Todd Brommelkamp / 1600ESPN
The Fran McCaffery era came to an unceremonious end in Iowa City last week as Beth Goetz reached the conclusion change was needed atop the men’s basketball program at Iowa. Calling it a “change in leadership” rather than what it was, a firing, didn’t make the news sting any less for McCaffery.
It was, I believe, the correct call.
A myriad of empty seats inside Carver-Hawkeye Arena during men’s games served as visual proof apathy had taken hold among the fan base.
Now, Goetz faces the first major hiring of her still-nascent tenure as athletic director. While she hired Jan Jensen to replace the retiring Lisa Bluder, that was an easy call to make. The decision to part ways with the school’s all-time leader in men’s basketball victories was much tougher to reach.
The fallout hasn’t been pretty.
Iowa fans pinned their hopes on luring Darian DeVries away from West Virginia after just one season in Morgantown. The former Drake coach (and brother of former Iowa football standout Jared DeVries) was widely believed to covet the Iowa and Creighton jobs above all others if either were to become available. Had McCaffery been jettisoned a year earlier, there’s little doubt the Aplington native would have just concluded his first season as Iowa’s head coach.
DeVries did leave West Virginia this week for the Big Ten, but in a stunning move, it was Indiana that secured his services by way of paying a massive buyout.
If he was Plan A for Goetz — there’s no indication that was the case at all — it’s now on to Plan B.
Whether that involves DeVries’ replacement in Des Moines, Ben McCollum, or another coach, it doesn’t matter. DeVries would have sparked an immediate interest in renewed support for the program among fans, as evidenced by the fanfare he was receiving before even exploring the Iowa gig.
DeVries apparently looked at the resources — more accurately, the lack of them — in Iowa City and decided some dreams aren’t worth making a reality. That should scare the bejeezus out of every fan who has ever set foot inside Carver-Hawkeye Arena.
McCaffery, after exiting the Big Ten Tournament in Indianapolis last week, was asked a series of questions about his future at Iowa. In answering those queries, he stated he felt Iowa men’s basketball would need roughly $6 million annually to compete in the Big Ten given what other schools were committing to their Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) programs. It has been reported that the team’s entire NIL budget for this past year was just over $1 million.
No coach in America is going to take the Iowa job without a significant commitment of resources, and it’s unclear whether the Hawkeyes have the ability to make that pledge at this point.
For a number of fans, it’s hard to fathom how Iowa has fallen on such hard times. The school has a rich basketball tradition stretching back decades. The present is all that matters in the current landscape of college sports. It’s no longer what have you done for me lately; it’s simply what can you do for me now.
Few fans recall how when former coach Steve Alford left Iowa for New Mexico after the 2006 season, then-Athletic Director Gary Barta struggled to find a replacement interested in the job. After a few brief flirtations with mid-tier candidates, Iowa settled on throwing a million bucks at reigning National Coach of the Year Todd Lickliter from Butler. The main issue at the time was the school’s lack of a practice facility. Iowa was one of only two Big Ten schools without a dedicated gym for its basketball programs.
That was nearly 20 years ago. Iowa was behind the rest of the conference then and, despite eventually rectifying the facilities issue, somehow managed to fall even further behind.
When Lickliter was cast aside after three lackluster seasons, McCaffery was hired after successful runs at Lehigh, UNC-Greensboro and Siena. He got Iowa back to the postseason, first the NIT then eventually the NCAA. He had recruiting successes in landing eventual National Player of the Year Luke Garza and brothers Keegan Murray and Kris Murray, both of whom would go on to become first round NBA draft picks. There was a Big Ten Tournament championship thrown in for good measure.
You couldn’t just take the good with McCaffery, though. There was the bad. In 15 seasons, the Hawkeyes never advanced past the first week of the NCAA Tournament. McCaffery was almost single-handedly responsible for ending Iowa’s home-and-home series with Northern Iowa and Drake, replacing those games with non-conference tomato cans that drew little to no interest from fans. He had issues with popular play-by-play broadcaster Gary Dolphin and failed to have his back when Dolph was suspended after being caught on a hot microphone criticizing Iowa’s guard play and McCaffery’s recruiting. He had a combative relationship with most of the media he dealt with on a regular basis.
Of course, there were the sideline tirades, technical fouls and ejections.
Through it all, McCaffery piled up victories and did more with less than anyone probably realized. I firmly believe history will look upon his tenure at Iowa quite well given time and distance.
However, it was time for change.
Goetz didn’t land the one coach who many fans had attached their hopes and dreams to. There are Bob Stoops parallels here, as some have pointed out well before I sat down to write this. When then-Athletic Director Bob Bowlsby faced the retirement of football coach Hayden Fry in 1998, Stoops was the near-unanimous choice of fans everywhere. Oklahoma got the drop on the Hawks after the school’s convoluted search committee process delayed Bowlsby from taking action, and Kirk Ferentz eventually landed the job.
It wasn’t popular at the time, but it’s safe to say everything worked out well in the end.
Perhaps a similar situation will unfold this time.
Who will be cast in the role of Ferentz this time around? I’m not sure even Goetz knows the answer and that, my friends, could be an entirely separate column.
Todd Brommelkamp is the host of “The Todd Brommelkamp Show” and can be heard weekday mornings on 1600ESPN from 6:30 to 9 a.m.
