Hold On Loosely - The New Era Of Coaching Carousels

If reports are true of Keith Patterson’s hiring to coach defense at WVU, I have now begun to detach myself emotionally from the Dana Holgorsen era in Morgantown. Why? Because hiring a guy who used to work for Todd Graham at Pitt (a coach who "one and doned" his players for browner pastures in Arizona - complete with texting them about his departure), doesn’t bode well for the character of guys on this Mountaineer football staff. This is only accentuated by the fact that to take the job with the Mountaineers, Patterson resigned from Arkansas State less than two months after being hired.

We have officially left the era where coaches are thinking about anything but their own career advancement. I think the quick departure of Mike Smith back to his job with the New York Jets demonstrated that Holgy isn’t looking for guys who would consider making WVU their final destination. Which tells me it is far from his. Is the coach still living out of a suitcase at the Waterfront Place Hotel? Is the house he told the WV Gazette he was building last September still under construction? What would it matter if it weren't? A new contract would cover whatever loss he'd take selling it quickly.

I’ve known it for a while but didn’t want to admit the truth to myself. Gone are the days when our head coach would retire here and continue living in Morgantown. I had hoped that Rich Rod would be such a guy. Most knew Coach Stew didn’t have the chops to be a head coach for long. Perhaps I wanted to think that silver-tongued Oliver Luck had the capacity to convince a coach that you could build a legacy here at WVU.

Unfortunately, this latest hire (if it be true) seals it for me.

Hence, I’m not going to bet any emotional capital that Holgorsen won’t leave West Virginia once a $3,000,000+ a year pay day from an SEC school (or Texas) is available. You might say, "So what, as long as he wins while he’s here." I can go along with that. It just means that I’m not any longer going to dream of a coaching staff whose loyalty lies anywhere but getting theirs.

And it is a mystery to me how these college coaches - demonstrating their own selfishness in such a public way - are ever going to convince players that they should play for school pride or the betterment of the team, instead of first thinking about themselves.