UGAChemDawg wrote:
I seem to recall the last time a big name championship winning coach whose better days were behind him was hired for the sake of bringing star power and name recognition to Georgia basketball. His name was Jim Harrick.
Sorry, not interested in trying that again.
ChemDawg, even though I'm against signing Bobby Knight, I will say a couple of things to blow up your theory:
Jim Harrick had a string of recruitment violations and academic violations following him that would make Kelvin Sampson look like Mother Theresa. Bob Knight has never had a recruitment complaint levied against him.
Jim Harrick was hired over the gigantic objections of Vince Dooley because he was Michael Adams' friend. A lot of people speculate that it was the fallout over the Tony Cole incident and everything that that uncovered that led to MFA not renewing CVD's contract and essentially retiring the greatest AD in history. Bob Knight has no such connection to Adams, though there may be -- and should be -- concerns on Damon Evans' part due to Knight's past behavior.
Jim Harrick got in a good deal of trouble because of his son. Pat Knight is already firmly ensconced at Texas Tech, and from all reports is doing a bang-up job there just like his dad.
Finally, Jim Harrick NEVER achieved the level of success that Bob Knight has. Never even sniffed it. Three titles and a gold medal? I don't care if you've won a national title. Don't care if you succeeded at UCLA. You can't come close to what Bobby Knight has done. You
can't.
In short, just because we hired Jim Harrick once doesn't mean we shouldn't take a chance if someone like Roy Williams or Billy Donovan or -- gasp! -- Bob Knight comes available. It ain't a mathematical axiom; believe it or not, in this age of HYPEspn, it's more of an anomaly. Knight is NOT Harrick. Don't even confuse the two.
