By Aidan Joly
What *should* end up being the second to last hire of the college basketball coaching carousel (UMES is still open for some reason) is easily the most puzzling, and also the most polarizing.
On Tuesday, Green Bay, in the Horizon League, turned heads across the sports world by hiring Fox Sports Radio personality Doug Gottlieb as the program’s next head coach.
Even more bizarre, it was quickly clarified that Gottlieb will continue his daily two-hour radio show, where he mostly discusses the NBA, along with some college basketball. He’s been a polarizing figure in the sports media world and has had some outrageous takes that have gotten him both good and bad attention on social media.
Simply put, this is something we have truly never seen before. Gottlieb played college basketball at Notre Dame (where he was dismissed for stealing a teammate’s credit card) and Oklahoma State from 1995-2000. However, he has been in the media for two decades and his only coaching experience is in the Maccabiah Games twice in 2009 and 2017. He has never been on a Division I bench as a coach.
Gottlieb has interviewed for coaching jobs here and there over the years. That includes at Green Bay one year ago when the school hired Sundance Wicks, who went 18-14 in his lone season with the Phoenix before leaving last week to take the job at Wyoming, after now-former Wyoming coach Jeff Linder left to take an assistant coach job at Texas Tech with Grant McCasland.
Sports media is not what it used to be. Coaching is not what it used to be. The lines between the two used to be very strict, but the lines have been blurred a little bit between media and coaching, we have seen several times in recent years coaches being more involved with media, including sitting coaches routinely being analysts during the NCAA tournament.
But, the bigger issue here is this: running a Division I basketball program is a major, major undertaking. It’s a 24-hour a day, 7-day a week job. Burnout has become more and more of a discussion among coaches in the past few years, especially so when it comes to an expanded recruiting calendar, the transfer portal, and managing NIL. It’s a much more time-consuming job that it was even three or four years ago.
It is tough to see him managing the two things simultaneously. The radio show is also a full-time job that requires him to pay attention to other sports that are going on, at the same time he is in-season. It’s surprising that even one of Fox or Green Bay gave this the green light, much less both of them. If he dropped the show for the coaching job, it would be a little easier to understand. But doing both is another story.
Still though, this is the most attention that Green Bay has gotten in as long as one can remember. The program has only been to the tournament one time in this century, and will certainly have many more eyes on it once the season gets going.
There’s absolutely no doubt that this is a fascinating move. It’ll be a storyline to watch, whether he is able to balance both and succeed, or if it ends up not going so well. For right now though, it’s very easy to be skeptical.
AJ Hoops 