Alan Cotler | Is Penn rearranging chairs on the Titanic?

It is just an expression, but by replacing Steve Donahue with Fran McCaffrey as head basketball coach, is Penn just rearranging the chairs on a sinking ship?

Steve Donahue is one of the most capable basketball coaches in Division 1. He understands the mechanics of the game as well as anyone — especially how to create effective offensive systems in the style of the European game. Passing, motion, court balance, and seeing the whole court with creativity, Donahue is a quality person who authentically connects with his players and teaches them what it means not only to be a quality player on the court, but off it as well.

And yet, he and his staff failed to win the way Penn should win given its history of success, its vastly superior basketball arena, and the love for the sport and exposure in Philadelphia. It is too painful to put the numbers on paper, but the win-loss record and inability to beat the Princeton Tigers for too many years is res ipsa loquitur (look it up). Why did he fail?

This past year, when playing legitimate Division I basketball programs, other Big 5 schools, and even the very weak Ivy League itself, I never saw Penn play a team where they had more player talent on the court than their opponent. Coach Donahue extracted 150% out of his players, and they played their guts out for him, usually for the full 40 minutes. They simply did not have as much talent as their opponents. The talent difference was especially evident when it came to the Big 5. Penn did not have sufficient numbers, if any, of a powerful presence inside offensively, and, most importantly, defensively. No one could protect the rim and block shots. No matter how good the coaching, a coach cannot consistently win when he has less talented athletes than his opponent. Why was that happening here?

First, you would have to say that Donahue and his staff were out-recruited even within the Ivy League. That should never happen when we have the 9,000-seat Palestra, Philadelphia media exposure, and Big 5 basketball. But it did.

Second, and this is where the future will lie for new coach Fran McCaffrey, with pay-for-play now dominating college athletics, there is virtually no way an Ivy League team can compete in major sports outside the Ivy League itself. The top-flight basketball players are commanding $1-2 million per year, and even more from the schools that can afford it. Alumni and various groups (and who knows if the schools themselves are contributing) are putting together buckets of millions of dollars for recruiting high school kids and transfers. With revenue sharing about to happen from television, radio, ticket sales, and the like, the fair market value of these athletes will only increase over time.

In the face of this unrelenting tsunami of college athletes realizing their fair market value, the Ivy League will not even discuss or allow these kids to get scholarships, let alone pay-for-play. On paper, the Ivy League claims to support legitimate, authentically earned, name, image, and likeness money. But unless you are a superstar, the vast majority of these athletes have a name, image, and likeness fair market value of close to zero.

Coach Donahue lost his top scorers Jordan Dingle, Tyler Perkins, and Clark Slajchert to the money offered by St. John’s, Villanova, and the University of Southern California, and to restrictive Ivy League rules that prohibit play as a graduate student. While Donahue points to these losses as his own losses as a coach, one has to recognize that Princeton, Yale, Brown, and others within the Ivy League have similarly lost their best players who left for full scholarships, pay-for-play money, and superior athletic competition, and those Ivy League schools kept beating Penn.

Back to Coach McCaffrey. He is used to pay-for-play since being at Iowa and being in the “big time.” At the age of 65, he comes home to roost in Philadelphia where he grew up and played at his alma mater. He will come face-to-face with the reality of the above. He has two players who have the potential to contribute to other Division I teams who play at a much higher level of athletic competition — Ethan Roberts, who has already been to West Point and Drake and made some dough, and sharpshooting 6’3” Sam Brown. Roberts announced on Apr. 7 that he is staying at Penn after certain “logistics” were agreed to. McCaffrey will have to convince Brown to turn down massive sums of money to stay at Penn and earn that lifelong cherished Ivy League degree. Brown has to evaluate those offers from the likes of Davidson, Notre Dame, Stanford, Virginia, Michigan, and similar high academic venues. Can he duplicate his success against Ivy League teams in the big time, the show? History suggests not. Danny Wolf, the previous best player at Yale, went to Michigan last year, and he has been the most successful Ivy player to transfer. The vast majority do not have the same success outside the Ivy League that they had inside for obvious reasons. A handful of Ivy League players have contributed to other teams in far less significant ways than they did for their Ivy League team. But then there is the money.

So, does changing the coach really change anything? When the eight Ivy League schools refuse to join the rest of Division I on scholarships and pay-for-play, can any coach make an Ivy League basketball team competitive with the top 50 to 100 programs? Or even 200? The best guess is that with respect to competing on a national level within Division I, the Penn and Ivy League ship is already just a few yards away from sinking to the bottom. The schools have decided to man their boats in their own pool of a lesser form of athletic competition. Penn will be satisfied if Coach McCaffrey can at least beat Princeton once in a while and be one of the top four teams that play in the Ivy playoffs. Certainly, a goal coach McCaffrey can realize.

ALAN COTLER is a 1972 Wharton graduate, 1974 Wharton MBA graduate, and former Wharton Business Law Professor. He was the point guard on the Penn Basketball team that went 25-3, was ranked third in the nation, and reached the Elite Eight. His class’ four-year record was 99-6. Cotler is a Philadelphia trial lawyer. His email is alancotler@gmail.com.

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