« Robinson to Oregon State | Main | Projo SoxTalk with McAdam: Opening day at Fenway »

April 7, 2008

Robinson heading cross-country, not cross-town

Brown basketball coach -- oops, make that former Brown basketball coach -- Craig Robinson and I were sittinng in his office a couple of weeks ago talking about the just completed Brown season. He was relaxed, as he should have been after his team had won 19 games, a school record, and finished second in the Ivy League with an impressive 11-3 record. Better yet, his team had closed the regular season by winning 10 of its last 11 games and had two first-team All-Ivy players in Mark McAndrew of Barrington and Damon Huffman of Petoskey, Mich.

He told me how much he enjoyed coaching this team, how the players were smart and motivated, how they had bought into his system, played hard, and finally come to believe when they took the court that they could win. He mentioned how much he liked Brown and Providence and that if the university made some kind of commitment to him -- he was thinking of the cost of putting his son Avery and daughter Leslie through a college like Brown -- he could see himself coaching here for a while.

Life was good.

I asked if he would be interested in the Providence College job if Bob Driscoll, the athletics director, called. He said sure and went on about the allure of big-time basketball, playing in big arenas before big crowds, playing so many televised games, matching wits with Big East coaches. He also talked about recruiting kids for a program like PC's, one in which academics are important but the criteria are less stringent than the Ivy League's. He said he would relish the opportunity to sit in a living room and convince a young man and his parents that it's possible to come from a modest urban background and succeed in the world of sports and the world of business. He would savor the chance to teach young men how to become Craig Robinson, if they chose to listen and to work hard. He never had to do that at Brown, he said, because Brown kids are already motivated. They already know what they have to do to get a job in investment banking or get admitted to Harvard Law.

And PC would be attractive because he wouldn't have to move his family. He's just have to move his Xs and Os across town.

I thought of all this today, when I heard that he was heading to Corvallis to take the Oregon State job. I thought of his following his predecessor Glen Miller's footsteps to a better opportunity, footsteps that are taking Craig Robinson now not cross-town but cross-country.

Posted by Mike Szostak  at 10:01 PM to College Sports | Permalink

Comments

Post a comment

Please be civil. Vicious comments, personal attacks and profanity won't be published.

Name:

Email Address:

URL:
Remember Me? YesNo

Comments: (you may use HTML tags for style)