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Hoya Paranoia No Excuse for Esherick's Treatment
Now in his fourth year as head coach of the men’s basketball team, it’s apparent that John Thompson III and the Georgetown Hoyas have performed quite a feat. After several years of almosts and maybes, Georgetown’s basketball team is once again counted among the great programs in the country. The sense of pride and community that JTIII and the basketball team have given to Georgetown will be remembered for many years.
And yet, one thing stands in the way of Georgetown Basketball’s proper return to glory — a spot of tarnish on the program’s gleaming history. Maybe it was an inadvertent mistake, and it may be unpopular to bring up, but it’s about time that Georgetown apologizes to former Head Coach Craig Esherick (B ’78, L ’82) for the way we treated him.
An alumnus of the business school and Law Center, Esherick was one of Coach John Thompson Jr.’s first recruits and a four-year contributor for the Hoyas from 1974 to 1978. During his first season on the squad, the Hoyas returned to the NCAA tournament for the first time in 32 years — an effort that his team repeated the following season. Esherick attended the Georgetown Law Center and later joined Thompson’s coaching staff, which led Georgetown to its only national championship in 1984.
Coach Esherick took over as the Georgetown men’s basketball coach in the middle of the 1998-99 season. As the elder Thompson’s long-time assistant and hand-picked successor, Esherick had modest success. In 2001, the Hoyas appeared in the NCAA Sweet 16 for the first time since 1996, but the next three years featured only one postseason appearance — as the runner-up in the 2003 NIT championship game. After the conclusion of the 2004 season, bitter and outspoken alumni and fans wanted change. And many called for Esherick’s head.
But University President John J. DeGioia publicly supported Esherick and refuted demands for a new head basketball coach.
In a statement in March of 2004, DeGioia said, “I believe that this season’s men’s basketball team, and our new class of recruits,” by which he was referring to future players Jeff Green and Roy Hibbert, among others, “hold a great deal of promise. I have confidence that Craig Esherick, who helped to build our tradition of excellence, is the right person to strengthen and lead our program.”
A few days later, following a similar endorsement from athletic director Joe Lang, Esherick headed out west on a recruiting trip. But almost as soon as he left, alumni threatening to withhold donations bullied DeGioia into changing his mind, and the president fired Esherick a few days later.
He then tapped Thompson Jr.’s son, Princeton head coach John Thompson III, as the Hoyas’ next leader, and the current chapter in the story of Georgetown basketball began. Esherick’s recruits re-signed with the new Coach Thompson, who led the team to an appearance in the NCAA Final Four last year.
The end of Esherick’s coaching career may have been inevitable. We’ll never really know. But the period surrounding his termination was certainly a time during which the character of Georgetown faltered: The administration seemed to have lied to an alumnus and dedicated leader. After 30 years as a player and coach, Esherick fell victim to the whims of an impassioned mob, a president who succumbed to its demands and the fetters that bind Georgetown’s decision-makers to the selfish wallets of rich alumni rather than their own convictions.
Esherick was more than an employee. And the event raised an important question: If a long-time servant and alumnus could be so easily denounced and destroyed by fellow alumni, what, for the rest of us, is the incentive to serve our school? After all, Esherick did a lot more work for Georgetown than many of the rest of us will, and many students and alumni are comfortable with the way he was treated.
Like Esherick, DeGioia is also a twice-alumnus of Georgetown and has spent three decades as a member of the Georgetown community. Were DeGioia’s short presidency to end in the near future, it would be silly to trample his legacy with suggestions that he somehow engineered increases in D.C. crime or intolerance between students of different ethnic backgrounds. Nor would we judge DeGioia’s presidency by comparing it to those of John Carroll or Patrick or Timothy Healy, whose successes took place during very different periods, and with very different challenges. We would thank him for his efforts, probably name a building after him, and see to it that he was remembered affectionately.
If only a similar treatment had been provided to Coach Esherick.
Very few Hoyas might have regretted a decision by DeGioia to ask a venerable and dedicated alumnus to step aside for the betterment of the school. It’s quite common for former coaches to move on from official coaching positions while remaining integral contributors to a program’s success. In 2005, Thompson Jr. remained on salary at Georgetown, and was still one of the school’s five highest-paid employees. Such a request would have allowed Esherick to be remembered for the contributions that he made as opposed to the sloppy and uncomfortable manner in which his life at Georgetown was expunged.
Instead, a damnatio memoriae of sorts has surrounded the legacy of Esherick. His innumerable contributions are obscured by a bizarre notion that he was some villainous athletic saboteur, hell-bent on ruining a storied program — a program that he helped create.
No reasonable Hoya regrets the addition of John Thompson III to the Georgetown community. His record as a coach speaks for itself, and he is extremely popular among students for his strong leadership and positive demeanor on and off the court. JTIII inspires students with his infectious sense of pride in all things Georgetown.
Esherick might not have been the right man for the coaching position at Georgetown, but the manner in which his replacement took place was a negative experience for the school that has long been ignored. Georgetown has more class than that.
Hoya Saxa, Coach Esherick. Thanks for your time at Georgetown, and I, for one, am sorry.
