dropped to such a low point.  If Roberts’ record is acceptable to the people running St. John’s then we have a lot less respect for that school and basketball program.

5.  Dennis Felton- Another basketball program in the SEC that has really underachieved is Georgia under Dennis Felton.  Felton is 70-78 (.473) in 5 seasons at Georgia, and that record makes Mark Gottfried look like Coach Wooden.  With a trip to Auburn, Ole Miss at home, and the SEC Tournament to finish the season, we just don’t see anyway that Georgia justifies keeping Felton on at Georgia for another year.  The most troubling thing for us is that it seems some of the Georgia players have quit playing hard, and that is one of the sure signs of coach in trouble.

Back to the Stanford-UCLA game, what a joy it is to watch two basketball teams that play all out during an entire game.  Coach Johnson and Coach Howland are two of the best in the game, and how unusual it is to watch two teams in the same game that actually play defense.  Now UCLA’s defense is good, really good, but Stanford’s is not far behind, and the Cardinal certainly makes up for it by the way they crash the boards.  Stanford-UCLA at Pauley Pavilion, Thursday, March 6, 2008, 8PM PST.  It should be a great one, and however the games turns out, after the game we are going our for drinks in Santa Monica with our UCLA buddies.  Let’s just hope for the Bruins sake we are not singing “Hail to the Cardinal” the way we did after the USC football game last year!

In order to show the utter absurdity of the BCS (Bowl Championship Series) as a way to determine a National Champion in college football, Coaches Hot Seat introduces the GCS, the Game Championship Series for college basketball!  Yes, it is not enough that college football has the most asinine way that could ever be conceived by a mammal with a working brain for a way to determine a champion, but we believe that college basketball should not be left out of this insanity.  The GCS, Game Championship Series is thus inaugurated on February 27, 2008, with the first ever GCS Rankings.  Yes, we have a ranking too!  No, Coaches Hot Seat does not use a formula created by a dozen attorneys that combined one poll that has been around for 50 or more years, and then getting together a group of morons, most who watch no more than one college football game each Saturday, to vote in another poll.  That second poll is combined with the first poll, and then a bunch of computers (computers for God’s sake who have never seen a down of football!) are thrown into the mix to spit out the BCS Rankings.  Can you say, “Stupid is as stupid does?”  No, we are not idiots at Coaches Hot Seat, but rather Americans that believe championships can only be won on the field of play.  Imagine that, Americans acting like Americans, instead of this communist/socialist/elitist crapola that the BCS Boys have dreamed up, which exists only to keep a very small group of people employed and which also allows them to keep a stranglehold on the game of college football.  Americans believe in fair play, and the BCS is anything but that, but we digress…..

So here we are, with the first ever GCS Rankings, which will be used at the end of the basketball season to set up 5 games with 10 teams, with only the top 2 teams in the final GCS Rankings having the right to play for the National Championship.  Sounds stupid you say?  That is exactly the point.  Below you will find the first ever GCS Rankings, but before we do our witchcraft (we learned well from the BCS Boys) to create these new rankings, first let us explain what the 10 teams that are lucky enough to be part of the great Game Championship Series will be doing.  Strike up the band and send the women and children to bed, because this is hype at its worst, and so we move on to the actual GCS Games. 

1.  The Moron Game- This game will be played in Los Angeles, California (and will be preceded by a parade!  Yes, stop the presses!  A parade!) on Saturday March 22, 2008 and will match up two teams that are randomly pulled from a hat, from the GCS Rankings!  We are sooooo smart! 

2.  The Idiot Game - This game will be played in Phoenix, Arizona on Saturday March 22, 2008 and will match up two teams that are randomly pulled from a hat, from the GCS Rankings!  What genius!

3.  The Really Stupid Game - This game will be played in New Orleans, Louisiana on Sunday March 23, 2008 and will match up two teams that are randomly pulled from a hat, from the GCC Rankings!  Somebody make me a Hurricane!

4.  The Asinine Game - This game will be played in Miami, Florida on Sunday March 23, 2008 and will match up two teams that are randomly pulled from a hat, from the GCS Rankings!  Let’s hit South Beach!

5.  The GCS Championship (This is dumbest idea since man stood up on his two hind legs, which was about 4 million years ago!) Game- This game will be played in Los Angeles, California (no parade for this one, but we can all go to the Kodak Theater together!) on Sunday March 30 and will match up the two top teams in the Final GCS Rankings!  The idiot that thought this up would do well to run for Congress, because as Mark Twain said, “Suppose you were an idiot.  And suppose you were a member of Congress.  But I repeat myself.”

