CECIL HURT: Vacancies reveal a changing climate in SEC

I’ve never fancied myself as what Ray Perkins once referred to as “a predictionist."

My NCAA Tournament bracket is littered with more carnage than the Thermopylae battlefield in “300." But you could see this coming a mile away.

Any astute observer of college athletics and those who comment upon that scene knew that it wouldn’t take long before someone, somewhere, made a comparison between the Tubby Smith situation at Kentucky and the Mike Shula interlude at Alabama, and that somehow the comparison wouldn’t be flattering to UA.

Enter Pat Forde, the ESPN columnist. We aren’t close friends, but I’ve known Pat for years and respect his work. He’s particularly close to the programs at Louisville and Kentucky, having worked in that area for many years. And, in something of a defense against “sweeping generalizations" about Kentucky basketball fans on Tuesday, here is what he had to say:

“It isn’t like Smith was yanked through the spin cycle like Mike Shula."

Now, all I can say is hold on a minute.

First of all, I don’t know what makes Mike Shula the poster child for fan-base impatience all of a sudden. He coached in Tuscaloosa for four seasons, one of which was a winning season, then he was let go. Ron Zook, who never had a losing season, was canned before he reached the end of his third season at Florida. If Shula was “yanked through the spin cycle" at Alabama, then what sort of rinsing did Zook get at Florida? What about Matt Doherty, who lasted three years at his alma mater, North Carolina, despite going 26-7 in his first year? Did North Carolina simply turn the garden hose on Doherty? Shula’s tenure lasted as long as Ty Willingham’s at Notre Dame. Are the Irish fans unreasonable?

Later in his defense of UK fans, Forde notes among Smith’s transgressions that this “marked a second straight year without winning any SEC hardware -- not a division title, not a conference title, not a conference tournament title."

Really? A second straight year? Imagine that. No wonder those poor long-suffering UK fans were right to insist on change. Forget about all the hardware -- including a national championship -- that Smith had accumulated before those two years.

That’s enough sarcasm vented on Pat Forde, who also makes some very good points in his article, which should still be available on ESPN’s Web site. It’s also probably enough of a rant about a topic which has been previously ranted about in this column.

The real point, which isn’t just about an apples-and-oranges comparison between Mike Shula and Tubby Smith, is much larger. It is about a changing climate of expectations, certainly in the Southeastern Conference. It’s about the heightened expectations, not just of fans, but of administrators as well. It wasn’t too long ago that a resume like Tubby Smith’s would protect a coach even at a high-profile basketball school like Kentucky. Stan Heath’s second straight NCAA appearance would have warded off the axe at Arkansas. That’s not the case any more.

Schools -- and it is particularly true of those schools that are accustomed to athletic success -- just aren’t as patient any more.

The fact is that Alabama isn’t some radical fringe outpost because it didn’t give Mike Shula one more year. The decision, after careful consideration, was made based on a number of factors and won-lost record was not the decisive one. It was the same decision that North Carolina made about Doherty, and Arkansas made about Heath. The people running the program felt that the direction of the program needed to be changed.

That’s not radical thinking any more -- it’s becoming mainstream. More and more schools are thinking that way and, more saliently, acting that way. Maybe that’s a good thing for college athletics and maybe it’s not; that’s a different debate for a different day. But to continue to use Alabama as some sort of illustration for impatience when no one else has very much patience either doesn’t seem particularly cogent.

Cecil Hurt is sports editor of the Tuscaloosa News. Reach him at cecil.hurt@tuscaloosanews.com or at 205-722-0225