Greg Hansen column: Although Arizona lost baseball coach Jay Johnson to LSU, the UA for the most part has not been a steppingstone athletic program that's vulnerable to poachers.
Greg Hansen A few days after Todd McCorkle coached Arizona’s women’s golf team to the 2000 NCAA championship, Wildcat athletic director Jim Livengood answered a phone call from Georgia AD Vince Dooley.
“They almost tripled my salary," he said. “They just spent millions on a new clubhouse and practice facility." On first glance, it might appear that Arizona has been a steppingstone school, a well-poached athletic department looking over its shoulder after each successful run to an NCAA Tournament.Over the last 100 years, Arizona has been among those least affected by well-endowed poachers looking for a rising coaching . The UA has been anything but Job-Hoppers U.
A few years later Arizona State pursued Sun Devil graduate Mike Candrea and asked if he would be willing to relocate his softball prowess to his alma mater in Tempe.The Wildcats were similarly fortunate when Hall of Fame swimming coach Frank Busch, winner of two NCAA championships and four national coach-of-the-year trophies, resisted strong interest from both USC and Florida in the 2000s.
I would never consider Hall of Fame football coach Jim Young a job-hopper, but after he coached the long-struggling Arizona football team to successive records of 8-3, 9-2 and 9-2 in the 1970s, Washington AD Joe Kearney phoned Arizona AD Dave Strack and asked for permission to speak to Young. A decade later, after building Arizona into a legit Top 25 football program, establishing dominance over Arizona State, Larry Smith was offered the job at USC. Smith was torn; he wept while telling AD Cedric Dempsey about his indecision. Arizona or USC?The decision was soon made easy: By state law, Arizona could offer Smith no more than a one-year contract.
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