In Atlanta, Georgia Tech AD Mike Bobinski pulled off a bit of a stunner and gave Brian Gregory one last chance.
The situation, as detailed here by the AJC's Mark Bradley, reminds you a bit of the situation last summer as Dan Radakovich decided what to do with Jack Leggett.
Mike Bobinski is giving Brian Gregory another chance - a chance with conditions. In a meeting with three reporters Monday, the Georgia Tech athletic director admitted he considered firing his basketball coach. "I jumped on both sides of the fence," Bobinski said.
He landed on the side of continuity and, in Bobinski's mind, fairness. Because Gregory inherited a program in actual shambles - Tech's arena was being rebuilt when the coach arrived in 2011 - his AD didn't feel that four years were enough for a full read. "A lot of things didn't allow him to get off to a fast start," Bobinski said.
That's not the end of the Clemson-relevant themes. Gregory, of course, was hired by Radakovich after Radakovich made the expensive decision to part ways with Paul Hewitt (who was fired this week by George Mason).
One of the theories about Bobinski's decision to keep Gregory is that their athletics department is still strapped paying Hewitt's buyout, which was the handiwork of Radakovich's predecessor at Georgia Tech. Bobinski said that wasn't an issue.
For all of you who believe that the only reason Gregory still has a job is that the Jackets can't afford to pay him and Paul Hewitt - who was, in a stranger-than-fiction convergence, fired Monday by George Mason but who remains on Tech's payroll through 2019 - not to coach … well, here's what Bobinski said:
"We had figured all that (financial stuff) out. That was not a driver, not a factor, not a decision-maker here."
And yet another parallel: The problem of Georgia Tech's often-putrid offense. Both Gregory and Brad Brownell go into the long offseason charged with doing something to juice up that part of the game, and Bobinski puts it well here:
He said he told Gregory, "Offense can't be something we do between defensive possessions." He said: "We can't continue to be close." He said of Tech: "The elements are in place. We have a great arena. This is a city that's going to be attractive to a young man playing college basketball. There's no reason not to have a successful college basketball program."
A few Tuesday links:
-- Wow on the decision by 49ers linebacker Chris Borland to hang up his cleats because of safety issues.
San Francisco 49ers linebacker Chris Borland, one of the NFL's top rookies the past season, told "Outside the Lines" on Monday that he is retiring because of concerns about the long-term effects of repetitive head trauma.
Borland, 24, said he notified the 49ers on Friday. He said he made his decision after consulting with family members, concussion researchers, friends and current and former teammates, as well as studying what is known about the relationship between football and neurodegenerative disease.
"I just honestly want to do what's best for my health," Borland told "Outside the Lines." "From what I've researched and what I've experienced, I don't think it's worth the risk."
Good friend of mine who coaches Clemson's rugby team believes at some point football will need to completely overhaul its tackling techniques and come up with methods that more closely mirror its ancestral sport. It's something worth considering, because Borland won't be the last example of this.
-- North Carolina whistleblower Mary Willingham settles for $335,000.
UNC-Chapel Hill is paying former learning specialist Mary Willingham $335,000 to settle her claim she had been retaliated against for blowing the whistle on the longest-running academic fraud in NCAA history.
Willingham's attorney, Heydt Philbeck, provided a copy of the signed settlement to The News & Observer late Monday, hours after a federal court document showed the case had been settled and closed.
"We believe the settlement is in the best interest of the university and allows us to move forward and fully focus on other important issues," UNC spokesman Rick White said in a statement.
Willingham said once legal fees are deducted from the $335,000, she will have the equivalent of three years' salary. She made roughly $60,000 a year.
"It gets me out far enough that I will be able to get a job," Willingham said.
Willingham had sought her job back, but that was not part of the settlement.
-- Pat Forde of Yahoo! examines dream and nightmare scenarios of the Midwest Region.
No. 1 KENTUCKY
Best Case: The Quest is fulfilled. Big Blue nirvana attained. The program that has everything but an undefeated national champion goes 40-0, checking the last box on the all-time checklist. Along the way the Wildcats smash Bob Huggins and West Virginia in the Sweet 16, in retaliation for upsetting the John Wall/DeMarcus Cousins team in 2010, then throttle Notre Dame to reach the Final Four. Kentucky massacres Wisconsin there, having no need for Aaron Harrison heroics this time. Leading by a point in overtime in a thrilling title-game showdown with Duke, John Calipari opts to guard the inbounds pass and Dakari Johnson knocks it away. Years later, families living in Appalachian hollows explain to their children why they are named Dakari. At the welcome-home celebration in Rupp Arena, a vision of Adolph appears and declares Calipari his true heir, adding that he never really cared for Rick Pitino. Cal states that the only thing better than 40-0 is 80-0, and several draftable players decide to stay in school. City of Lexington immediately votes to fund arena upgrades. Louisville loses its first game to a team called the Anteaters. Shortly before spring signing day, ESPN devotes 24 straight hours of coverage to UK, including a "Cooking with Cal" segment as the coach shows Shannon Spake how to make chicken cacciatore. Every available prep All-American commits to Kentucky.
Worst Case: With Joe Mazzulla watching in the stands as a human talisman, Huggins concocts a nightmarish Throwback Thursday - to 2010, specifically. Huggins draws up another crazy defense that turns Kentucky ice cold from the perimeter. Devin Booker and both Harrisons cannot hit anything. Karl-Anthony Towns fouls out after nine minutes of playing time. Johnson and Willie Cauley-Stein combine to miss 15 shots inside of five feet. With the pressure of an undefeated season bearing down, Calipari turns into a puddle of incoherent rage early in the second half and fails to draw up a single play the rest of the game. Kentucky loses in the round of 16, and a 36-1 season is deemed a miserable failure that sparks a night of rioting and months of utter depression in the commonwealth.
Calipari and eight players go pro. ESPN returns Duke to Most Favored Program status. After Louisville stunningly reaches its third Final Four in four years, a vision of Adolph appears in Lexington to say it's time to bring back Pitino.
-- Here's a look at Syracuse's last-ditch effort to limit the NCAA fallout, and how it delayed the final decision.
Syracuse fans spent 125 days waiting for their fate from the NCAA, spending Halloween, Christmas and Valentine's Day waiting for word from college sports' governing body.
In between the school's hearing in Chicago and the public report released just over a week ago, the school and the NCAA were engaged in behind-the-scenes legal wrangling that included a pair of appeals by the school.
The appeals constituted a last-ditch effort by Syracuse to get claims of academic issues within the basketball program eliminated from the case.
Victory would have kept the issues in-house, keeping the basketball program from being branded nationally as academically out of control. The eventual loss led to the school's delayed decision to self-impose a postseason ban, prompting cries of convenience when the school made it official.
-- And David Hale of ESPN breaks down Louisville's quarterback situation with Garrick McGee.
There's that old adage that if a team has two starting quarterbacks, it really has none, but that doesn't seem to apply at Louisville. After all, the Cardinals currently have four.
No, it's not an ideal scenario to enter spring with so many questions at QB, but the way offensive coordinator Garrick McGee sees it, there are no wrong answers here.
"It's wide open," McGee said. "For some people that's a controversy, but for me, it's a really good thing. It shows we have depth, and where a lot of programs are struggling to find one guy, we have multiple guys that can play."
LW
This post was edited on 3/17 7:21 AM by Larry_Williams
