Friday, March 31, 2017

The Worldwide Leader Comes To North Texas

This post originally appeared at the Fort Worth Weekly's website. To view it there : https://www.fwweekly.com/2017/03/31/the-worldwide-leader-comes-to-north-texas/

ESPN has long billed itself as the “worldwide leader” in the sports world, and this weekend they are covering one of the biggest events in women’s sports. The NCAA is holding the Women’s Final Four in Dallas this year, and the network will carry complete coverage. Friday’s semis will run on ESPN2 and Sunday evening’s championship game airs on ESPN.


I talked to a couple of women who perform vital functions in the coverage effort. Holly Rowe roams the sidelines, conducting in-game interviews and ferreting out developing storylines. Pat Lowry does her work behind the cameras as a coordinating producer. Check out these video interviews to find out about which storylines they see as compelling and how they go about performing their duties. Topics like comfortable shoes and pet care also managed to work themselves into the mix.




Rush Olson has spent two decades directing creative efforts for sports teams and broadcasters. He currently creates ad campaigns, television programs, and related creative projects for sports entities through Rush Olson Creative & Sports and FourNine Productions.


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Thursday, March 30, 2017

Power of the FInal Four

This post originally appeared at the Fort Worth Weekly's website. To view it there :


I’ve decided I like Aerial Powers. It has nothing to do with her making the WNBA All-Rookie Team for the Dallas Wings last year, though she is certainly an entertaining player to watch play.

No, I like Ms. Powers because when we discussed my name, she compared it to the movie “Rush Hour.” I admitted to owning the film on VHS and she graciously claimed that fact did NOT make me old. With respect for her at an all-time high, this apparently well-preserved reporter proceeded with the interview you can watch in this post.



Powers, along with Wings teammate Tiffany Bias, head coach Fred Williams, assistant coach Taj McWilliams-Franklin, and members of the club’s front office, had come to Arcadia Park in Dallas to witness the dedication of a Dream CourtTM. The event was timed to coincide with the presence of the Women’s Final Four in Dallas this weekend, and the NCAA had worked with Nancy Lieberman Charities and the WorldVentures Foundation to place the court in the Oak Cliff neighborhood.

After the VIPs had done a ribbon-cutting and dedicated the new basketball court, I talked with her about the Final Four, the ceremony, and the upcoming Wings season. We did not discuss movies of (relatively) recent vintage.




Rush Olson has spent two decades directing creative efforts for sports teams and broadcasters. He currently creates ad campaigns, television programs, and related creative projects for sports entities through Rush Olson Creative & Sports and FourNine Productions.

RushOlson.com
Linkedin.com/company/rush-olson-creative-&-sports
Facebook.com/RushOlsonCreativeandSports

Tuesday, March 28, 2017

Pushing The Ball

This post originally appeared at the Fort Worth Weekly's website. To view it there : https://www.fwweekly.com/2017/03/27/sports-rush-push-the-ball/

Basketball arrived in Tarrant County this year. I know because I had thousands of people screaming it in my ear.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a column about how the area had experienced an all-time high in men’s college basketball success. This past week, the local boys took it up another notch.

While the Dallas team about which I wrote, SMU, fell victim to a first-round NCAA tournament upset, Texas Wesleyan, Texas Christian, and Texas-Arlington posted some impressive results.

You might not have filled in their names in a bracket, because they weren’t playing in the NCAAs. But the single-elimination events in which they participated offer ample history and prestige.

Both the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), where TWU played, national championship tourney and the National Invitational Tournament (NIT), postseason home for TCU and UTA, predate their NCAA counterpart. The NIT began its championship in 1938 after the NAIA had initiated its version for mostly smaller schools a year earlier. The NCAA started its tournament in 1939, but the NIT remained the more coveted title for some years thereafter.

Today, of course, there’s only one Big Dance. But for those schools unaccustomed to appearing there with Duke-like frequency, any late March competition feels meaningful.
The crowds felt substantial, too. UTA hosted two NIT games. A Monday win against Akron drew more than 5,000 fans and 6,000+ saw a furious comeback fall just short in a quarterfinal against Cal State Bakersfield.  Both crowds were season highs.

