Hold onto your nose, your cheeks, your chin, your eyelids, your eyebrows here because … this news isn’t something you see or hear every day or practically any day. It might just melt the skin and bones straight off your face.
Read it niiiiiiiccceee and sllloooowww so as to minimize the disbelief.
Utah State … is … retaining … the … services … of … its … basketball … coach.
That’s right. The Aggies are signing Jerrod Calhoun to what is reported to be a five-year contract extension that starts out paying him $1.8 million in the first year, with bumps up in pay for each subsequent season.
It’s a miracle.
USU doesn’t do this. It does not retain its head basketball coach. It loses him, then replaces him, then loses him, then replaces him, then loses him and replaces him again.
That’s, in general, the bad news. The good news is that it keeps on winning. It feels like the Aggies could pretty much hire the dumbest coach on the planet and turn him into a hoops savant. It’s what they seem to be able to do, even if their current run has included some fairly bright dudes.
Count Calhoun among them. And now, he’s still theirs … for as long as it lasts. Coaching contracts don’t mean a whole lot anymore, what with coaches constantly looking for and taking whatever job could be to their financial and competitive advantage, regardless of what the words and numbers written out on a piece of paper indicate. In-demand coaches are like in-demand players these days, regularly hitting the portal.
Well. Calhoun is good to stay, not go.
There was talk he might bolt, not just on account of that being the recent track record in Logan — Craig Smith, Ryan Odom, Danny Sprinkle having left, swiped away by Utah, VCU, Washington after posting impressive records with the Aggies — but rather because certain athletic directors from other schools had reportedly interviewed him. Schools like, say, West Virginia. But that didn’t work out, according to one report, for a variety of reasons, one of them being that Calhoun’s teams — at Utah State and Youngstown State — haven’t exactly distinguished themselves at the defensive end. Take that at face value if you will.
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But what Utah State did do this season was win 26 games in Calhoun’s first season running the shop. The Ags qualified for the NCAA Tournament, where they were ousted in the first round by UCLA. That ultimate outcome was far from satisfying for Calhoun, considering his team was blown off the floor by the Bruins. But his team remains his, still. So, it shall be seen if he can find more satisfaction at USU in the season(s) ahead.
No matter the relative success the Aggies have had with whichever head coach is leading them, it must be comforting for them in this time of such carpetbaggery to be able temporarily to get off the hiring treadmill. It might be an unsolvable fact that a school in Cache Valley — even a quality school that has a proud basketball tradition — that plays in the Mountain West is going to be used as a steppingstone by extremely ambitious and ego-driven coaches who are wired to constantly be looking for more money — another shock, right? — and more fame and more glory and more wins and more, more, more.
Guys like Stew Morrill are hard to find. When they are found, their name ends up on the court upon which the team plays.
Don’t know if there will ever be room on that floor in the faraway future for another name, for Jerrod Calhoun’s name, but that’s not the way to bet. On the other hand, Utah State will crawl before it sprints. It will take whatever stability it can get. For the time being, a signature penned in ink on the bottom line of a contract extension — for now, at least — is enough, be it five years or one year or some number in between.
Point is, the Aggies have their coach. They are his. He is theirs. Regardless of how long it actually lasts.
Follow @GordonMonson
