Boulder
Laughing all the way to the bank, the most-overpaid man in Colorado sports will do what he does best.
With the clock winding down on his time as CU basketball coach, Ricardo Patton will get money for nothing.
You might argue Jose Theodore is no bargain as a goalie for the Avalanche or suggest Dan O’Dowd has yet to prove his worth as general manager of the Rockies. And you would be 100 percent correct.
But for my money, or to be more accurate, well over a half-million bucks of CU’s athletic funds, no local sports figure has given us less bang for the buck for nearly as long as Patton, who did just enough to hold the job since 1996.
“CU is getting killed in basketball. By making the right hire, they could change all that,” said Dana Pump, founder of ChampSearch, one of the more influential consulting firms in the business of big-time college sports. “If I’m the CU athletic director, I go try to hire Larry Brown right now. Now maybe there’s a very slim chance of him taking the job. But at least try.”
So I asked CU athletic director Mike Bohn, who never ducks a tough question and relishes big challenges, if the Buffaloes had serious interest in Brown, the much-traveled, 66-year-old coach who has won NCAA and NBA championships, while also professing a love for the Rocky Mountains.
“If Larry Brown really has a passion for teaching basketball at the college level, he will give us a call,” Bohn said.
For decades, there has been a defeatist attitude regarding college hoops in our state. You cannot consistently win big at CU, as the record shows and the story goes. Patton seemed to believe every word.
Bohn refuses to believe basketball is doomed to be a losing proposition at CU. He cannot afford to think becoming a top-25 program is impossible.
Responsible for the bottom-line health of an athletic department that must pinch every penny, Bohn needs basketball to contribute more dough if he wants to turn a healthy profit.
“It’s a missing link in our formula. Clearly,” Bohn said. “That’s why men’s and women’s basketball need to really establish themselves as viable enterprises.”
While Bohn insists it’s highly unlikely he will hire a new coach before the lame-duck Patton waddles away in March, I fear CU has misplaced trust in a coach to keep a program rolling down the same uneven, mediocre road, while he has one eye peeled for his next job. Sounds like an accident waiting to happen.
“Ricardo has got the keys to the bus. And we expect him, as does he, to drive the bus with the pedal to the metal,” Bohn said.
Counting all forms of potential income, including base salary, his summer camp, shoe revenue and incentives, the Buffaloes were on the hook for as much as $750,000 per year with Patton.
That was stupid money.
UCLA pays Ben Howland $900,000. Bill Self takes home approximately $1.2 million annually by Kansas.
With a little more fundraising, a touch of imagination and far smarter investing, the Buffaloes could go buy themselves a real basketball coach.
Mike Montgomery, a Colorado State graduate who made Stanford a regular at the NCAA’s big dance before he discovered all that shines is not golden during his ill-fated NBA gig with the Warriors, should be more than an impossible dream for the Buffs.
Montgomery, or another well-known coach capable of causing blue-chip recruits to sit up straight and listen, could be within the means of CU’s budget, if Bohn looks hard enough for a way to make the hire happen.
Pursue the best and brightest?
“I hope you would say, ‘Why not?”‘ Bohn said.
But he is also realistic enough to look at the six Big 12 Conference schools that hired a hoops coach during the past year and ask how many of those vacancies presented a better opportunity for success than Colorado. When I suggested Oklahoma, Missouri, Oklahoma State, Iowa State and Kansas State all had stronger basketball traditions than CU, Bohn did not disagree.
Nevertheless, if a hot, young coach such as Billy Gillispie can grow a nationally ranked program in the desolate plains of Texas with the A&M Aggies, then don’t tell me the Buffs need be content as an also-ran in a highly competitive conference.
“We have to make an investment in basketball,” Bohn said. “The problem is how much of an investment can we make on the front side.”
Find a way to pay a coach a $1 million salary and fire up a private jet for him to go recruit and there’s little reason Colorado cannot become a regular participant in March Madness.
Want to know what stopped CU from building on the hoops success Chauncey Billups proved was possible years ago?
You mean besides this lame-duck coach?
It’s a chump-change attitude.
This is not a job for any old Tom, Joe or Ricardo.
Before CU can win big in basketball, the Buffaloes must be willing to spend money on a big-name coach who is willing to guarantee he can win anywhere.
Staff writer Mark Kiszla can be reached at 303-903-1053 or mkiszla@denverpost.com.
