Coaching carousel sometimes turns backwards

Last Thursday the NBA's Orlando Magic hired University of Florida basketball coach Billy Donovan. But this weekend, rumbling and rumors that Donovan was starting to reconsider surfaced. As I write this, the Magic are apparently trying to figure out whether to tear up Donovan's still-wet-inked, five-year, $27.5 million contract and allow him to stay in Gainesville. These should be halcyon days for Donovan, who is coming off back-to-back NCAA titles with the Gators and having his pick of jobs in the college and pro ranks. Instead, regardless of how this shakes out, he will have to live with the shame of many coaches who should have "slept on it" before deciding to take a job instead of waiting till after they agreed to make a move. And to think, not 15 years ago, such a switcharoo was absolutely unthinkable.

It all started in the spring of 1993. The University of South Carolina men's basketball team was coming off another disappointing season, during which head coach Steve Newton resigned amid scandal. As always seems to happen in the world of big-time sports, the speculation as to who would replace Newton was rampant. Around the Palmetto State, excitement grew about the possibility of a homecoming of sorts for then-Georgia Tech coach Bobby Cremins. He was a star at USC in the late 1960s; one of many native New Yorkers brought south by legendary coach Frank McGuire. He even served as a McGuire assistant in the '70s.

On Wednesday, March 24, 1993, the ever-devoted but oft-disappointed Gamecock faithful got their wish, when Cremins agreed to be USC's new coach. It was the top story on every newscast and the banner headline in every newspaper around South Carolina. A local newstand quickly printed up "Welcome Home Bobby Cremins" bumper stickers. A Columbia TV station interviewed my friend Johnny's mom, a USC alum and Gamecock fanatic, about what having Cremins as coach would mean. It seemed like the entire Gamecock nation was walking on air. But it wouldn't last for long. The following Saturday I was at Johnny's house, when his mom yelled upstairs to us that the same TV news reporter would be at the house later that morning. When we asked why, we couldn't believe her answer: Bobby Cremins was going back to Georgia Tech.

Little did we all know that day that Cremins had opened a veritible Pandora's Box of coach waffling. Starting just days after I accepted admission to the University of Georgia in the winter of 1995, I saw it happen all too often first-hand. On Christmas Day, 1995, Kansas coach Glen Mason, who had agreed to be Georgia's new football coach, announced during a press conference after the Jayhawks played in the Aloha Bowl that he would not go to Georgia after all. Instead he would stay in Lawrence. (Mason left one season later for Minnesota)

My junior year at UGA, I was opinions editor at the student newspaper The Red & Black when the Bulldogs hired Jim Harrick to coach the basketball team in late March 1999. On April 1, we got a call in the newsroom from a reporter at spring football practice about rumors Harrick had pulled a Cremins and gone back to the University of Rhode Island. When he called back to tell us about a press release announcing an early-evening press conference to discuss the basketball coaching situation, I called the athletic department to make sure it wasn't an April Fool's joke. It wasn't. That evening, with athletic director Vince Dooley conferenced in by phone from a hotel room near the battfields of Gettysburg, PA, UGA President Michael Adams told reporters that Harrick had indeed changed his mind to go back to Rhode Island before flip-flopping again and deciding to come to Athens after all.

A couple months later, I was there when Dooley introduce Ron Polk as Georgia's new baseball coach. Polk was coming out of a two-year retirement after a legendary career at Mississippi State. He said one thing that made the Georgia job a good fit was that the two SEC teams would not play each other his first two years. I guess he couldn't bear to face his old school, which played on a field that bears his name, because after two years, MSU fired Polk's successor and rehired Polk.

In 2001, there was a reverse Cremins when Georgia Tech football coach George O'Leary left for Notre Dame. Five days later, a reporter revealed that O'Leary had lied on his resume, and O'Leary was forced to resign in disgrace.

Back to Florida/Orlando's Donovan. It must be tough to have such a public change of heart and one that could cost you millions. But I'm certainly not crying for him. Most of us never get the chance to go back on decisions like this. Of course, most of us make sure to make the right decision in the first place.

By the way, Cremins change of heart seems to have paid off in the long run. He retired from Tech in 2000 as the Yellow Jackets winningest coach. The school named the basketball court at McAlexander Coliseum after him three years later. And last year, he got back into coaching when he took the top job at the College of Charleston… just a few weeks after Gregg Marshall accepted the job, but decided to stay at Winthrop (though for just one more season) instead.