Fast Firing Leads to Instability

“Enough is enough. The results are clear: (Insert coach’s name here) has to go.”

Take a look at the sports section of any major or collegiate newspaper, and you’re sure to find that sentiment over and over again. Very few teams or programs are satisfied with the coach they have at the moment, and all it takes is one or two bad seasons—no matter the experience level of the person at the helm—to get the coaching carousel turning. Everyone in the world of athletics, it seems, thinks the grass is greener on the other side.

Columbia isn’t alone in that regard, either. The four years of M. Dianne Murphy’s tenure as athletics director have seen head-coaching changes in 12 different varsity programs, including the high-profile hiring of Norries Wilson for football and the high-profile firing of Dieter Ficken for men’s soccer. Only six Columbia head coaches have been leading their programs for over a decade: Kevin McCarthy with women’s soccer, Bid Goswami with men’s tennis, Willy Wood with cross country and track and field, Jim Bolster with men’s swimming, George Kolombatovich with fencing, and Diana Caskey with women’s swimming.

This winter, though, Murphy won’t be all that busy. With the exception of volleyball, which is currently undergoing a nationwide search for a new head coach, not one fall program—barring an unexpected resignation or retirement—will be switching head coaches. Or at least last season’s results seem to bolster this theory. Of the fall sports, three—football, men’s soccer, and volleyball—saw more than their fair share of troubles, combining scores for zero wins in the Ivy League.

Football, however, is still in the long process of rebuilding a program that became stagnant under former head coach Bob Shoop, and it only follows that Wilson will be given time to produce results. As for men’s soccer, head coach Leo Chappel will likely get at least one more year to turn things around, despite two straight winless Ivy campaigns to start his Columbia career. Volleyball, as previously mentioned, has long been in the process of achieving stability in its coaching ranks, and hopefully Murphy’s impending hire will accomplish that.

On the other side of things, field hockey head coach Katie Beach gave herself a good deal of job security with her team’s surprising second-place Ivy League finish. McCarthy, Goswami, and Wood, meanwhile, have cemented themselves in their respective programs and will likely be here until they choose to retire or move on, while women’s tennis head-coach newcomer Ilene Weintraub has just begun her Columbia career.

What we have, then, is a situation in which one year from now, the fall coaching landscape at Columbia will be virtually unchanged. The same is most likely true for the other remaining sports as well, although another winless Ivy season for Kerri Whittaker’s lacrosse program could spell her end. In a world of college athletics where most programs are frantically moving parts around in search of wins, Columbia’s situation is, quite frankly, remarkable.

There are arguments both ways as to the merits of giving a coach a wealth of time to produce results versus quickly cycling out coaches who have done little. If you create a system where coaches stay on regardless of results, then you risk letting programs stagnate. If you act too hastily to replace the old guard, however, you could potentially create programs without experience at any level, robbing yourself of institutional knowledge. The truth is that it takes time to produce a premium product at any athletic level. If an organization is continually shuffling out the old and replacing them with the untested, then how can a program be expected to develop? How can recruits feel comfortable joining a team that, within a year or two, could have an entirely new coaching staff running things? And how could coaches ever feel secure in their jobs if they know that one or two years of frustration could bar them from ever doing anything more?

That isn’t to say that perpetual mediocrity should be rewarded. If a coach is failing and there seems to be no effort on their part to remedy the issue, then they should be dealt with accordingly. There’s a difference, however, between institutionalizing mediocrity and rapidly flipping through alternatives in an effort to try something new. Coaches and administrators need time to implement their plans, bring in recruits, and change the way things are run from top to bottom. Being hustled out the door at the first sign of trouble, or at the first whisper that a better option might be available, does nothing to build a program.

It’s hard to judge coaches from a spectator’s standpoint because of the fact that we, as observers, really know very little about what happens on a day-to-day basis or on an internal level. We can discuss wins and losses, player defections, and game strategy all day long, but we’ll never know just how a coach is valued by the administration until they’re handed either an extension offer or a pink slip. For her part, Murphy understands that progress on most levels is a gradual thing. In athletics, it’s as simple or difficult as the variables of achieving the right mix of players or the strength of your conference opponents. Reactionary politics, more often than not, lead to greater instability. Achieving real results takes a systematic approach to building from the ground up.