Colleges taking careful approach to hiring coaches

Jennifer Collins Nov 30, 2011

Jeremy Hobson: Washington State University fired its football coach yesterday for failing to turn around its program. UCLA also let its coach go this week. Now these firings have nothing to do with the kind of stuff that’s been going on at Syracuse
or Penn State.

But as Marketplace’s Jennifer Collins reports, those scandals are going to be front and center for any universities looking for new coaches.


Jennifer Collins: It starts with how new coaches are hired.

Raymond Sauer: A lot of this is done informally and perhaps not very transparently.

Raymond Sauer is a sports economist at Clemson University. He says many athletic departments find their coaches through other coaches.

Sauer: We’ll see more thorough background checks.

On everyone: Trainers, assistants and head coaches. Many universities may beef up the staff responsible for oversight of athletic programs.

Kenneth Shropshire: Now schools have to be on alert at an even higher level.

Kenneth Shropshire is the director of the Wharton Sports Business Initiative.

Shropshire: Just because someone has been somewhere for a long time does not mean they should escape scrutiny on issues even off the field.

Because the cost of a scandal far outweighs the cost of compliance.

I’m Jennifer Collins for Marketplace.

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