Kick Out the Sports!
by Bob Cook
Bob Cook's weekly ruminations on sports appear Mondays in Flak.
Matt Doherty can't figure out why he's no longer the University of North Carolina's men's basketball coach. Here's why: That job has been Woodenized.
A college coaching job that is Woodenized means that no matter who fills it, that person will never measure up to a much-revered predecessor who, as fans and alumni tell it, won championships, embodied the essence of the school, healed the sick, walked on water and raised the dead. The term Woodenized comes from what John Wooden did to the UCLA basketball job. By winning 10 championships in 12 years and being a generally good and avuncular fellow, he created an impossible standard for any of his first seven successors to follow.
Former Pittsburgh coach Ben Howland, as of April 3, becomes the eighth to try.
A coach who takes a position that is Woodenized is a person who alumni, administrators and about anyone else have knives out for from day one, ready to cut up the infidel who can't live up to the god that came before him. Rather than accept the reality that no coach will ever measure up, the school and boosters create a meat grinder that can end up turning what would seem to be a marquee job into a sucker's bet.
In North Carolina's case, the god in question was Dean Smith, who retired in 1997 with 879 wins, the most in college history, two championships, 11 Final Fours and one campus arena named after him. And, he was a nice guy who, with his liberal political views, appeased the new, progressive North Carolina, and who, with his long-time smoking habit, appeased the old Tobacco Road crowd. Doherty had a mediocre record and a fiery temper, thereby being the anti-Dean (despite playing under him), so out he went.
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North Carolina is hardly alone in the Woodenization of its job:
Alabama football — Coaches have been crushed under the legacy of Bear Bryant, college football's winningest coach when he retired in 1983. Despite a 1992 national championship under former Bryant player (at Texas A&M) Gene Stallings, it seems like Alabama is either struggling, on probation, or both. After coaching only two seasons, Dennis Franchione must have felt his own Woodenization coming late last year, when he bolted Bryant (as in Bear)-Denny Stadium for Texas A&M.
Indiana basketball — It seemed as if Mike Davis was making the job his own after leading the Hoosiers to the NCAA final in 2002, but Davis' freakouts this year make one wonder if he's still laboring under Bob Knight's considerable shadow. Lowlights include racing onto the court to throw a bizarre tantrum about a referee's noncall at the end of a game against Kentucky, and bad-mouthing his players as selfish, among other sins, after their NCAA tournament loss to Pittsburgh. Davis, who fell into the job when the Indiana players lobbied for the then-assistant to replace the fired and martyred "Hey" Knight in 2000, can probably already hear the whisperings of the still-sizable Knight faithful: "They wouldn't have been selfish under our Coach. Coach would have disciplined them but good!"
Nebraska football: There was a potential for the Woodenization to start as early as 1973 (thereby making it Nebraska-ization), when assistant Tom Osborne took over for the legendary Bob Devaney. But the man who went on to become a Republican Congressman did well enough to delay that process until his assistant, Frank Solich, took over and steered the program toward the Independence Bowl. Doherty, Davis, Solich — notice that those coaches that come from "in the family" are most likely to get the Woodenizing? For a college booster, having a longtime compadre struggle in the job must be like finding out his son is on drugs.
Texas football: Darrell Royal not only won three national championships in the 1960s and got the football stadium named after him, he was just so warm and cuddly and down-home, spouting such Royal-isms as "you gotta dance with who brung ya." The problem for Texas is, it hasn't brung in any dancing partner who can fit into the slipper Royal stepped out of in 1976. Mack Brown is trying now, but he hasn't won a championship, and he's not from Texas. (Then again, neither was Royal — he was from Oklahoma, so he had some idea how to sound Texan. Plus, he hung out with Willie Nelson.)
Addendum: Duke basketball (Mike Krzyzewski), Penn State football (Joe Paterno) and Florida State football (Bobby Bowden) and Syracuse basketball (Jim Boeheim) are potential Woodenizers once they leave after successful careers.
But Woodenization is not confined to college sports. In any endeavor, there are people who are doomed to fail following in the footsteps of an impossibly popular predecessor. Here's examples from other fields:
Corporate world: Chrysler, post-Lee Iacocca; GE, post-Jack Welch; Coca-Cola, when it released "New Coke."
Politics: The presidency, post-John Kennedy; the presidency, post-Ronald Reagan (Republican version); Russian despots, post-Stalin; Huns, post-Atilla.
Music: Van Halen lead singers, post-David Lee Roth; classical composers, post-Mozart; any band that comes back as "Part Two" or some other bowdlerized name for legal reasons; drug-addled deaths, post-Jimi Hendrix.
TV: The cast members of "Seinfeld," post-Seinfeld; "The Tonight Show," post-Johnny Carson; "Saturday Night Live," post-original cast; "Sesame Street" shop owners, post-Mr. Hooper.
Hey, maybe you can apply this to your family, like if a favorite Grandma died and everyone fell apart.
E-mail Bob Cook at bobc@flakmag.com.