Now that we have the basic outlines of this incredibly stupid way to determine a National Champion, we introduce the First Annual GCS, Game Championship Series Rankings!  We will use the GCS Rankings to pick the teams to play in the above games, and since this whole things makes absolutely no sense, I think we all know how very stupid the BCS really is……  Now on to the GCS Rankings:

1.  North Carolina
2.  Tennessee
3.  Memphis
4.  UCLA
5.  Texas
6.  Duke
7.  Stanford
8.  Wisconsin
9.  Xavier
10.  Georgetown
11.  Louisville
12.  Indiana
13.  UConn
14.  Butler
15.  Vanderbilt

There you have it, the first ever GCS (Game Championship Series) Rankings!  What joy and how smart we are to come up with this stupidity!  Now, we all know how this foolishness ends, but just to recap, at the end of the regular season the 2 top teams in the Final GCS Rankings will play in the GCS Championship Game.  No other teams in college basketball will be eligible to play for the National Championship, but rather the people running the individual GCS Games will pick 8 teams to play in the other GCS Games.  Pure genius you may say, but no you are wrong.  A first grader could come up with this idea, but then that same first grader would come to the conclusion that his idea for the GCS was really stupid, and then that same first grader would draw up a series of brackets to determine the National Champion on the field of play.  That would be a sure mark of an American!

Right now (Imagine I am saying this breathlessly!) if the season was over, North Carolina would play Tennessee for the National Championship in the GCS Championship Game!  The other 8 teams the GCS Games would pick would be playing in meaningless exhibition games, but we never told you there was any logic to this insanity.  Just for the sake of stupidity, below are how the games would shake out if the college basketball season ended right now:

GCS Championship Game - North Carolina vs. Tennessee
The Moron Game - Memphis vs. Texas
The Idiot Game - UCLA vs. Duke
The Really Stupid Game - Stanford vs. Xavier
The Asinine Game - Wisconsin vs. Georgetown

There you have it, the GCS, Game Championship Series!  2 teams get to play for the National Championship and the rest play in meaningless exhibition games.  If this seems very stupid then you realize how so very stupid the BCS is, and how it is abhorrent to everything that America stands for.  Are there really living, breathing people that can defend the BCS with a straight face?  Yes, and some of those very people will be gathered in Indianapolis in a little over two weeks to pick the teams for…….hold on…….can you believe it?……..don’t say it is so……yes, the very evil……A PLAYOFF TOURNAMENT.  What a bunch of hypocrites!

We will be updating the GCS Rankings every week until the end of the season, and we will end up with two teams and two teams only out of all of the great college basketball teams in the country of ours, that will be able to play for the National Championship.  Everyone else can…., well, you know what they can do when an abhorrent system like the GCS is used to determine a champion.  Those other teams can go to HELL! How so very stupid…….

We are out with our Week 2 Coaches Hot Seat Rankings for college basketball, and there is no change at the top.  There is some great basketball being played right now, but there is also some awful basketball being played, and that bad play is putting some coaches on the Hot Seat.  Here are our Top 5 Coaches on the latest Coaches Hot Seat Rankings:

1.  Mark Gottfried - It is now becoming painfully obvious that Mark Gottfried is the worst basketball coach in the SEC.  How in the world an Alabama basketball team loaded with talent can lose to an Auburn team with 6 players on scholarship is hard to understand, but then again mediocrity has been the standard for Gottfried since he has been at Alabama.  Save for one trip to the Final 8 four years ago, Gottfried has incredibly underachieved in his time at Alabama, and it is time for Bama to make a change in the head coaching position in basketball.  If the Alabama season continues to spiral downward and the people running Alabama athletics let Gottfried coach for another year, we will know what they think of basketball in s.  Meaning, NOTHING!

2.  Matt Doherty - We have gotten some e-mail from SMU fans saying Doherty is not on the Hot Seat, but his record on the court (22-34 .393 at SMU) makes us believe that Doherty is starting to feel the heat in Dallas.  How long can Doherty lose games at SMU?  Certainly not through the 2008-09 season in our mind.

3.  Ed DeChellis - Do the Penn State fans care that their basketball team is awful?  The sad truth to that question is:  NO.

4.  Norm Roberts - The Roberts’ reign is about to end at St. John’s, and there is nothing wrong with that.  St. John’s has a proud basketball tradition, and they deserve a first-rate basketball team, and Norm Roberts is not delivering that right now.

