Tommy Amaker's Reign

In the interest of complete disclosure, I should preface my post with the following: I'm a Tommy Amaker fan. I remember him from his playing days at Duke. He was a tough defensive player on a winning team. As such, I wanted Amaker as Michigan's coach. Even when Brian Ellerbe got the gig, I thought Amaker should have. I want Amaker to stay as Michigan coach. However, I cannot come up with a single reason that he should.

Yes, Amaker's stabilized the program. With all due respect to Amaker, couldn't Michigan have found about 100 guys to do that? I mean they were a step above the old UNLV program when Amaker arrived. Michigan's administration almost could have chosen anyone with an ounce of credibility and stopped the bleeding. However, wouldn't some of them posted better records? The problem for Amaker is that his record is only part of the dilemma.

I don't believe that very many of his upper classmen are much better basketball players then when they arrived. His recruiting has been good, not great. His team's play appears unorganized and his decision making can be questioned. Finally, and this may be my biggest issue with the guy I wanted, Amaker refuses to sell his program. He just won't get in front of cameras and microphones and promote the university's program--his program.

This closed door approach might work for coaches with Final Fours under their belt. Coach K, Roy Williams, Bobby Knight, Jim Calhoun can basically do whatever they want. Closed practices, open practices, talk to everyone, talk to no one. It's their choice. Their record, their program's history speaks for itself. Michigan and Coach Amaker cannot afford that. Michigan is not a basketball school and it's head basketball coach needs to sell the program to the alumni and fans here as much as he needs to promote it to potential recruits. Yet, Coach Amaker is oddly absent from the public's eye (and ear).

Michigan needs to get itself onto the college basketball map. There are two ways to accomplish that- sell the program relentlessly to all that will hear and win games. I don't think Amaker has done either. While I don't think that Michigan's administration has any idea about firing him, I'm his fan and even I find myself asking why he should stay.