[gailtate]

But two years later, I bet the AD is actually more flush for cash now than it was in January 2020, and I am supremely skeptical that we don't have enough rich boosters who would be willing to back a major push to get a top tier basketball coach. (Especially after they got so much outside funding to cover those cut sports. COUGH.)

Probably, but if you go around sounding out rich boosters you make your coach a very lame duck pretty fast. You also turn off lots of prospective hires because they don't like that look. It can be done, but it is tricky.

The much bigger problem is attracting someone to coach at a school that has had a thoroughly mediocre MBB culture for going on two full decades, and having an AD with EUTM to make it happen.

Agree that identifying and attracting the right guy will be difficult. I think an AD with EUTM is exactly the wrong guy to do it. What the prospective coach will want to see is stability and patience, because fixing the problem isn't going to necessarily be fast or easy. What will be needed from the AD is competence and professionalism. The "quick fix" meme won't sell well IMHO.

The mix is conspicuously weak at the moment: No Hennessy, no Bowlsby, no institutional imperative to make anything happen of significance. Messrs. H and B made Harbaugh happen. Today MTL is an unknown quantity insofar as prioritizing the competitive superiority of revenue-sports. Hats off to his predecessor for publicly declaring he had seen the light ("Now I get it!") of football's institutional importance in the wake of the Orange Bowl championship in 2011. If the guy at the top isn't pushing pressure downward, ain't nuthin' gonna happen.

[gailtate]

But two years later, I bet the AD is actually more flush for cash now than it was in January 2020, and I am supremely skeptical that we don't have enough rich boosters who would be willing to back a major push to get a top tier basketball coach. (Especially after they got so much outside funding to cover those cut sports. COUGH.)

Probably, but if you go around sounding out rich boosters you make your coach a very lame duck pretty fast. You also turn off lots of prospective hires because they don't like that look. It can be done, but it is tricky.

The much bigger problem is attracting someone to coach at a school that has had a thoroughly mediocre MBB culture for going on two full decades, and having an AD with EUTM to make it happen.

Agree that identifying and attracting the right guy will be difficult. I think an AD with EUTM is exactly the wrong guy to do it. What the prospective coach will want to see is stability and patience, because fixing the problem isn't going to necessarily be fast or easy. What will be needed from the AD is competence and professionalism. The "quick fix" meme won't sell well IMHO.

The mix is conspicuously weak at the moment: No Hennessy, no Bowlsby, no institutional imperative to make anything happen of significance. Messrs. H and B made Harbaugh happen. Today MTL is an unknown quantity insofar as prioritizing the competitive superiority of revenue-sports. Hats off to his predecessor for publicly declaring he had seen the light ("Now I get it!") of football's institutional importance in the wake of the Orange Bowl championship in 2011. If the guy at the top isn't pushing pressure downward, ain't nuthin' gonna happen.