FORT WORTH, Texas — Shaka, call your realtor.
After watching Texas lose by one-point to an Abilene Christian team that was blown out by 20 points two days later to UCLA in the NCAA Tournament, no job in America is any less secure than that of UT men’s basketball coach Shaka Smart.
Shaka clings to his job, staying only because his boss does not want to fire him for all of the implications it will have on his own status, and his athletic department.
Whether it’s today, or one year from today, Texas AD Chris Del Conte doesn’t have much choice, and he knows it.
This was Shaka’s best team, and since arriving in Austin in 2015 the Longhorns are 0-3 in NCAA Tourney games. Their loss as the 3-seed to 14th-seeded ACU on Saturday night should not have happened.
There are but three reasons CDC retains Shaka, and they are good ones.
WHY SMART WILL STAY, #1
Morale.
Nearly every athletic department in the nation has suffered cuts and reductions in the past year.
In September, Texas announced the elimination of 35 jobs in the athletic department and said an additional 35 job openings would not be filled. Del Conte said the cost-cutting moves saved $13.1 million.
Then, in January, one month after saying football coach Tom Herman would return, he was fired and replaced by Steve Sarkisian.
That exchange required $80 million in guaranteed contracts.
That’s a bad look for a department that laid off a slew of employees to save money.
Morale in an athletic department is significant, and if Del Conte fires Smart and eats the $7.1 million buyout it will send yet another flare warning how little the rest of his staff matters.
His credibility to his staffers will take another hit, regardless of the explanation.
He’d rather avoid that.
WHY SMART WILL STAY, #2
They can.
The primary reason Smart has remained at Texas despite the lack of postseason success is basketball.
Every coach in the Southeast enjoys the “Men’s Basketball Protection Program,” an unwritten insurance policy that gives them an extra year or two because their sport isn’t football.
In the fall, Texas will start its last season to play in the 42-year-old Erwin Center in downtown Austin. The Longhorns are scheduled to move into the new Moody Center in 2022.
If they were moving into the new building this year, there would be more urgency, bordering on a need. What’s one more year in the Erwin Center with Shaka on the sidelines? Texas can live with that.
WHY SMART WILL STAY, #3
This is the athletic director’s job.
While CDC is financially secure for many lifetimes, hiring Steve Sarkisian and what he will do with the men’s basketball team will define his success at Texas.
Waiting one more year on Smart could possibly buy him some time before the piercing Eyes of the Texas administration look at Del Conte.
He has certainly been an upgrade over the Steve Patterson era, but Texas has not regained the status it enjoyed under DeLoss Dodds, Mack Brown and Rick Barnes.
Del Conte was hired to do just that.
While CDC knows no peer in terms of fundraising and erecting a pretty new building, if he blows these decisions he’s toast.
CDC can spin this; Smart’s team swept Kansas, and won the Big 12 tournament, the finances of the contract, and the last year of the old building.
Texas is its own stimulus package, but that doesn’t mean it wants to spend all of it if it doesn’t have to.
It buys him one year before potentially announcing a new hire that will have the second greatest impact on his job security.
WHY SMART WILL GO
When Smart was hired in 2015, he was the jewel of the mid-majors, having built a bracket-busting, mini-monster program at Virginia Commonwealth.
But his success didn’t make it to Austin.
He has not come close to the level of success that Rick Barnes established from 1999 to 2012 when UT made the NCAA Tournament every year, and all the way to the Final Four in 2003.
Texas has two 20 win seasons in Smart’s six years, and in the previous five was not ranked in the final Top 25 AP poll.
Nobody is ever going to mistake Longhorns basketball for Duke, Kansas or Kentucky. Or, to keep it current, Houston, Baylor or Loyola Chicago. But whether you lean traditional or trendy, this level of mediocrity from an athletic department like Texas is unacceptable.
Shaka is a good coach, but not everyone is built for the Big 12, or the brutal world of Power 5 ball.
Whether it’s today, or a year from today, Chris Del Conte doesn’t have much choice, and he knows it.
There are good reasons to retain Shaka Smart, and yet they ultimately don’t feel like they’ll be good enough to prevent a call to the real estate agent.
