FSU set for mediocrity with Hamilton.
Picture this: Despite a lateseason swoon, FSU announces it is extending Jimbo Fisher’s contract for two seasons. Fisher has a 100-68 record in 14 seasons at FSU, and he has taken the Seminoles to four New Year’s Day bowls and seven appearances in the AutoZone Liberty Bowl.
Fisher says a new recruiting haul will soon pay off, but this year’s team is 6-4 and can make it to the ACC title game if Clemson and Louisville are placed on NCAA probation in the next 48 hours. Never happen, right? Of course not. If an FSU football coach won 59 percent of his games, fans would have grabbed the pitchforks and torches years ago. If an FSU basketball coach wins 59 percent of his games, he gets a contract extension and a vote of confidence from the
athletic director.
All of which makes the obvious point there’s a football mentality and then there’s everything else. But Wednesday’s news about Basketball Coach for Life Leonard Hamilton unapologetically confirmed how sports are held to different standards by fans, school officials and media.
Everybody pretty much yawned.
Giving Hamilton an extension isn’t totally preposterous. A top-10 recruiting class will join freshman
stars Dwayne Bacon and Malik Beasley next season. Hamilton’s contract was up after next year, so this removes the lame-duck recruiting distraction.
On the other hand, does anyone really think the 67-year-old Hamilton is suddenly going to turn into Mike Krzyzewski? Forget him, what about Mike Brey or any other coach who routinely gets his teams into the NCAA Tournament?
Hamilton has done it four times at FSU, and the Seminoles have made it past the second round only once. He’s also taken FSU to seven NITs.
It’s looking more and more as if an eighth NIT participant banner will be raised to the rafters at the Donald L. Tucker Civic Center. Expect the usual half-full building to be there for the ceremony.
Isn’t eight enough to persuade an athletic director that Hamilton’s recipe for success doesn’t work?
Not if that AD is Stan Wilcox, who said he wants to see what Hamilton can do with all that talent in the next couple of years. FSU might have a nice little run, but after all these years we know Hamilton’s ceiling.
You’d think FSU would
demand more. Or to put it in truly insulting terms, do you think Florida AD Jeremy Foley would have kept a 59-percent winner around for 16 years?
When you accept mediocrity, that’s usually what you get. The school’s fans and brass long ago accepted that FSU is to ACC basketball what Wake Forest is to ACC football — in over its head and thrilled when it’s occasionally competitive with the big boys.
Nobody expects Tallahassee to become Duke or North Carolina. But is it that hard to put together a consistent 20-win program and not be a perpetual bubble team? Miami’s not exactly Tobacco Road and look what Jim Larrañaga’s done there.
FSU has sunk a lot of money into basketball facilities. It’s Trump Tower compared to Florida Gulf Coast, which made more noise in one NCAA tournament than the Seminoles have since 1972.
Hamilton’s $2.25 million salary is the third-highest among ACC coaches.
Yep, he makes more in base pay than Larrañaga, Brey, Roy Williams, Jim Boeheim, Tony Bennett and Jamie Dixon. Heck, Hamilton makes more than
FSU’s top three football assistant coaches combined.
With that kind of money and backing, isn’t there some promising coach with no ceiling who could breathe some fire into the program?
Hamilton has proven top talent will go to Tallahassee. What he hasn’t proven is that he knows what to do with it.
But then again, he’s only had 14 years.
In the FSU scheme of things, what’s another two or three?