5.  Bill Carmody - Carmody’s team almost pulled the upset against Indiana, but it was just not meant to be.  Carmody is a good basketball coach, but he has just not won enough games at Northwestern, and no doubt the people in Evanston are thinking about making a change at the top of their basketball program.

Can you feel the anticipation building?  Yes, it is just around the corner, one of the great spectacles in sport, the NCAA Basketball Tournament!  What a great 3-weeks of sport the NCAA Tournament is, and we here at Coaches Hot Seat look forward to drawing up our brackets and putting together a pool and following the tournament until we crown a National Champion!

Let’s have another great week of college basketball!

People that claim the NCAA Basketball Tournament somehow devalues the regular season of college basketball hasn’t been paying attention lately.  The Tennessee - Memphis game, and another dozen games that we have watched here at Coaches Hot Seat in the last couple of days, proves beyond any doubt that college basketball’s regular season has never been bigger.  College basketball arenas are filled across the country, and like every other sport on the face of the planet, college basketball is rolling towards the post-season and a playoff tournament to determine its champion, just the way it is supposed to be.  All of the sycophants that somehow claim the NCAA Basketball Tournament somehow takes away something from the regular season, need to join the rest of us on planet earth.  College basketball is on fire, and it is on fire because we will actually get a legitimate National Champion at the end of this odyssey, unlike in college football which is running one of the most absurd and incredibly stupid ways to determine its champion that has ever been devised by man in his time on this planet.  NCAA Basketball Tournament or the BCS?  Please, only a moron would take the BCS.

What can you say about Kevin Sampson, but that Sampson is either one of the dumbest people on this planet, or one of the most arrogant.  He gets caught by the NCAA while coaching at Oklahoma, and in the hiring process at Indiana (more on that debacle in a minute) he promises to everyone that he is done with breaking NCAA rules.  What does Sampson then do?  He breaks the very same NCAA rules that he broke at Oklahoma!  What an absolute moron, no make that an arrogant moron, and if Coaches Hot Seat had been running things at Indiana we would have taken Sampson by the scruff of the neck and tossed his ass off the campus.  As far as why Sampson was hired by Indiana in the first place, if the AD Rick Greenspan actually made the call in the hiring of Sampson, Greenspan should be fired quickly as well.  We have read in various places that the former president at Indiana wanted Sampson, so maybe Sampson was hired by someone other than the AD, but this issue must be resolved and quickly so that Indiana can move forward.  Sampson is gone, and everyone involved in hiring him should be gone as well.

Getting back to the games, what a terrific weekend of college basketball.  Most of us here at Coaches Hot Seat have been watching college basketball for over 30 years, roughly back to the Michigan State (Magic -Indiana State (Bird) final game in 1979 (YouTube video of the ending of the game), and the game has never been better, nor bigger.  The athleticism of the players is just incredible and the coaching is just terrific.  20 years ago you could count on two hands the really good or great college head basketball coaches, but everywhere you look these days there are great basketball coaches that are putting very good basketball teams on the floor.  We will have the 2nd week of the Coaches Hot Seat Basketball Rankings out early this week, and there should be some shake-up in the rankings. 

Have a great week!

Welcome to Coaches Hot Seat for College Basketball.  We have had so much fun following the football coaches that we have decided to dip our toes in college basketball for 2008.  We have been watching a good deal of college basketball this season, but we have been reluctant to take on the college basketball coaches because of the number of teams in Division I-A.  We started putting together a list of basketball coaches earlier this year, but after a couple of weeks of following a hundred or so coaches it was just a little to unwieldy to handle.  Last week we narrowed the coaches that we believe are either on the Hot Seat or on the Edge of the Hot Seat and that has left us with 25 basketball coaches as of today.   Here you can find our first basketball Coaches Hot Seat Basketball Rankings.  We also have the Hot Seat/Edge of Hot Seat coaches ranked according to Winning Percentage and their Salaries.

Before we detail our first Top 5 Hot Seat Coaches, we are assuming that Kevin Sampson will be sent packing from Indiana.  Why in the world Indiana ever hired this guy from Oklahoma in the first place, when everyone paying attention could see that Sampson didn’t have much respect for the rules of the NCAA is beyond us.  Indiana is a place that prides itself on not breaking NCAA rules and then they go out and hire Sampson just after he has been punished by the NCAA?  That makes no sense, and with all the great basketball coaches out there why would Indiana put its focus on someone that was just so recently in trouble with the NCAA?  It just makes no sense, and if the people running IU have any sense they will send everyone packing that any hand in bring Sampson to Bloomington.