UTA Mens Basketball NIT 

TCU put nearly 6,000 fans of their own into Schollmaier Arena for their NIT quarterfinal against Richmond. Beyond just numbers, however, the atmosphere felt like a big game, one in which the winner would earn a chance to compete in the historic Madison Square Garden. The Horned Frogs played a complete game to earn themselves a trip to New York City. I stood below the student section for much of the game and can testify as to the volume and occasional maliciousness of their vocalizations. They were into it.

One observer who attended Richmond’s first round game in Tuscaloosa noted the atmosphere and intensity there paled in comparison to the ferocity of Frogland. For a school like Alabama that revolves around football national titles, an NIT berth may be no big deal. But for schools without such a pedigree, a postseason appearance offered a reason to celebrate.

Speaking of national titles and celebrating, TWU earned the ultimate honor in its classification. The Rams went to Kansas City and won the NAIA national championship. They didn’t get to play in front of home crowds, and they had to run the gauntlet of a full tournament packed into a week. It’s an impressive and significant accomplishment.
These west-side squads have pushed men’s hoops to the forefront of local consciousness. I have a proposal to help keep it there. Back in the ’70s, Wesleyan’s athletic director at the time (I know this because he is my father) proposed a local tournament among the Rams, Mavericks, Horned Frogs, and Mustangs. The bigger schools didn’t want to do it then, but maybe they should revisit the idea.

While TCU and SMU have played each other most years since 1918 (The Ponies won this past December 7), the rest of the group has matched up more sporadically. TCU hasn’t faced UTA since the Mavericks took the Frogs to overtime in both 2006 and 2007. UTA and SMU last played in 1997. TWU hasn’t taken on UTA since 2009, and hasn’t faced TCU or SMU since losing to both in 1982 (taking SMU to OT in Dallas).

One argument for such a tourney involves students. Last Tuesday, I chatted with Will Bryan, who handles media relations for Richmond’s men’s basketball team. As we watched the squads warm up, I asked him if they would stay in Fort Worth that night. He told me they would fly back because the players had school the next day. This season, our local student-athletes played mid-week games in the likes of Boise, Idaho; Morgantown, West Virginia; and Moraga, California. More local games mean fewer classes missed and more sleep before the ones the young men do attend (assuming they go to bed at a reasonable hour, as I always did in college and still do).

Another reason the teams should play each other is to keep this momentum going. The more they can do to stoke interest in the game here, the more it does to encourage participation and entice local recruits. A home-grown tournament would generate media coverage and outreach opportunities.

Texas Wesleyan, of course, is the wild card here. NCAA Division I schools wouldn’t benefit from an expected win against the Rams, but a defeat would be the equivalent of a football loss to a DII school. And as NAIA programs go, with two national titles in just over a decade, the east-siders are stout. Still, if you’re TCU, don’t you want a shot at leveling your record with your crosstown neighbors? Thanks to victories in 1937 and 1947, Texas Wesleyan currently owns the “Best of Fort Worth” title by a two-wins-to-one margin all-time.

If a tournament could help push the sport forward in this area, the DI athletic directors should consider it – especially if they can find a way to make money from it. Such a series should certainly have title sponsor appeal, especially during what could be a golden age of men’s hoops in North Texas. My eardrums can attest to it.

Rush Olson has spent two decades directing creative efforts for sports teams and broadcasters. He currently creates ad campaigns, television programs, and related creative projects for sports entities through Rush Olson Creative & Sports and FourNine Productions.

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Linkedin.com/company/rush-olson-creative-&-sports
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Wednesday, March 22, 2017

Sports Drinks and Eating Contests : An Interview With Emily Jones

This post originally appeared at the Fort Worth Weekly's website. To view it there : https://www.fwweekly.com/2017/03/22/sports-rush-spor…ers-with-a-smile/


How would you feel if your co-workers frequently amused themselves by flinging large containers of sugary liquid at each other with you getting caught in the crossfire? Would you be ok with it if it came following a week in which you met your sales quota?

