I’ve never been a fan of players influencing coaching hire decisions.
Players are transitive, here one moment, gone the next. When Chris Beard departed the Texas Tech men’s basketball program two years ago to the day, key components of the roster expressed an overwhelming demand to promote then-assistant Mark Adams to the vacant head coaching position.
Red Raider fans universally backed the players in their endeavor to retain Adams, the soft-spoken, defensive guru credited with designing one of the country’s most creative, vicious and effective systems for preventing opponents from scoring.
The absence of any meaningful NCAA Division I coaching experience on Adams’s resume deterred no one as players, fans, and, ultimately, university administrators acted on emotion instead of logic.