D. Pierce Nixon is a senior in the College and contributing editor for THE HOYA. He can be reached at nixon@thehoya.com. DAYS ON THE HILLTOP appears every other Tuesday.
Excellent article- I agree completely.
You're a senior now. You weren't even here for Esherick. Sorry, but the man's behavior was what got him fired. Arrogance, poor relationships with players. You have no idea what it was like going to games towards the end. Showing up at halftime and being able to get a front row seat, having most of the team transfer, losing to Seton Hall's 6 players, losing to St. John's walkons, seeing those gaps in the banners at McDonough - those are things not experienced by the class of 2008. So next time, do a little research and interviewing before you judge. Yes, there may have been some bitterness on the behalf of the students, alums and administration but in the end, Esherick wrote his own ticket out of here. Last I looked, the decision to fire him begins and ends with DeGioia. Whatever may have been said and done by others may have influenced it but Jack was the one who pulled the plug.
Most schools don't get all buddy-buddy with someone that they fired, alum or not. Most companies don't keep in touch with a fired employee. I don't see why this should be any different. I don't see Kelvin Sampson going to barbecues next year in Bloomington. Peace can and will be made, but frankly, it's still far too sensitive a subject.
As a recent alumnus, what stands out most about Esherick is this: he coached the team to four consecutive finishes without an NCAA bid. On top of that, he stood beside the the former Athletic Director in asserting that being one of the top 65 teams to make the NCAA Tournament was "an unrealistic expectation." This is from a guy who inherited a program that made 24-consecutive postseason appearances, including 19 bids to the NCAA Tourney.
Following a 6-10 conference mark in 2002-03, Esherick was given a contract extension that ran through the 2008-09 season. In other words, Esherick has already been 'accepting our apologies' for the past four years by cashing our tuition checks - and will continue to do so next year, while watching JT3 coach the team to what is bound to be yet-another 'unrealistic' NCAA Tourney bid.
Esherick coached the 2003-04 team to a 4-12 record in the Big East and ended the season with a nine game losing streak. Repeat: nine game losing streak and 4-12 record in the Big East.
Given all of that, Esherick's attempt at damage control on March 5, 2004, in the face of (what any normal person would characterize as 'well-deserved') criticism, was: "I ain't going anywhere -- I may be here for another 30 years."
He ran the program into the ground, players transferred, assistant coaches quit, and he taunted the University Community. And on top of that, he's still being paid.
In light of all that, this article is almost surreal.
Georgetown University deserves an apology from Esherick, not the other way around.
If Esherick hadn't thumbed his nose at the community with his "30 Years" comment, he'd probably still be coaching today. Graduating from Georgetown doesn't give you an entitlement to work there.
In January 2004, a dark time for Hoyas fans, Bill Reynolds from the Providence Journal wrote an article titled: These Hoyas are merely a parody of former selves. I encourage young Mr. Nixon to google that ad read it. The column ended: "What's a Hoya? An opponent, nothing more. And not a very good one, at that."
Nixon says that DeGioia firing Esherick days after he and Lang publically gave him "votes of conifidence" constitutes lying and poor treatment. I think he needs to understand a couple of things. First, those public comments were made while the Hoyas were still playing and were probably designed to remind the players (and recruits) that the school was behind them. Second, a public vote of confidence from your boss usually means you are on the very precipice of losing your job.
It is misplaced to say that "rich alumni" somehow bullied President DeGioia into firing Esherick. If anything, it was Esherick's sense of entitlement (the "30 years" comment) and lack of sportsmanship that made alums (rich or not) despise him as the coach of the team. It was an embarrassing slap in the face when Esherick declined an invitation to the 2002 NIT tournament - he should have been fired then. It is no example of sportsmanship to take your ball and go home when you don't make it into a post-season tournament because you can't close out games. Frankly, good riddance.
ah, the arrogance of youth......
you seemingly know so much about this for someone who wasn't here when it all went down. oh, right, but you asked upperclassmen. sounds thorough enough.
you conveniently omitted remarks and actions by Esherick himself that brought along his own demise. i guess you didn't want to let the facts get in the way of your argument.
this is a hack piece by a hack 'journalist' who is just trying to stir up controversy. move along, junior.
D. Pierce Nixon's comments about Craig Esherick are a good start to GU's entire community coming to understand and publicly correct one of its darkest days, its treatment of Craig Esherick. We won't know if Craig would have led his recruits, Jeff Green and Roy Hibbert, to the Final Four they made last year. But, GU's mistake enabled me to recruit Craig to teach at NYU in our master's of sports business program where he is winning every time he steps in front of a class.
If Craig decides to coach again, and I don't want to lose him, GU may truly come to regret its treatment of him, because Craig perfectly fits the current profile of the most successful head coaches out there in all sports: reasonably successful coaches fired with near or better than .500 records. This group after having time to reflect seems to never look back. The names of the coaches in this group: including the three most recent Super Bowl winners Tom Coughlin, Tony Dungy and Bill Belichick; throw Pete Carroll and Joe Torre into the club for good measure. The NFL had six head coaches this past year who had been fired by a prior team and five of the six (Belichick, Coughlin, Dungy, Wade Phillips and Norv Turner) made the the playoffs and the entire group compiled an incredible .740 winning percentage.