Emily Jones goes to one of her jobs every day knowing the above might be a possibility. She performs reporter duties on Fox Sports Southwest’s Texas Rangers broadcasts that originate from Globe Life Park in Arlington,  and her duties include postgame interviews on the field if the home team wins. Certain players have adopted the custom of dousing whichever star of the game she’s interviewing with leftover sports drink from the dugout cooler. In this video interview, I asked Jones how she manages that nuance of her occupation, and how she juggles her various duties as reporter, entrepreneur, pitchwoman, and mom.

I also asked her about one of the favorite videos I worked on with her during my tenure at the Rangers. Check the piece we referenced here. She explains the story behind it and then also indulges my absurd follow-up question. I felt comfortable asking it, because, one thing we know about Emily Jones is that she's pretty good at accommodating ridiculous conduct in the workplace.

One other thing you should know about this interview: Emily is modest, but her rapport with players and everyone else in the organization owes as much to her professionalism, commitment to knowing her stuff, and consistently pleasant demeanor as it does to her longevity with the club. She brings her A-game every day and it shows in her work.


Rush Olson has spent two decades directing creative efforts for sports teams and broadcasters. He currently creates ad campaigns, television programs, and related creative projects for sports entities through Rush Olson Creative & Sports and FourNine Productions.

RushOlson.com
Linkedin.com/company/rush-olson-creative-&-sports
Facebook.com/RushOlsonCreativeandSports

Tuesday, March 14, 2017

Fort Worth-Dallas - A Hotbed of Hoops?

This post originally appeared at the Fort Worth Weekly's website. To view it there : https://www.fwweekly.com/2017/03/13/sports-rush-a-hoops-hotbed/

Wow. All of a sudden, basketball is a big deal.

OK, it’s one of the world’s most popular sports, but this area has not necessarily been a college basketball nexus. Until now.

An upset of top-ranked Kansas in the Big 12 tournament, which Texas Christian pulled off Thursday should make one sit up and take notice. Have you checked out Texas-Arlington? How about Southern Methodist? There have been a lot of balls ripping nets this year. If you haven’t been paying attention, the local men’s college basketball teams have been making some noise all season. Historically so, in fact.

TCU lost to eventual champion Iowa State in the Big 12 semis. UTA won the Sun Belt regular season before falling in the tournament semi-finals. SMU won the American Athletic Conference regular season and tournament. Among the area’s Division I teams, only Denton’s University of North Texas had a subpar year, finishing 8-22.

The Frogs, Mustangs, and Mavericks will all take part in the postseason. SMU earned a number six seed in the NCAA Tournament, playing Providence or the University of Southern California on Friday afternoon in Tulsa on truTV. TCU will host Fresno State in the National Invitation Tournament at 8pm Central Wednesday. At that same time, the UTA Mavs have an NIT first-round matchup against Brigham Young in Provo, with the game televised on ESPN2.


Each team has had good seasons in the past, but one can make the case that the area has never before had so much success in the sport all at once. The NCAA and the NIT are the top two postseason tournaments in men’s college basketball, and the North Texas region has participated sporadically. In the 1950s, when UTA was still a two-year institution called Arlington State College, SMU and TCU both had some good teams, but never made it into the postseason at the same time (though there were fewer berths available in those days). The two Southwest Conference schools again posted some winning records in the 1980s, Texas Christian under coach Jim Killingsworth and Southern Methodist under the since-disgraced Dave Bliss. UTA played a game in the 1981 NIT under Bob “Snake” LeGrand. However, 1986 and 1988 were the only previous years in which as many as two local teams made the two big tourneys. In 1986, TCU was defeated by Florida in the second round of the NIT while SMU lost to BYU in the first round of the same competition. In 1988, SMU made the second round of the NCAAs before falling to Duke and UNT also lost to an ACC team, North Carolina, in the first round of the big tournament.

