NEW YORK — TCU and three other college basketball teams have assembled in our cultural capital at the most famous gathering place in the world, Madison Square Garden, for the NIT semifinals Tuesday night.
There is a mystical quality about the place in all its incarnations, beginning when it first opened in 1871 and a few years later converted into an oval arena by P.T. Barnum, who brought an elephant named Jumbo to the open-air venue.
That was big, big news for the times.
The Garden in which the Horned Frogs and Texas Longhorns will play at 8 p.m. Tuesday opened in 1968, which was a year of big news.
Big, big news surfaced on the eve of this semifinals round, perhaps a more vexing distraction than the background that is the legendary Garden.
For a second time in the last four months, TCU coach Jamie Dixon’s name surfaced in UCLA’s search for a replacement for Steve Alford. The Los Angeles Times reported that UCLA has narrowed its focus to the third-year TCU coach and Mick Cronin of Cincinnati.
In answering questions about the report, Dixon seemed to be far less committed to staying at TCU than he did in January. On Monday, he simply said he didn’t want to talk about the circus of speculation.
Cronin reportedly has already met with UCLA officials.
Perhaps the winner of tonight’s game will go to Westwood.
Texas coach Shaka Smart is also said to be a person of interest, along with St. Mary’s coach Randy Bennett and Earl Watson, a UCLA alum.
Those three appeared to be on a second tier of targets, though Smart was on UCLA’s list when they hired Alford.
The Times cited “multiple people with knowledge of the situation.” It is safely assumed “multiple people” were not Russian bots spreading fake news.
The job would be of obvious appeal to Dixon, who was raised in North Hollywood. His father was a screenwriter and actor. After his playing career was over, Dixon returned to the area to coach briefly as an assistant at Los Angeles Valley Junior College before later serving as an assistant at California Santa Barbara.
He was hired by Ben Howland as an assistant at Northern California and followed him to Pittsburgh.
There is a feeling — a daydream — that Dixon’s loyalty to his alma mater would trump any other offer or ambition. The funny thing is that when the time comes for a school to fire or push a coach out the door, the administration never checks a loyalty rewards program, even for coaches who are alumni.
Ask Kliff Kingsbury, the favorite son turned fired former coach at Texas Tech. (As an aside, his pink slip was the best thing that ever happened to him.)
That’s why coaches and schools protect themselves with buyout clauses and the such.
It’s ultimately all a business.
UCLA is big basketball business. The Bruins boast 11 national championships, the most of any school. Howland led them to three straight Final Fours in the 2000s.
And the basketball program has top billing. There is no playing second fiddle to football, like in Texas, where basketball season doesn’t start until after the College Football Playoff.
Basketball is No. 1 in the hearts and minds of fans and, most importantly, the donors.
But there are potholes.
This UCLA is not the UCLA of John Wooden, Jim Harrick or Howland. This is as difficult a job as it ever has been.
UCLA is undergoing a paradigm shift. The basketball program, which recruited one too many of Lavar Ball’s kids, is a mess at present.
The most serious shift, however, is in public financing from the state legislature, which has never returned it to pre-Great Recession levels. All the while, operating costs have increased at levels not seen since we found out the Affordable Care Act was anything but.
And more students are coming.
Supposedly, the state is planning to attempt to fix this, but that budget, despite California’s reportedly booming economy, is Russian roulette. Moreover, a state auditor is tailing the UC system with a microscope on its business infrastructure.
Administrators and politicians have, of course, passed this funding deficit on to the students and their families, as well as donors, who to this point seem to be inclined to keep funding of the basketball program at competitive levels.
Is it enough? The business of college athletics is an expensive one.
The job has not attracted the names administrators had hoped. Of their original top-tier wish list, only Kentucky’s John Calipari sat down with UCLA officials, according to the Times. He reportedly declined six years and $48 million, presumably subsidized by the donor class.
The fanatics seem to think Virginia’s Tony Bennett, who currently heads one of the top programs in the country, would be interested. Perhaps the crooner Tony Bennett, but not that one. Some also believed Chris Beard would leave Texas Tech. Beard would fit there like Charlie Sheen in the seminary.
Dream on, dreamer.
This isn’t the same job.
TCU’s focus is on a game Tuesday and hopefully another on Thursday in the championship game.
After that, we’ll see what happens.
The best-case scenario is Dixon stays at his alma mater.
With a raise, of course.