Should Ben Howland be fired?

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There’s a lot of radical, crazy talk about Coach Ben Howland getting the pink slip as a result of an underachieving UCLA squad, currently sitting at 13-10 overall and 6-5 in Pac-12 play. With the last three seasons all winding up in a second-round NCAA tournament elimination or worse, the desperate, delusional Bruin faithful are beginning to demand that heads roll.

(Of course, by “desperate, delusional Bruin faithful” we mean the guys at Bruins Nation — a site that will never be linked here — who tend to want to fire anyone and everyone. They’re like Mitt Romney.)

The conclusion that people have come to — fire Ben Howland — is a misguided one, and one that isn’t shared by many UCLA fans. In fact, that idea is just the most negative, radical idea and it’s the one that gets most attention.

Those three consecutive Final Four appearances seem a long way away, but they were three consecutive Final Four appearances. That doesn’t happen often, and this is with guys like Russell Westbrook and Kevin Love jamming after a full season of starting.

That might be living in the past, sure, but it isn’t as if it’s the only reason to keep Howland around.

Because it doesn’t make sense to fire a head coach on the cusp of bringing in what could be the best recruiting class this basketball program has seen in quite a while. With 5-star recruit Kyle Anderson having already committed to UCLA and top-ranked recruit Shabazz Muhammad strongly considering becoming a Bruin (and with Jordan Adams, a 4-star recruit, also having committed), there’s far too much to lose by dismissing Howland. The way commitments are thrown around nowadays, we could stand to lose Adams and Anderson while getting the cold shoulder from Shabazz.

And then there’s the matter of finding another coach. Guess who’s hiring? Dan Guerrero, of course.

While, right now, it seems as if Dan Guerrero might (deservedly) lose his job, he can redeem himself. He hired UCLA football coach Jim L. Mora, who’s doing a damn fine job so far (although it’s way too early to pass judgment), and while we hope he can replicate his so-far-so-good success, it’s important to realize that the dude blew threw two head football coaches and a few other basketball honchos, too.

Jim Mora was considered to be the worst possible hire at the time, and though it’s turning out OK right now, what’s to say that Guerrero won’t make another Karl-Dorrell-type “oopsy” by hiring a failed head basketball coach?

And aside from the possible hiring process, what about the money? Ben Howland has a guaranteed contract that ensures he gets paid upwards of $2 million each year for the next two years. If we hire a top-notch coach, we’d have to pay somewhere in the neighborhood of $4 million (thanks, ixrs on /r/ucla). What that means, then, is we’ll be tied up financially to the point where we’ll have to run ourselves dry for two years, and then be forced to recover afterwards, meaning the shiny, new, awesome coach is likely to be stuck with limited resources.

That’s my take, though. I won’t pretend to be the heavy-handed idiots at BN who claim to single-handedly represent the UCLA fan-base. What do you think? Should Ben Howland be fired?