In 2012, UTA dropped a first-round game to Washington in the NIT while TCU made it to the second round of the third-tier College Basketball Invitational (a tournament won, incidentally, by current TCU head coach Jamie Dixon’s University of Pittsburgh team).
Never before, though, have we had three teams qualifying for end-of-season tournaments at once.

In addition to their postseason berths, all three teams have recorded wins over big-time opponents. TCU and UTA went a combined 3-0 against the University of Texas, though admittedly in a down year for the Longhorns. TCU beat Iowa State during the regular season. UTA defeated four NCAA tournament teams. SMU won 30 games, with no losses to teams not in the NCAA or NIT draws. Add to that the fact that Texas Wesleyan made the 32-team NAIA field (they play Cumberland Thursday) and it’s not hard to make the case that there has never been a better men’s college basketball season in North Texas.
So pay attention this week, and hopefully beyond, to the glut of area teams playing in the postseason tournaments. It doesn’t happen very often. Or ever.

On the other hand, the four NCAA teams expect to lose a total of only sixteen players off these rosters. And none of their leading scorers are seniors. So maybe we can expect the same next year. For basketball fans, that probably sounds like a pretty good deal.


Rush Olson has spent two decades directing creative efforts for sports teams and broadcasters. He currently creates ad campaigns, television programs, and related creative projects for sports entities through Rush Olson Creative & Sports and FourNine Productions.

RushOlson.com
Linkedin.com/company/rush-olson-creative-&-sports
Facebook.com/RushOlsonCreativeandSports

Monday, March 13, 2017

Creative Suffering In TX


In Burleson, Texas, elite cyclists and triathletes can now train in a festival atmosphere.



Of course, it’s endurance training, so it’s a festival of hard work, perspiration, and, yes, suffering. In fact, they call it the Sufferfest.



The athletes assemble in the studio room at C3 Cryo Club. Most bring their own bicycles, which they attach to trainers, though there are also spin bikes available for those who need them. Then high-energy music kicks in, a video with a title like “The Wretched” or “Sufferfest Fight Club” begins to play, and they begin to pedal.



"Sufferfest videos make you faster," says class supervisor William Pruett. 

Pruett runs CorioVelo, a multi-sport coaching and consulting company. He had personally used training videos from a concern calling themselves The Sufferfest, who produces videos for cyclists to watch whilst training. The pieces brandish a cheeky attitude about torturing oneself for one’s fitness, while also incorporating actual footage from some of cycling’s biggest races, like the Tour de France.



“It gives you the feeling like you're riding in a pack, like in a group ride, so it's a little bit different than just being in a room by yourself,” said recent participant Leslie Haas.



“I had always wanted to do (a) Sufferfest (class), because Sufferfest is designed so well for cyclists,” said Pruett.



“William Pruett knows how to get the most out of his athletes to help them achieve their goals,” said David McQuillen, Chief Suffering Officer at The Sufferfest, via email. “So we’re thrilled that CorioVelo has become a Sufferlandrian Embassy and is using our videos to help guide those athletes to victory.”



Pruett is beginning with classes four days a week. Weekday sessions will last a half hour. He’ll offer longer Sunday rides designed to appeal to athletes in training for upcoming races, though one of the setup’s appeals is its ability to cater to multiple types of athletes at the same time.



“You have different levels of experience,” said Haas, “But they get the same workout because it's (based) on perceived exertion.”



On a trail, an inexperienced rider would get left behind no matter how hard he or she pushed. In the studio, each person can perform – and suffer – equally. The shared experience creates an element of camaraderie and motivation that might be missed when riding at home by oneself.



“Leslie gave me a high-five in the middle,” said rider Eva Diana Iguaran.



“You're all in it together,” noted Haas. “When everyone else is in the room doing it, it’s like, ‘all right, we can all do this.’”



"You shouldn't be talking. You should be climbing," joked Pruett at one point in their class.



