Next Stop

TigerBlog can speak for, presumably, a great number of listeners of WFAN sports radio in New York City when he says the following three things:

First, he can say that he can't stand Mike Francesa, who is nothing but a gigantic ego maniac who knows about 20 percent of what he thinks he knows.

Second, he used to listen to Francesa a lot.

Third, he never once has listened to the show that replaced him after Francesa retired.

There. That about sums up why Francesa is coming back to WFAN.

Even if you're not from the New York area, you're probably familiar with Mike Francesa and Christopher Russo. They were "Mike and Mad Dog," and they were the ones who started sports talk - radio and TV, and ultimately social media - down the path it has gone.

Francesa is all the things that TigerBlog said he is. He's also the best who ever did sports talk, or at least he and Russo are.

Without him, rating went down on WFAN. TigerBlog certainly doesn't listen anymore. He'd rather sing show tunes as he leaves work.

The big news earlier this week was that Francesa was coming back to save WFAN. Apparently, from what TB read, Francesa's ego has taken over, he made a big power grab, he didn't care about the three people who replaced him, blah, blah, blah.

The bottom line, though, is that if Francesa is back on in the afternoon, TigerBlog will probably listen again. So will, he presumes, much of the audience WFAN lost when Francesa left.

Someone that TigerBlog knows listened to "Mike and the Mad Dog" was Joe Scott, who himself would be really good at doing sports talk radio, now that TigerBlog thinks about it. Scott actually would be a natural at it.

Instead, Scott is a basketball coach. His career has been the kind that coaches often have, with a lot of stops along the way.

Scott played for Pete Carril at Princeton before graduating in 1987. He then went to law school before starting down the path of his coaching career. In fact, according to a story that TigerBlog just read, Scott has been in the coaching profession for 27 years.

Carril spent 29 years as the head coach at Princeton. In his 27 years as a coach, Scott has gone from:
Monmouth to Princeton to Air Force (head coach) to Princeton (head coach) to Denver (head coach) to Holy Cross and now to his latest stop, Georgia, where he was just hired as an assistant coach.

Scott's most recent position, at Holy Cross, was under former Princeton head coach Bill Carmody. Now he moves on to the Southeastern Conference with, TB presumes, the hopes of getting a head coaching job again.

Joe Scott is one of TigerBlog's favorite people. He's a driven, competitive guy, but he also has depth to him that very few people TB has met can match. He's a very deep thinker, and he's extremely loyal. And he's hilarious.

Coaching isn't the easiest profession. Scott has been lucky actually, since so many other coaches spend a year here, two years there, another year someplace else, and never get to be a head coach.

Carril could have left Princeton during his nearly 30 years here. He chose not to, and it's part of what his legend is. TigerBlog has often said that he's not willing to concede that John Wooden was a better college coach than Pete Carril, and he'd love to somehow know what Princeton basketball would have looked like had Wooden been its coach for those 29 years.

Instead, Carril stayed loyal to Princeton, where he coached players who benefited from the way Carril ran his program - tough, no BS, everything earned.

Would Carril have stayed for 29 years if he got here today?

It's been 22 years since Carril retired from Princeton. That alone is sort of whacky.

Since then, Princeton has had Bill Carmody, John Thompson, Joe Scott, Sydney Johnson and now Mitch Henderson as its head men's basketball coach. Each time they were hired, TB thought they'd be here as long as Carril. He still thinks there's a chance Henderson will be.

The first four, though, all left to become head coaches someplace else. It's just how it works, TB supposes.

If you're looking for someone who could be Carril-like, it might be Courtney Banghart. She's already been here 11 seasons, and she's built a program that has won six Ivy titles and played in seven NCAA tournaments and two WNITs. Carril, if you forgot, won 13 Ivy titles and played in 11 NCAAs and two NITs (winning it in 1975).

Banghart is starting to get in the neighborhood of those numbers.

At the same time, it's a lot to imagine a coach who stays at the same place for nearly 30 years. Who knows? In another 19 years, it wouldn't really shock TB if Banghart is still here. Then again, it also wouldn't shock him if she was a United States Senator.

In the meantime, Joe Scott is off to another stop along his road.

And TigerBlog can now add Georgia to the list of teams he'll be rooting hard for come next basketball season.