So I commend Mr. Nixon for his insight and hope GU acknowledges its poor treatment of both a good man and coach. As someone who was fortunate enough to have hired Craig Esherick, I will join GU fans in hoping that no Big East athletic directors are reading this.
Professor Robert Boland, Esq.
New York University Preston Robert Tisch Center for Sports Management
Professor,
Unlike the NFL and MLB, .500 winning percentages are not considered good in NCAA basketball. Beyond that, the only way Georgetown achieved .500 records under Esherick was by loading their non-conference schedule with laughable opponents like Elon, Bethune-Cookman, Coastal Carolina, Norfolk State, and the Citadel. Esherick's record against ranked teams was 6-25 (.194), and his Big East record of 41-57 (.418) is not deserving of your Joe Torre, Tony Dungy and Bill Belichick comparisons.
Beyond that, his antagonistic comments to the Georgetown University Community in light of horrendous job performance was outrageous, egregious and utterly indefensible. For a man that devoid of civility to be on the current faculty of a leading educational institution is incomprehensible.
The impassioned nature of this article is way off base...
One of THE BIGGEST mistakes you can make in sports (or business, politics, etc. for that matter) is rewarding failure or mediocrity simply due to a perception of 'loyalty'
I would much rather have the Hoyas disrespect (though they didn't) Esherick a bit and be a powerhouse once again than be 'loyal' to him and continuing to toil in the cellar of the Big East
Replacing him saved our program. Hoya Saxa
I remember a lot of the games between '99-'04 being super close. It seemed like those teams could seldom finish a game like that successfully (an '02 road game against the Irish ended in a double overtime loss because we casually allowed the shot clock to expire). Comparing that with the remarkable steadiness of the current team illustrates (I think) what it means to be an effective coach.
I also recall showing up to MCI Center and being able to collect about 100 free t-shirts from the empty student section. I was most disappointed with Esherick when he declined the NIT invitation in 2002. College coaching gigs are performance based, who isn't grateful that Coach Thompson is here?
Nixon didn't say he's ungraeful for Thompson. He was pretty clear about that -- maybe you should read a little better.
Nixon's argument is just plain silly because it's four years too late. No one cares about this anymore. It's a moot point, so he should move on.
Professor Boland,
One thing John Thompson Jr. did not do was prepare his assistant coaches for head coaching positions. How many times was Esherick approached while Thompson's lead assistant? How many times did the rumor mill spit out his name when there were big-time coaching vacancies? He got the Georgetown job because Thompson quit mid-season and forced Georgetown to name Esherick. How many times have you heard his name mentioned in coaching searches since he left Georgetown? If you answered "none" to all these questions, that's all you need to know.
I'll just assume Mr. Nixon is simply trying to stir the pot and illcit a reaction from readers. That said, it is absolutely ridiculous to argue that simply because he was a "loyal" servant that he not be put under the same scrutiny that ALL MAJOR Division One colleges coaches are put under. Unfortunately, the basketball coaching profession is not a tenured position. At a major college basketball programs, such as Georgetown's, coaches are not given much slack. In fact, one could argue that, BECAUSE of Esherick's "loyalty", he was given the time he was given. Other programs would have probably ousted him much sooner.
Let's just say that paying Esherick whatever we are paying him to NOT coach our team is money well spent. Esherick had his shot. He failed. Let's just say there is a reason that Georgetown is now winning close games. It's because a certain someone is now teaching at NYU rather than walking up and down our sideline.
The following should be a nominee for hyperbole of the decade: "Tom Coughlin, Tony Dungy, Bill Belichick, Pete Carroll, Joe Torre, Craig Esherick." I hope you didn't keep a straight face while writing this, Professor, because I'm sure nobody did while reading it.
The breakdown of Esherick's losses are nauseating: .194 winning percentage against ranked teams; 4-12 in the Big East, nine game losing streak to close the 2003-04 season. But the warped logic of your "near-500" argument is just sad. Esherick's coaching performance was dismal. He wouldn't bother calling time-outs in the final minute of close games to design plays, and the team invariably faltered. His players (e.g. Matt Causey, Drew Hall, Tony Bethel) lost all confidence. On top of that, his personal behavior was highly-regrettable (hanging NIT banner above urinals; rants about officials; a view that making the NCAA tournament was an unrealistic expectation, etc.)
Contrast that with the dignity, intelligence, professionalism and track record of high-achievement of the John Thompson, Jr. and JT3 eras. Now we drop a game on the road to Syracuse and people get concerned. Before, we lose nine in a row to the likes of Seton Hall and St. John’s, and Esherick responds to an increasingly apathetic and callous fan base that he "ain't goin' nowhere" and "may be here another 30 years."
This Hoya fan, for one, hopes that Esherick and his negative attitude stay at NYU for another 30 years... where he will be safely outside the purview of our once-again great basketball program.
I thought Jeff Green with Jon Wallace and Coach Thompson from Princeton...
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