The Review

Issue date: 4/24/07 Section: Sports

Media Credit: Mike DeVoll Brendan Reed

Not many people can say they paid money to quit their job. Bob Huggins can. Earlier this month, the 53-year-old college basketball coach opted to pay $100,000 to get out of a contract with Kansas State. Huggins abruptly resigned from the school after just one year to take a head-coaching position at West Virginia, his alma mater. And while that may seem like chump change to Huggins (set to earn about $5 million, plus incentives, over the next five years at WVU), the players he recruited at Kansas State may be cursed by his decision.

Sometimes teams will hire assistants from within their program to fill a coaching void, but more often, and in the case of Huggins, teams hire coaches from other schools.

For Huggins, it was a no-brainer to take the job at a school where he played from 1975-1977 and first started his coaching career as an assistant. Coaches love to take the job at their former schools, and sometimes, like in the case of North Carolina head coach Roy Williams, they are hugely successful.

Fine and dandy for them. But their recruits are screwed.

According to the National Letter of Intent governing body, a high school basketball player commits to the school they'd like to attend and not the coach trying to get them there.

On the outside, this seems like a reasonable rule which serves to protect prospective players, considering coaches can ditch their job whenever they want. But head coaches have so much contact with their much-desired players that the NCAA may regulate how much text messaging can go on between a coach and player. So it's hard to understand how a player can be told not to pick a coach considering the amount of contact that goes on between them.

When Delaware junior forward Henry Olawoye was recruited to play here, it was by former coach Dave Henderson.

Henderson was let go by the university following the 2005-2006 season and current head coach Monté Ross was hired a few weeks later. Olawoye said he was fortunate to inherit a coach like Ross, who chose to retain the players already on the team.

"Usually when stuff like that happens, most coaches tend to clean house," Olawoye said. "They'll tell you they don't want you anymore or that you don't fit the system.

Continued...

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