The videos’ editing and graphic elements are based on workouts designed by coach Neal Henderson of APEX Coaching and the BMC Racing Team’s sports science staff. Each film features changes in cadence and effort level designed to mimic the ups and downs one would encounter in a race. Having pictures helps.



“Looking at the screen is like riding on the road,” said Pruett. “You keep your head up."



As the moderator, Pruett watches a rundown sheet that lists upcoming climbs and sprints and keeps his charges aware of how long certain elements will last. He also keeps an eye on the exercisers’ gear settings and other technical elements to help them get the most from their ride. He says being able to use one’s own machine without having to brave weather or traffic is an advantage in training.



“You can bring your bike specifically fit for you, and you can do these harder workouts to increase your fitness, but on your bike. So that's the beauty of this.”



The cyclists will also be watching beautiful scenery from around the world, and indeed, the Sufferfest is an international company. Though based in Singapore, they have created their own ersatz nation, dubbed Sufferlandria. Cycling studios who license their videos for classes are known as “Embassies,” and only they are allowed to exhibit the works publicly



Pruett’s is the only such outpost in North Texas, having achieved the embassy designation. It gives him the privilege of bestowing naturalization on those intrepid trailblazers whom The Sufferfest has just directed to move their “legs like a (suffering) hummingbird” or been told it’s “time to separate the Sufferlandrians from the weak.” At the end of the session, Pruett distributes high-fives and congratulations.



“You’re all official Sufferlandrians!” he said.







One can purchase passes for Sufferfest classes at https://squareup.com/store/coriovelo-enterprises-llc. For more information on CorioVelo, visit http://www.coriovelo.com/.



Rush Olson has spent two decades directing creative efforts for sports teams and broadcasters. He currently creates ad campaigns, television programs, and related creative projects for sports entities through Rush Olson Creative & Sports and FourNine Productions.

RushOlson.com
Linkedin.com/company/rush-olson-creative-&-sports
Facebook.com/RushOlsonCreativeandSports

Thursday, March 9, 2017

More March Madness Than You Realize

This post originally appeared at the Fort Worth Weekly's website. To view it there : https://www.fwweekly.com/2017/03/06/sports-rush-madness-in-the-third-degree/

There is so much more madness in March than we even realize.

If you think you have to wait for the CBS Selection Sunday Show this coming weekend to start picking a bracket, or for the women’s hoops equivalent on ESPN the following day, you should investigate further. The NCAA basketball playoffs started Friday, and they played a regional in Dallas- Fort Worth.

No, the governing body didn’t add even more play-in games to the Big Dance. It’s just that the NCAA runs more than one dance card. They have multiple divisions, and we had the opportunity to see the Division III women’s tournament get underway locally.
I found myself at a second-round game Saturday between my alma mater, Trinity University, and Claremont-Mudd-Scripps. They played in a regional held at the University of Texas at Dallas. CMS had defeated the hosts the previous night after the Tigers had beaten Hendrix College in the evening’s first game.

TU_On_Defense_1618 

The DIII draws (women’s and men’s) include 64 teams each and not one of them features a player on an athletic scholarship. At this level, students pay their own way or find other forms of financial aid. While they don’t have hype or pedigrees, they otherwise share a great deal with their counterparts who will fill your office pool next week.

These teams won their respective conferences and they know how to compete. Before the tip, I noticed Trinity’s Mollie Hughes sporting a black left eye and CMS’s Quinn Glosniak wearing a large bandage on her right eyebrow. Hughes had gotten hers going for a rebound in an earlier game and said she had gotten called for a foul on the play, apparently having somehow hacked an opponent with her cheekbone. Glosniak’s cut had required stitches, with the team’s athletic trainer preferring to leave the covering in place rather than reapply the stitches when the player inevitably took another blow there. Based on that evidence, one might have expected a physical game, and we got one.

“One of our goals was to get the ball inside this game,” said CMS senior Aly Young, whose team-high 17 points came mostly via a variety of post moves. There was plenty of up-tempo play, too, with Trinity running a full-court press from the get-go. The combination made for an intense contest.

