DePaul fired Jerry Wainwright and brought in a big name coach. Why can't we do the same?

But DePaul is being proactive. Jerry Wainwright went the entire Big East slate without a win in 2008-09, but was fired midway through last season, after a 7-8 (0-3) start. After a 1-14 finish to their Big East slate, Tracy Webster, the interim coach was not retained.  But rather than look to promote from within, or to find some small-school coach, DePaul took their search for a new leader to the next level.  NBC Chicago reported that money was “no option” when it came to finding a man who could return DePaul to their glory days, of the 1970s and 80s, when they made the tournament every year, and they dangled what promised to be one of the highest salaries in the NCAA to any interested parties.  Among the big names that DePaul targeted were Butler’s young protege Brad Stevens, Kansas State’s Frank Martin, Pitt’s Jamie Dixon, ESPN announcer and former UCLA coach Steve Lavin, who took the St. John’s job, and Paul Hewitt, who’s staying put at Georgia Tech.

Today, it was announced that Clemson’s Oliver Purnell would take the job, and he brings a formidable resume to Chicago, having brought the Tigers to their first three tournament appearances in over a decade, after doing the same for Dayton, building up a program that now competes for the A-10 title on a yearly basis.  However, the most important statistic is the bottom line: Purnell will sign a 7-year $15 million contract. For those who aren’t so great at math, that means that Purnell will be getting paid more than $2 million per season. Or, roughly three times what Penn State pays Ed DeChellis.

The question that this prompts is obvious. Why is Penn State, with a football program that nets upwards of $5 million dollars for every home game paying their basketball coach, the head of the only other revenue producing sport on campus less than just about every single other major conference school in the country?

It boils down to the Athletic Director, and while some will be content to point to fencing championships and gymnastics success, Penn State’s success in the Director’s Cup only serves as a foil for its noncompetitive basketball team.  How many Penn State students, alumni, and fans would give it all up for a consistent winner on the hardwood? Sure, the women’s volleyball team is great (and no, not under NCAA scrutiny), but please, speak up if you wouldn’t pass up on those three titles and undefeated seasons if it meant our basketball team would make the Sweet Sixteen on a regular basis.

Now, here’s the good news: it’s not an either-or ultimatum. A good basketball coach will more than pay for himself. All one needs to do is look at the attendance figures–when Penn State won, the curtains came down. People want to support this team, and that means a steady revenue stream.  The extra couple hundred thousand dollars we spend on a competent head coach will more than be made up by increasing ticket sales and merchandise purchases.  This is a Penn State athletic department that is more than just self-sufficient, as few around the country are, but generates revenue. So how can we continue to ignore one of the only two sports that most people really care about?

That, in a nutshell, is why I have immense trouble swallowing the bullshit that Tim Curley served up to the Centre Daily Times in an interview last week.

CDT:You do turn a profit with men’s basketball (about $3.3 million last year), but do you feel like that could be more of a money-maker than it is? If there were more wins, would it lead to more tickets sold?

TC:Absolutely. We have room to grow revenue-wise in men’s basketball. We do turn a profit now and that’s a positive, but we still have room to grow in that area. Certainly with the economy, the budgetary and financial pressures everybody’s under, that’s an important area for us, and we want to try to make sure we maximize that as best we can.

If “everybody” is operating in this recession, how is DePaul able to pay Oliver Purnell two million? How are Iowa, St. John’s, and Auburn, able to fire their coaches and replace them with higher paid ones? Hell, even UNC-Wilmington, the team that beat us in the opening round of the Charleston Classic decided it was time to cut and run on their stinker of a head coach. Fordham has gone 1-31 in A-10 play over the past two seasons, and they just hired Hofstra’s Tom Pecora for $705,000 a year. Digest that, Penn State fans. Fordham, perhaps the worst team in a mid-major conference pays their head coach more than $50,000 more than Tim Curley pays the coach at Penn State, a Big Ten program with one of the biggest cash cows in the college game across the street from the BJC.  And that coach that Fordham just hired, by the way, is a far more successful and charismatic leader than DeChellis could ever be. But this is not meant to be an indictment of Ed.  Hell, it should be him at Fordham, him at UNC-Wilmington. Maybe at UTEP or Siena, to replace the coaches hired by Iowa and Auburn.  Because if he’s not going to be treated like a power conference coach, he might as well not be one.

You can read the rest of Curley’s inanity over at the CDT, because if I had to try and analyze everything he said, I’d get either an aneurysm or throw my computer out the window in sheer frustration.  Apparently, the only thing holding us back from the tournament in 2006 was Danny Morrissey’s injury, and Penn State would’ve reached the NCAA’s in 2008 if Geary Claxton hadn’t gotten hurt, even though we were swept by South Carolina, Rider, and Central freaking Florida during the Old Spice Classic to start that season off.

But I will break down his last response, because it shows just the scorn he has for anyone who really cares about this basketball program.

CDT:You have the motto “Success with Honor.” DeChellis has done a good job with the “honor” part — he runs a clean program, does a lot for the community. Has that given him more leeway or more time to build the success than a lot of other coaches might have had?

TC:I think at Penn State, we value people that do things the right way. As I said earlier, I like the way he runs his program. He’s just a great representative of this university. From that standpoint, you want to try to be patient and support coaches that bring those values to the table every single day. Both Ed and I understand the importance of winning at this level, so that’s certainly a big component of all this. But there’s other aspects of it — he’s a great fit for the university, and that’s why I brought him here. I thought he could do all those things that we could all be proud of. So we’re going to continue to work real hard to try to improve the “Ws” and continue to support him with the overall program that he’s running, because I think it’s one of the best in the country.