Top 5 Hot Seat Coaches:

1.  Mark Gottfried - Alabama - In our opinion Mark Gottfried is the worst coach in the SEC and we cannot understand why Alabama would tolerate such mediocrity in its basketball program, but alas when we think about it. the same people that employ Gottfried hired Mike Dubose, Dennis Franchione, Mike Price, and Mike Shula for the football program at Bama.  In other words these are not the brightest bulbs running Alabama athletics and in fact we wonder if Alabama doesn’t mind their basketball program being such an underachiever.  Football drives the bus at Alabama and if the basketball program is being coached by someone that would be lucky to be coaching a high school team, then it is easy to understand how Alabama basketball got into its current predicament.  Gottfried is 14-12 this season and has 5 games left.  The way Alabama is playing right now they might just lose all 5 of those games, and if Alabama retains Gottfried after that, the real question will be: Does anyone at Alabama really care about basketball?  The answer to that question would be:  No.

2.  Matt Doherty - SMU - Matt Doherty is 22 - 32 (.407) in two seasons at SMU and we are starting to wonder if this train is headed for some serious trouble.  With a 2 -8 conference record this season and several tough games left on the schedule, a second straight losing record for Doherty at SMU is a certainty.  Steve Orsini, the AD at SMU, has staked his career on hiring experienced “name” coaches and Doherty certainly fits that bill, but can he build a winning program at SMU?  We have some real doubts about that and we cannot imagine that another losing season by Doherty in 2008-09 will do anything but bring an end to the Doherty reign at SMU. 

3.  Ed DeChellis - Penn State - Ed DeChellis is 54-88 (.380) in 5 seasons at Penn State and that puts him squarely on the Hot Seat.  So far this season DeChellis is 12-12 and we are starting to wonder if he can survive another losing season in State College.  There is no reason that Penn State should not have a very good college basketball team, but much like Alabama we really wonder if anyone cares if their basketball coach is putting up such mediocre numbers.  DeChellis and Penn State have 5 games left and 3 wins are needed for a +.500 season and it will be interesting to see how the people running athletics at State College will react if indeed another losing season is in the offing. 

4.  Norm Roberts - St. John’s - With a career record of 47-62 (.431) at St. John’s, Norm Roberts has been on the Hot Seat for most of his career in Queens.  For those of us in our 4os we remember those great St. John’s teams of the 1980s and wonder why Georgetown can be so good today, but the Red Storm (didn’t that used to be Redmen?) struggle so much.  There is some great basketball being played in the New York metro area and there is no reason for St. John’s to be anyplace but at the very top of the Big East every year.  With a 10-14 record right now and trips to Duke, Georgetown, and Notre Dame on the horizon this may be the last roundup for Norm Roberts with St. John’s.  With so many very good or great up-and-coming coaches in the game today, the people running St. John’s athletics must be asking themselves:  Can we do better?  Answer:  Yes, you can.

5.  Bill Carmody - Northwestern - Anyone that has walked around the Northwestern campus that is hard up against Lake Michigan just north of Chicago knows that it is a very special place.  The academics are great, the setting is ideal, the students are motivated, and the basketball team is terrible.  Bill Carmody is 102 - 130 (.440) in 8 seasons at Northwestern, and even at a place that expects very little of its basketball program, that record is probably not going to be good enough for Carmody to keep his job.  With a 0 - 13 Big Ten conference record this season and several tough games left on the schedule, it isn’t going to get any better anytime soon.  What can Carmody do to save job?  Probably nothing.

Well, there you have the Top 5 Coaches in our first ever Coaches Hot Seat Basketball Rankings.  We are going to see how this goes for the rest of 2008 and then work towards having every coach in Division I-A college basketball ranked for the 2008-09 season, just the way we do it for college football. 

The one great thing about college basketball is that we actually get to crown a legitimate National Champion and what great fun it is to watch a legitimate post-season tournament to decide that champion.  Coaches and teams may argue that they should be in the NCAA Tournament, but no one can argue that the National Champion in college basketball did not earn that title, and sadly that cannot be said for college football.  Of course, that is going to change in the coming years, and we will eventually get to watch a college football team (not a college football coach) hoist a NCAA National Championship trophy.  Of that, there is no doubt.

Let’s watch the rest of this great college basketball season unfold!