CBS: How do coaches return home after pursuing 'better' jobs? Mason quoted/mentioned

BleedGopher

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per CBS:

Power Five-to-Power Five job switches are somewhat rare. They usually follow this pattern: 1) It's home -- see Willie Taggart moving from Oregon to Florida State; 2) It's clearly a better job -- Mullen going from Mississippi State to Florida; 3) A coach/school needs a reset -- Fisher leaving a successful run at Florida State to start over at Texas A&M.

"You can't keep playing Russian roulette with coaches," said former college coach Glen Mason, now a Big Ten Network analyst. "You can't keep buying hope. There are only two things in sports -- results and hopes. When they don't get the results they want, they have hope."

Mason should know. He remains the ultimate Walk Back Coach. Toward the end of the best season of his career -- 10-2 at Kansas in 1995 -- he took the Georgia job.

Made sense, right? You don't have to be told that KU is a bit of a black hole in football. Except a funny thing happened on the way to Athens, Georgia.

Mason changed his mind.

The night before a Hawaii Bowl win over UCLA, Mason decided the grass was greener in Lawrence, Kansas.

"It was obviously quite unusual," Mason said. "… Even then, people in the profession said, 'You did what?!' Georgia's always been one of those jobs that was regarded as a top 10 job. If not that, really close.'"

Mason took stock of his personal life. He was divorced and raising his two children as a single parent. Kansas, a program he had hoisted from the bottom of college football, remained the best place to be.

Then, there was the reaction by his players, coaches and bosses the night before that bowl game.

"When I made the announcement, the players gave me a standing ovation," Mason said. "I thought, 'Wow.' I had talked to [former chancellor] Bob Hemenway. He gave me a big hug.

"Then we destroyed UCLA, so all was good."

The feel-good atmosphere lasted less than a year. Mason went 4-7 in 1996, then split for Minnesota.

But for a coach who was allowed to come back from turning down Georgia, "it was a head scratcher at the time," recalled Mason

It remains a reference point for any coach who has to walk back to the campus he tried to leave.

https://www.cbssports.com/college-f...aches-return-home-after-pursuing-better-jobs/

Go Gophers!!
 




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