As I've said before, I think it all comes down to the contract.
One thing to remember is that college coaching contracts really aren't the same thing as professional athletes' contracts. For pro athletes, if a guy has a 5-year contract, he's going to be playing for five years. People think college coaching contracts work the same way, but most of the time they don't. College coaches are always switching jobs, getting fired, or retiring, regardless of the number of years left on their contract. Just one example ... Nick Saban had 6 years left on his contract when he retired at Alabama -- he walked away from more than $70 million by retiring when he did. But that's the way it works with college coaching contracts. They are more about a school's symbolic commitment to a coach (or a coach's symbolic committment to a school), rather than an actual measurement of how long you expect the individual to keep coaching.
The other big factor that affects college coaching contracts is recruiting. Generally speaking, you want your coaches to be able to walk into a recruit's living room and be able to give them some assurance that they will still be the coach for the entirety of the prospect's college career. So the rule of thumb is that you always want your coach to be under contract for at least 4-5 years from the present date.
So, back to Fran. Right now, he is under contract through the 2027-28 season. That's only three more seasons. And that's a problem for recruiting. 2025 recruiting is basically wrapped up at this point, so the class we are mostly looking at is the Class of 2026. Right now, for those prospects, Fran can only guarantee that he will be at Iowa through their sophomore year. Sure, for the 5-star kids, who have early NBA aspirations, that might not matter. But for a lot of other kids -- including most of the kids who are likely recruits for Iowa -- it matters a lot. But we're not just recruiting '26 kids right now. We are also building foundational relationships with '27 and '28 kids. For those prospects, Fran's short contract is even a bigger problem.
So, in reality, it's time to start talking contract extension for Fran McCaffery. Of course, we all know that's not going to happen. For starters, wide swaths of the fan base want him fired immediately for lack of success on the court. For another, Fran will be nearly 70 when his current contract expires, and not a lot of guys want to keep working at that age.
So, if we know we're not going to extend Fran McCaffery beyond 2028 -- and I think we can all agree on that -- he is a lame duck
right now. And this is going to start negatively impacting our recruiting in a major way. I suppose with the way players move around in the portal these days, it might not as big of a problem as it might have been 10-15 years ago, but it's still a problem.
Against all of this, there are other intangibles, such as:
- Fran's potential desire to watch Jack play
- Beth's need, as a new AD, to demonstrate her willingness to make tough decisions
- Revenue sharing coming online, creating an opportunity to make a splash in recruiting
- A desperate need to boost attendance and increase MBB revenue
It just makes all the sense in the world to turn the page after this season. I don't hate Fran nearly as much as a lot of other folks, and I've never before called for a coach to be fired (not even Lickliter, though I was ultimately happy we did). Fran McCaffery has done many good things for the Hawkeye basketball program, and I'd prefer not to just drop him on the curb. Ideally, I would hope that the university and Fran could negotiate a mutual parting of ways, even if it means giving Fran a portion or the entirety of his buyout to make it happen.
But the time is right to make a change. Not doing so puts the program at risk. It's time to start breathing new excitement into the MBB program, and you can't do it without finding a new coach.
