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Shaka Smart, Steve Patterson and the allure of the Texas job
When Texas fired embattled athletic director Steve Patterson on Tuesday after just 22 tumultuous months on the job, it didn't merely signal that the Longhorns had made a huge mistake not properly vetting him before hiring him.
It also served as a reminder of the issues Shaka Smart was willing to endure to become the next coach at Texas.
Smart is way too savvy to have made the jump from VCU to Texas last April without first researching his new athletic director's history of alienating those around him. He had to know that Patterson had already made enemies in Austin by raising ticket prices, firing respected longtime employees, forcing coaches to pay for their own meals and not bothering to spend enough time schmoozing with the school's wealthiest donors. He also had to know Patterson pulled many similar stunts during his fiascoe of a tenure as Portland Trail Blazers general manager.
Yet Smart took the Texas job anyway in April, accepting a six-year, $22 million contract from the Longhorns despite the presence of a draconian athletic director with zero people skills and four years left on a guaranteed contract. Smart did this despite having a Top 25-caliber roster returning to VCU and despite having passed on similarly lucrative contract offers in previous years from name-brand programs such as Oregon, NC State, Illinois and UCLA.
It's a testament to the allure of the Texas basketball job that none of Patterson's many issues deterred the school's pursuit of Smart. Smart surely is among the many in college basketball circles who believe that the combination of a strong brand, endless resources, modest fan expectations and an outstanding in-state talent base make Texas one of the nation's premier jobs.
Annually among the nation's wealthiest athletic departments, Texas can afford to spend lavishly on facilities, assistant coaching salaries, recruiting budgets and guarantee games. Whoever coaches Texas basketball will always have resources many opponents lack.
Texas also has the advantage of being the flagship program in a state awash with basketball talent. Among the numerous in-state products now starring in the NBA include LaMarcus Aldridge, Chris Bosh, DeAndre Jordan, Marcus Smart and Julius Randle.
Lastly, there's the fact that Texas is a football school and its fan base doesn't demand the same level of success that other schools with similar resources do.
Fans at North Carolina, Kansas or Kentucky will often call for a coach to be fired if he doesn't reach a Final Four after five years or win a championship soon after that. All the coach at Texas has to do is string together NCAA bids and make an occasional deep run every few years to satisfy Longhorns supporters.
All of those reasons were enough for Smart to take the Texas job in spite of any concerns about Patterson, and now he has the best of both worlds.
Smart holds one of the most coveted coaching jobs in college basketball and he'll have the chance to have a say in who his new boss will be.
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Jeff Eisenberg is the editor of The Dagger on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at daggerblog@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
