Ben Howland Versus the Others

First off, it might seem that I fell off the face of the Earth, but I’m still here (hopefully you, the reader, noticed, but only because you miss my articles and not because you’re glad they’re gone). There are 2 reasons why I’ve been gone for a while. The first is because of finals (my last quarter at UCLA is about to start!). The second I’ll talk about at the end, so those of you who don’t care about what I’ve been doing can just go ahead and read the sports stuff.

As you guys all know, I’m the only guy on the Bruins sports blogging world that doesn’t want Ben Howland fired (and you guys have heard my reasons over and over, from recruiting to not forfeiting 2+ million a year since his contract is guaranteed).

College basketball is a money maker- and the top programs make between 15-40 million dollars a year. As you guys all know the elite coaches make anywhere from 2-4 million dollars a year representing 5-10% of the total revenue, which may not seem like a lot, but these coaches actually come at a premium considering people like Steve Jobs never made close to a billion dollars. The reason for this is (as always, economics) is because these college programs aren’t as profitable as the NBA, but must compete with the NBA for coaching, and thus are forced to raise prices. They’re also totally worth it, as NCAA tournament appearances usually raise the amount of alumni donations.

So let’s compare Ben Howland to the best of the best and see how he stacks up (since he makes plenty of money as well).

I’ll be comparing their first 9 years (because Howland has only been here for 9 years) at their “final destination” schools (i.e. their premium years, the years where we know they got good, such as UCLA, Duke Kentucky, Kansas, etc.). The school in parentheses is the 9 years that I’ve counted.

First up is our very own Ben Howland: 6 total tournament appearances, 2 final fours, 1 runner up

Next is Michigan’s Tom Izzo: 9 appearances, 2 final fours, 1 title

Billy Donovan (Florida, our arch nemesis): 8 appearances, 1 runner up

Bill Self (Kansas): 9 appearances, 1 final four, 1 title

Thad Matta (Ohio State): 7 appearances, 1 runner up (only 8 years)

Rick Pitino (Louiville): 9 appearances, 1 final four

Coach K: 6 appearances, 2 final fours, 1 runner up

Roy Williams (North Carolina): 9 appearances, 2 final fours, 1 title (he made his name at Kansas already)

I didn’t include John Calipari (of Kentucky) because he’s only coached 3 years at Kentucky, but he’s been amazing so far (2 final fours so far). He’s also the highest paid by far (just over 3.7 million).

As you can see, Ben Howland isn’t exactly blowing anybody else out of the water, but he’s not chopped liver either. Nearly all of these coaches have one thing in common- they took a while to develop their skills before they became great. As a side note- I’ve been critical of Ben Howland since my first year here (ugh, man to man produces NBA players, which is exactly what we’ve seen, but is a terrible idea for college), but he’s done the minimum to ensure that I’d rather not gamble 2.2 million (60% of the highest paid coach, not exactly peanuts) on some nobody. (All of the above coaches are under contract so we couldn’t exactly steal them.)

Anyway, that concludes my study on college basketball coaches. In context, Ben Howland isn’t too terrible, and definitely not worth throwing millions of dollars in the toilet to gamble.

So what have I been up to? I’ve been writing this Android smartphone app- https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.leebyloaf.ucladining

You can read more about it on the Android Market, but it basically tells you the menu at UCLA dining halls and calculates swipes. You can scan the QR code here:

http://i.imgur.com/mqhgu.png

Why not develop for iphone? Because I don’t own any Apple products other than my 3rd generation ipod nano, and Apple’s developer license is 99 bucks a year (and I’m poor, but that’s besides the point). I would love to otherwise, because Apple products are shiny.