Lickliter Fired: Iowa Makes Right Decision

I'm often the first person to defend the coach when a team has a bad year. Teams are often so obsessed with winning and generating the highest level of excitement that they'll fire good coaches for merely having an off year (see Auburn pushing Tommy Tuberville out the door a few years back). The Iowa Hawkeyes, however, had no choice but to fire Todd Lickliter after three years of diminishing results, declining attendance and player instability.

Coming off a Sweet 16 win while coaching Butler, Lickliter signed a 7-year contract to coach Iowa before the 2007-2008 season. From the beginning, things in Iowa were not copacetic, as the Hawkeyes finished 13-19 in Lickliter's first year. After three years, Lickliter's record with Iowa was 38-58, falling way short of expectations.

The more troubling aspect of Lickliter's tenure with Iowa, however, was his inability to keep the fans in the stands and to keep his players encouraged about the Hawkeyes' future. I'm not one to blame Lickliter for the fans staying away from Iowa home games, but the four players who transferred out of Iowa after the 2008-2009 season are his fault.

Part of a college coach's job is to find a way to win while not alienating current and future players. During Lickliter's three year tenure at Iowa, he saw five players transfer out of the program and another dismissed following alcohol and academic issues.

When a coach fails to meet expectations because of injuries or players playing below expectations, I think they should be given a little more slack than they are normally given. When a coach actively drives players away from the program, it's tough to find someone else to blame.

In addition to the transfers after the 2008-2009 season, the Des Moines Register reported recently that more players were threatening to transfer if Lickliter wasn't fired. Although there are no reports as to why all of these players were threatening to transfer besides Iowa's team-record setting futility, one has to wonder why multiple players didn't have confidence that Lickliter could turn the club around.

The 2008-2009 season, after which the mass exodus of players occurred, was actually Lickliter's best at Iowa, finishing at 15-16. Why didn't these players believe that Iowa was going to continue to get better and finish the next season above .500? Would Iowa have finished the 2009-2010 season at 10-22 if these players hadn't been driven away?

There's no clear answer to these questions, but when a team is willing to pay a coach over $2 million to not coach their team any longer, something is seriously wrong. The Iowa Hawkeyes are a team in disarray right now, and Todd Lickliter was not the man who was going to turn things around.

Source:

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/news/story?id=4997052

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20100315/SPORTS020504/100315003/1003