If you follow Virginia sports at all, you've surely heard "coaching change," or some form of that phrase, being tossed around since late December. Before you turn away and look for the "Club Sports Spotlight" or whatever else is on this page, this is not a Pete Gillen-related column.
This is in no way a primer for Athletic Director Craig Littlepage on how to handle any dismissal of a Virginia coach -- if any situation like that is at all imminent. Instead, these are a couple of situations for Littlepage to avoid at all costs, no matter who the coach is.
One of my favorite mistakes in handling a coaching change came in late December of 2002. During that year's GMAC bowl, then-Louisville coach John L. Smith became the focal point of a technique we can refer to as the "halftime shocker."
The Cardinals went down 17-0 to Byron Leftwich's Marshall squad. I was watching this game because my friend and I had become fascinated with Louisville quarterback Dave Ragone, and this was his final game. Why Ragone? Because the lefty and his Cardinals were on ESPN almost every week that season on late-night weekday games, and he was a true gamer, playing with every injury known to man. The Texans drafted him, and now he's headed for a career as a backup, playing Doug Pederson to David Carr's Brett Favre.
Despite the fact that the GMAC bowl was Ragone and Leftwich's final game as college quarterbacks, the focus was on Smith. At a halftime press conference, Louisville Athletic Director Tom Jurich announced that he was allowing Michigan State to talk to Smith about its coaching vacancy. According to Ragone, before the first half was even over, the whole team knew.
This has to have been the biggest possible hit to morale on a team during a game, short of a program announcing it was disbanding midway through the second quarter. You just can't do that, especially in the middle of a bowl game. One can only imagine what Smith said at halftime -- maybe something like, "We can still
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