this may be the weirdest hire in college hoops history
As the 2024 coaching carousel winds down, with almost seventy new hires across Division I men’s college hoops, what is likely the last hire in the cycle also is probably the most intriguing, and might be the most interesting and somewhat confusing hire in college hoops history.
Green Bay announced on May 14th it was hiring Doug Gottlieb as its next head coach. Gottlieb is a longtime and highly regarded basketball analyst who also has a reputation for having a somewhat unfiltered attitude in some of his takes. But, he also has no coaching experience at the Division I level, which makes this hire that much more head-scratching.
Gottlieb began his ESPN career back in 2003 when he became a co-host of ESPN Radio’s show Game Night. He worked with ESPN until 2013, helping launch ESPNU from Charlotte, and then left to go work at CBS. Until 2017, he worked as a host and analyst around college basketball before joining FOX as a basketball analyst and radio host for his show, The Doug Gottlieb Show, where he talks college basketball and the NBA.
Over the years, he’s expressed his interests in coaching, but never got the opportunity until now. Gottlieb was a point guard at Notre Dame for a year then finished his career with a strong three years at Oklahoma State, averaging 7.6 assists and sitting 11th in the all-time Division I assist leaders with 947. In 2023, Gottlieb was actually a finalist for the Green Bay vacancy, before the university ultimately hired Sundance Wicks. After one impressive season, Wicks left to take the job at Wyoming, thus giving another opportunity to Gottlieb, which he landed.
Not only is this hire strange because Gottlieb has no Division I coaching experience and is also a member of the media, but he says he plans to remain a member of the media and continue hosting his radio show alongside being the Green Bay head coach.
Now, there’s a whole argument that can be made whether it is right for a coach to simultaneously be a member of the media, especially since Gottlieb has his own show surrounded around the very sport he will be coaching. He runs his show for two hours daily, and expresses his opinions around the sport of college basketball while running a program itself. We can assume he’ll rarely talk about his own program, hopefully, but it’s hard to imagine a Division I coach can be successful while also having another full-time job as a media personality.
All of the practices, shootarounds, traveling, games, NIL negotiations, are an insane amount to handle on its own. Many coaches around the nation feel overwhelmed being a Division I head coach, which makes complete sense. Now, Gottlieb is trying to build a mid-major program with all of these factors, then leave in the middle of the day to talk about everything else around the sport that doesn’t have to do with his program. It just doesn’t seem feasible by any stretch of the imagination, but who am I to say Gottlieb shouldn’t give it a shot.
This is Green Bay’s third coaching hire in the last five seasons, and the program hasn’t made the NCAA Tournament more than once since 1996. With this splash of a hire, it’s about as boom or bust as it gets. But with this very creative approach by Green Bay, it will be interesting to see how long this thing lasts.