Indeed, the atmosphere felt like you would expect a playoff game should. Claremont-Mudd-Scripps represents an amalgam of three schools whose campuses adjoin each other in Southern California. The Athenas brought a couple of dozen fans, and they made themselves heard. San Antonio-based Trinity filled a good portion of the home side (they also wore the white jerseys and got to have their points recorded as “Comets” on the UTD scoreboard). The Tigers’ head coach, Cameron Hill, even spotted some players from other teams in their conference having come to support their rivals.

If the stakes weren’t enough, the game itself effectively caffeinated the gym. Trinity got out to a strong start, but the Athenas pulled to within three at halftime. The second half went to-and-fro until the Tigers forced some turnovers late to pull away. The 77-66 win put Trinity into the Division III round of 16.

Hill said afterward of his now 28-1 team, “The key to this whole thing is there’s just not a lot of panic in this group. There’s no doubt in their mind that they can figure out a way to stay competitive and give themselves a chance to win.“

Trinity_PC_7545 

Staying calm in tension-filled situations; self-confidence; problem solving – all abilities that carry over well to the business world these students will shortly enter. What should matter the most in college athletics is the student-athletes and how the experience pays off for them in future endeavors. Any competitive sport experience should provide those benefits, but raised stakes accentuate the pressure and the payoff.

“They sacrifice a ton of stuff, especially Division III student-athletes, so the fact that they get this experience is the best part, besides the team,.” said Claremont-Mudd-Scripps head coach Kristen Dowling. “The team is the best part, but the experience in the national tournament is absolutely a reward for their hard work all year.”

The Athenas’ six seniors made their fourth NCAA tournament appearances this year.
“They’re the best memories I have. There’s nothing like going to a postseason tournament. The excitement, I mean, it’s so incredible to be able to play,” said Young. “There’s nothing that brings us together more than making it this far.”

Turning shared memories into longtime friendships is another benefit of a university experience. The longer your team lasts, the more of those you get to make. Last season, the Athenas were the ones who denied the Tigers that opportunity, defeating them in a first-round matchup in Tyler. This year, it was Trinity who got to prolong the adventure.
“It’s just a really, really nice feeling to know that we get to have practice on Monday,” said Hill.

“Our chemistry is like no other team I’ve ever been on, said TU junior Micah Weaver, who contributed 17 points in the second-round win after scoring 31 in the first round against Hendrix. “I’m just excited to have another week with them.”

TU_CMS_Postgame_9125 

The Tigers will attempt to extend their season another weekend when they play Whitman Friday in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Expect the same intensity, passion, and ultimate payoff as those other games you may watch on the big networks. So whom do you have in your bracket? I’ve got Trinity.

Rush Olson has spent two decades directing creative efforts for sports teams and broadcasters. He currently creates ad campaigns, television programs, and related creative projects for sports entities through Rush Olson Creative & Sports and FourNine Productions.

RushOlson.com
Linkedin.com/company/rush-olson-creative-&-sports
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Thursday, March 2, 2017

Leicester and Longhorns and Aggies, Oh My

This post originally appeared at the Fort Worth Weekly's website. To view it there : https://www.fwweekly.com/2017/03/01/sports-rush-leicester-and-longhorns-and-aggies-oh-my/

A lot of Longhorns and Aggies probably looked at Leicester City F.C. this week and said, “oh yeah, we’ve been there.”

OK, in actuality, they probably didn’t. In their defense, the Leicester folks likely didn’t spend much time considering the Texas A&M and University of Texas athletic experiences in their calculations, either.

Here’s what happened. Last week, English soccer club Leicester City fired its manager, Claudio Ranieri. The team has not played well this season in the Premier League and currently sits just two points clear of relegation. A bottom-three place in the standings means they would drop a level next year and have to earn their way back to the major leagues.

