CNATI: Cincinnati OH Sports Journalism

All anybody wants to talk about when referencing University of Cincinnati basketball is that Mick Cronin should go. Toward the end of nearly every game the @cnati twitter gets blown up with #firemick tweets. 

This is hardly fair to do midway through a season where all hope is not (technically) lost yet. But, if that is what everyone is talking about, and player/coach availability was canceled because of snow, I figured this would be a great time to take a much deeper look.

So, how long should the leash be?

As Bill Koch broached today on his blog, there is very little reason to believe Cronin will be gone after this year. The contract extension he signed this summer all but assured that.

But more than cash, a look into the history of the power conferences gives even more validity to his return...and staying power through next year and likely the next.

Presidents and athletic directors in the Big East recognize that giving more time to coaches far outweighs the benefit of putting job security pressure on a coach to win.

At the beginning of the year the New York Times broke down the average tenure of coaches across the Big 6 conferences. Here it is, a good read.

It points out that the ACC and Big East have the longest tenure and the reasoning was put forth succintly at the Big East media days before this season.

"I think we have very smart people in this league," Villanova Coach Jay Wright said, referring to university administrators. "I think they're looking at the coach and saying, 'The guy's a good coach. The guy's in a great league that is just off the charts, and when we look at the success of this league over the years, the teams that have experienced players are usually the better teams, so let's keep our guy here, let's keep things going in the right direction, let's let him get his guys some experience.' I think people are getting smarter about that."

Anybody who follows this blog knows my feelings on the "youth" excuse, but as poster douglasedwin pointed out UC has the youngest top 3 scorers in the Big East. So, allowing youth to develop is relevant in Wright's quote here.  

Now, the breakdown. The Big East and the ACC are the premier, basketball-first power conferences so I will lump the two of them together for the sake of this argument and looking at how long coaches have been at each school, what forced some to leave and how bad coaches have to be in order to get the boot.

As NYT points out, the ACC leads all conferences with an average tenure of 8.75 years, the median is six years. The Big East is second with an average tenure of 7.25 and median of 4.5.

Now, Mick Cronin entered his fourth year as head coach this season with a 42-52 overall record and was 18-34 in the Big East. That includes a 2-14 season his first year when myself and Pete Rose could have earned playing time in an epic rebuilding project.

UC has improved each year under his guidance. Last year they were 18-14 and 8-10 in the conference. That will likely be about the same this year.

OK, that said, let's look at some of the previous firings and what appears to be the going standard to drop a coach in the Big East and ACC.

Big East

DePaul: Jerry Wainwright, 4 1/2 seasons. Fired this January. Wainwright was 0-18 last year (during the regular season, of course, as most Bearcats fans know) and after four years in the program was still given another chance to at least come back at the beginning of this season.

Providence: Tim Welsh, 9 seasons. Let go after 2007 season. Welsh never really caught on with PC, but did make the tournament with Ryan Gomes. Still, in his final four seasons at PC he was 23-45 in conference. His final year he went 15-16, 6-12.

Seton Hall: Louis Orr, 5 seasons. Let go 2006. I admittedly don't know a ton about the background of this move, but he was 80-70 in his time there and his last season made the tournament at 18-12, 9-7. Probably the most confounding of all the moves and from the bit of research I did, he wasn't very well accepted in the community or by his boss. That can't be said at UC, where I think everyone likes Cronin the person and really wants to see the Cincinnati guy succeed. Even with all of that, Orr still was given five seasons.

South Florida: Robert McCollum, 4 seasons. Let go in 2007. He only lasted four years but he never made any headway there. He was 40-76 overall. That includes 12-18 and 3-13 his last season there. No way can you put Cronin into that category of ineptitude.

ACC

Clemson: Larry Shyatt, 5 seasons. Let go after 2002. Even for a guy who never had more than five conference wins in a season, he was allowed to stick around for five years.

Florida State: Steve Robinson, 5 seasons. Let go after 2002. Robinson's last year he was 12-17 overall and 4-12 overall. He was 8-24 overall in conference his last two seasons and didn't have an overall winning record any of his last four seasons and he was STILL given a fifth year.

Miami: Perry Clark, 4 seasons. Let go after 2004. Clark fell apart at Miami and finished 8-24 in conference the last two years he was there. He also finished below .500 overall both of those years. Again, Cronin has improved the team's record each year, hardly the struggles of Clark despite only being given four years. 

Virginia: Dave Leitao, 4 seasons: Let go last year. He and Clark fall into the same category, they were so bad they absolutely had to go. He was 4-12 in conference his last season and 9-23 his last two years.

All of these firings say that the only way you get rid of somebody in less than five years is if the program is a complete debacle.

Other than that, those that even do a mediocre job are allowed to hang around.

Take a look at some those, with their numbers and years reflective of prior to this season:

Big East

St. John's: Norm Roberts, 5 years. He is 64-85 through the first five seasons and have hardly been relevant in the Big East picture. Still, he was retained for Year 6 this season.

ACC  

Miami: Frank Haith, 5 years, 33-47 in conference overall. Back in his sixth year.

Florida State: Leonard Hamilton 7 years. He was in the cellar of the ACC his first three years then over the next three was 23-25 in conference, without an NCAA tourney bid. He finally made the tourney as the Noles stuck with him for a seventh year. Patience paid off. They have won 19+ games the last four seasons.

Hamilton is a great example of what can happen if you show patience and when a coach has accomplished all the Cronin has to this point in his career certainly deserves an opportunity to prove he can do what Hamilton has.

I have voiced my concerns about whether Cronin is or is not the answer here before and those hold water with most of the fan base. But to not give him a chance to prove his strategy can work for at least another year would be against all the Power Conference trends of the past 10 years.

Mix that in with the contract extension and you have Mick Cronin as your coach next year. If UC finishes short of the NCAA tournament this year, as the odds would say, his coaching seat will be much hotter. But more than likely if UC can be around .500 in confernece and near 20 wins overall, you can probably count on a sixth year if recent trends hold true.

So, all the people who tweet #firemick after every game may want to save up some of their top one-liners or start finding some new material, all signs say its going to be a while until you get your wish.