Sometimes, amid the moaning and the hand-wringing and the protesting and the rallying, someone has to be the voice of reason.
Today, that someone is going to be me.
You see, I don't think it's that big a deal that Coach G decided to leave Duke. From Duke's perspective, I think letting her go was the right choice.
Yes, you can make the argument that Coach G built Duke from the ground up. I'll buy that argument. (Though I'll qualify it by saying that Duke was a sleeping giant in women's basketball. Come on-the tradition of Cameron Indoor Stadium and the men's team, the allure of Duke's academics to athletes who will never get rich playing basketball-Duke had it all. It only needed someone to put the pieces together.) Before Goestenkors got to Duke, the Blue Devils didn't exactly have a tradition of winning-they had been to just one NCAA Tournament.
So the fact that Duke has been to 13 straight Tournaments and has had seven straight 30-win seasons is definitely a huge mark in Coach G's favor. As The Chronicle's editorial said, "Coach G was a jewel in the athletic department."
I don't disagree with that statement. Goestenkors is a seven-time ACC Coach of the Year (including this past year) and the reigning AP National Coach of the Year. It would have been fantastic if Coach G had been able to stay at Duke. It just did not make sense to match the price that Texas paid.
Reportedly, Goestenkors new contract at Texas will make her the second-highest paid women's basketball coach in the nation, behind only Tennessee's legendary Pat Summitt. That's right: Goestenkors will make more than National-Championship-winning coaches Brenda Frese of Maryland, Sylvia Hatchell of North Carolina and Tara VanDerveer of Stanford. She'll even pull down more than Connecticut's Geno Auriemma, a five-time National Champion.
Goestenkors? Well, she's been to a bunch of Final Fours.
If you're going to pay someone like they're the second-best coach in the country, then they had better be the second-best coach in the country. By virtue of her track record, there's no way you can justify making Goestenkors the second-highest-paid coach in the country.
And you definitely can't justify paying your coach that much when her team operates at a loss of more than $2 million per year.
A lot of people have ripped Director of Athletics Joe Alleva for saying that Goestenkors doesn't bring in money for the University, and for implying that the team's lack of profit factors into the decision of whether or not to keep its coach. But of course whether or not the team turns a profit figures into the decision.
If more people cared about the team, it would make money. Women's basketball does at Tennessee and UConn, where the teams have rabid fan-bases. If people don't care about the team, then why should Duke invest money in ensuring the team's success.
Look at it this way: What does women's basketball provide to the Duke Community that makes Goestenkors indispensable?
Judging from the number of tenters in Goestenkorsopolis this year, there are no more than three dozen hard-core women's basketball fans on campus. So they're probably really broken up the Coach G is leaving. There's a niche community of Durham residents and women's basketball boosters that really care about the success of Blue Devil women's basketball. And they're probably upset, too.
But that's about it. There are probably more students who care about the football team than the women's basketball team. The women's basketball team doesn't win National Championships. It doesn't help connect that many Duke students with the larger Durham community. It doesn't boost Duke's national reputation much. It really doesn't do anything but suck up $2 million per year in charter flights and marketing billboards (things that Goestenkors reportedly demanded more of as conditions for her staying.)
When the women's basketball team is playing well, everyone gets just a little bit excited. When they lose, no one really cares. This isn't like the men's basketball team (which, by the way, makes money). The men's basketball team helps define Duke's identity. The women's basketball team is nice to have.
If the women's basketball team is worse without Goestenkors, then it's a small loss for the University. A very small loss. But who's to say they would actually be worse off?
There's a cult of The Coach in sports today. It's the reason people say Phil Jackson is a genius, and the reason NFL coaches spend 100 hours a week watching film to prepare for Sunday. Coach G may have built Duke, but she's not irreplaceable.
Recruits will still come to Duke for the name and the tradition. As long as top players keep coming, the team will keep winning. Coaching isn't rocket science.
Duke Women's Basketball will be fine without Coach G. It's all going to be okay.
(And if it's not, you probably won't care that much anyway.)
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