Relegation can devastate a club, and It’s not terribly unusual for a team performing poorly in any sport to jettison its manager during the season. In the Prem, bottom-half performers Hull City, Swansea City, and Crystal Palace had already done so. But here’s the thing : none of those clubs won the league last year. Leicester City did, taking home a top-fight crown for the first time in its history.
Of course, they had finished second once before – in 1929. For most of their existence, the Foxes would have been happy to just to take up a standings place in the best competition, and they haven’t done so consistently. As recently as 2009, they played a season two rungs below the top level. So it was generally acknowledged that what they did last year was amazing. And unprecedented. And a Red-Sea-parting-grade miracle.

The veteran Italian manager took that team to those heights and was generally given a decent amount of credit for playing a significant role in the process. This season he’s faced criticism for his offseason moves and his coaching. None of us really know what has gone on behind-the-scenes at Leicester, but one wonders if it had truly reached a point where Ranieri was not good enough to coach the team any more, less than a year after leading them to the best moment in team history.

The situation reminded me of the big state schools in Texas. I specifically thought of three coaches : R.C. Slocum, Rick Barnes, and Mack Brown. All had virtually unprecedented success and all effectively lost their jobs due in part to outsized expectations.

Slocum, a College Football Hall of Fame inductee, coached the Aggies from 1989 to 2002. He never had a losing season and won in double digits five times. The program had a total of six 10-plus-win seasons in the 86 years prior to Slocum’s arrival and has had one since his departure.

Barnes coached seventeen seasons of men’s basketball at the University of Texas before being fired two years ago. The Longhorns made the NCAA Tournament in all but one of those. He took them to their first Final Four since the 1940s. Other than his immediate predecessor, Tom Penders, no Texas coach, not even the legendary Abe Lemons, had gotten the school to more than one NCAA Tourney (though the criteria were admittedly more stringent before the field expanded). He owns the top winning percentage of any UT coach since the 1930s.

Mack BrownAs Texas’ football coach from 1998-2013, Brown put up nine years of 10 or more wins against a single losing season. He won a national title and got his team to a second championship game (they kept that one close against Alabama despite losing starting quarterback and future NFL-er Colt McCoy to an injury in the first quarter). Brown measured up against the legacy of Darrell Royal better than any of the legend’s other successors had. The program has not had a winning record since Brown moved into a special assistant role.

So why might these three have been good for Leicester to know about prior to making their decision to terminate Ranieri? Because sometimes you have to appreciate what you have. A&M football before Slocum was not a consistent winner. They won three conference titles between 1942 and 1984. While Penders started to put Texas basketball on the map, Barnes established it there, something no coach had done before. And though Texas had a strong football tradition before Brown, he took it to a level seen only once before in the program’s history, and in a different sort of era.

Past performance is certainly no guarantee of future results. Any of these coaches might well have failed to maintain the program at the level to which he had gotten it. Sometimes, however, one has to understand how hard it is to win all the time against high-level competition – and it is really hard. Maybe those in charge saw some sort of slippage in approach or work ethic from Ranieri, Slocum, Brown, and Barnes. Maybe declines in those programs would have accelerated with them in charge. But it has always seemed to me that when someone has had success, especially where none was to be found before, one should take a long hard look at the possibility of taking a step back when making a change. Scores of schools will never win a national championship, and sometimes if you try too hard to take that next step, you end up taking two leaps in the other direction instead.

Will it happen in Leicester? Will time prove their decision a correct one? What are the expectations? If they expect hardware every year, history might indicate they will have miscalculated. Of course, they do still have hopes of a trophy this season. A 1-0 win March 14 against Sevilla would propel the Foxes into the final eight of the Champions League, the most prestigious competition in club soccer. That’s where Ranieri had gotten them this year. It wasn’t good enough.


Rush Olson has spent two decades directing creative efforts for sports teams and broadcasters. He currently creates ad campaigns, television programs, and related creative projects for sports entities through Rush Olson Creative & Sports and FourNine Productions.

RushOlson.com
Linkedin.com/company/rush-olson-creative-&-sports
Facebook.com/RushOlsonCreativeandSports