Gap said:
I disagree. You just have to do a lot of work vetting them and fully understand if they have what it takes to succeed.
Kirby Smart is the prime example today.
I agree more with this than with "never hire assistants", but even with the best vetting it is impossible to know fully how much an assistant really had to do with building a program and more importantly, even if they were a huge part of building it, whether they have what it takes to keep doing whatever it was (coaching, recruiting, relationships etc.) at the same level
while running their own program.
At a place like A&M where we have the best resources and the highest salaries, there is no need to hire an assistant when there are proven HC that will come running. The reason this was a terrible hire is because there were so many proven head coaches out there making half of what we are paying and the admin let themselves be not only be talked into the hot assistant du jour, but into paying her as if she had already won big as a HC.
Look no further than Aggie football to see that even hiring a proven HC is no guarantee, but football is a different animal, where every school is trying their hardest and spending the most they can. Even though volleyball is a lot more competitive than it used to be, we are still in a position where we are paying and spending double even what many other P5s are and we can probably go moneywhip a sitting top-25 HC into coming here. In that scenario, the odds of success are a lot higher than hiring an assistant coach.
I truly don't care about the money. It's chump change compared to what A&M has and what A&M can spend. It's just the principle of it. Kansas was very good, but they made one final four, but beyond that their results weren't any better than the peak Corbelli years...so it's not like we hired the Kirby Smart of volleyball. More like the Jake Spavital.
