Grohing Pains

Terry Holland once said that the best measure of a coach’s impact is the difference between what was and what is. He was talking, of course, of George Welsh, whose impact was easy enough to see: building a program from the rubble, a gleaming 60,000-seat stadium, near-perennial bowl trips and near-occasional contention for the ACC title.

Given how many people want Welsh’s successor fired, it’s time to ask the question of what, exactly, is Al Groh?

Is he a collection of alternating 5- and 9-win seasons? A series of great assistants and brain drain, rinse and repeat? Orange t-shirts and a traditional marching band? Christmastime in Charlotte or Boise in the good years? An endless supply of third down backs? A yearly beatdown by Tech?

More importantly, and this is the question not asked enough, is he the best we can do?
Probably, surprisingly, damningly, yes.

Look at the past five major coaching searches at Virginia and see how close it came to landing a big name or the kind of blue chip top assistant that is a surefire bet to succeed?

The searches replacing Holland, Jeff Jones, George Welsh, Pete Gillen and Dave Leitao had tons of fun rumors of a Tubby Smith or a pre-Georgia Mark Richt, some near-misses such as Rick Barnes, but really, the biggest “name” hires were Gillen and Groh; Gillen was coming off a pretty terrible season (he had lost a bunch of starters, I know, I know) and Groh’s 2000 Jets had collapsed after a 9-3 start to miss the playoffs, and nobody in New York seemed too upset he was gone (the Jets are cursed, I know, I know). But would you have imagined that Jerry Sandusky would have done much better over the past eight years? If Groh had gotten fired last winter, who would be coaching the Cavaliers right now?

Which makes UVa’s vague tolerance/hate relationship with Groh all the more depressing; it’s like a married couple that’s been together so long divorce seems like too much of an effort. The well’s been poisoned too much for any real reconciliation; it’s just a stalemate between Groh getting annoyed enough to quit or two losing seasons in a row providing Littlepage with enough cover to make what should be a bold decision look easy.

Groh’s not particularly likable, and he and Craig Littlepage have seemed somewhat callous in their treatment of a lot of things about Virginia football fans have liked (walking back to the tailgates at halftime, not going to games wearing gym clothes, having a pep band that served as a nice outlet for the “indoor kids,” having strained relationships with black quarterbacks over their “decision making,”) and running them into the ground. Creeping Big State U-ism indeed, only without the trips to the Peach Bowl.

And he loses games. Nonconference games. To teams Virginia conceivably should either not be playing or at the very least beating. Virginia fans can tolerate 3-5, 4-4, 5-3 ACC records, with upsets of Maryland and North Carolina paired with random chokejobs against NC State and at Georgia Tech to make the ride to the anonymous middle a little more of a roller coaster; that’s in our DNA at this point. But Western Michigan? East Carolina? Connecticut? Wyoming? All were good enough teams, don’t get me wrong, but remember when we used to lose to the likes of Auburn or even BYU? These were games nobody wanted to see, and certainly games nobody wanted to see Virginia lose. Remember when Virginia would split series with Auburn or BYU instead of UConn or Wyoming? Give me past national champions or I-AA teams; we can’t beat mediocre I-A teams with any consistency, so let’s get some starpower.

And there’s the off-the-field situations, and the seeming lack of a predictable standard applied to players’ transgressions; some are let go, some are welcomed back. This happened under Welsh too, of course, but rarely with such a lack of finesse as Groh and Littlepage displayed with the disposal of Peter Lalich.

Working under the assumption that a losing season spells the end of Groh’s tenure, what would keep him around? Six wins? Maybe, maybe not. Seven? Possibly, even probably---Virginia’s not really in a position to fire winning coaches. Eight? Without a doubt.

And thus the cycle would begin anew. What if Groh goes 5-7 in 2010? Another year, another shot at 7-5 redemption?

Perhaps the best thing Littlepage has done as AD was his firing of Leitao a year earlier than anyone thought, not giving him a chance at a NCAA first-round exit (in the best-case scenario) which would make him bulletproof for another year and stagnated UVa’s basketball program.

The awkward passivity of the annual December decision over whether to exercise one-year options on Groh’s contract years in advance creates no real answers or direction for the program. Even after that flukey ACC Coach of the Year nine-win year in 2007, Groh still only got a one-year bump, showing he has almost no leverage in the situation. It’s like Walter Aston’s 23 one-year contracts with the Dodgers, only the opposite. There’s no implicit loyalty here, other than Groh’s to the school. (This would be the rare turn of events which generated sympathy for Groh, except he really doesn’t have many other foreseeable options).

If a guy’s not your guy, he’s not your guy, and if that doesn’t have consequences immediately, it’s going to have them in the long run. Leitao wasn’t the guy. Groh likely isn’t either, and that’s as much a criticism of Littlepage than Groh that he’s still around with a relationship with the school and the fanbase that is in such disrepair.

Virginia needs to have the direction and (perhaps misplaced) confidence in itself as an institution to fire him almost regardless of what happens this year. It probably should have done it nine months ago.