It’s entirely plausible that Miami will win 28 or 29 games this year and not make the NCAA tournament. Even if you believe Travis Steele is willing to work for free, he probably also wants the opportunity as a coach not only to make the tournament but make some noise there. Literally any major conference job is going to provide more access to NIL, assistant coaches’ salaries, and multiple tournament bids.
Alex is pounding on all of us to donate more to Miami not just to increase the chances that this staff will stick around but also to make it a better job when we need to hire the next coach and maintain continuity. We’ve done it before in football and basketball, but it’s harder and more expensive now
I’m personally much more worried by jobs like Dayton, Butler and SLU than major conference jobs.
He’s a Butler alum and Dayton is in the region. Both jobs very well could open up.
Regardless of money, Steele is still relatively young, ambitious, and super competitive. If the right opportunity comes by, he will take it. That’s life in the MAC.
I do think his personal circumstances mean he’s also happy if Miami is the right job right now for him until that ideal circumstance comes.
When I was young the Old Bobcat used to tell people I was the kind of kid who could get a bag of shit under the Christmas tree and run to the window lookin’ for the pony. I’m still that guy. And I will be rooting hard for the magic to continue. But I was also a halfway decent math student, so I have a rough sense of the probabilities here.
I could be wrong on any or all accounts, but my understanding is that his in-laws wealth comes from owning a billion dollar company, and his wife makes a lot of money as one of the top level employees of said company. And she is unwilling to quit her job with the family business. In that scenario, his family, not his in-laws only, have considerable wealth. And also for him to take any job away from the Cincinnati area would require him being separated from his family consistently.
I have said it before but the one job that would surprise me is UC. For every other possible job opening their fan base would view Mr. Steele as the coach who resuscitated a struggling program and brought them to the top 25. UC boosters will think of him as the guy who struggled at Xavier. I think the UC AD would have a harder job selling his boosters than anyone else that Mr. Steele is the right guy
I’m a poet/degenerate. The long odds are more fun. That’s why people play the lottery. Someone always wins. Coach Steele is our lotto ticket. Might as well go for the win.
Butler yes, but I’m not worried at all about jobs like Dayton or St Louis.
George Mason is currently 20-2, but most projections have them outside the tournament. St Louis is 21-1 (with the one loss coming on a flukey buzzer beater) and they’re barely ranked with projections putting them in the ~7-9 seed range. The A-10 is basically a one bid league at this point, just with tougher competition.
If he were to take one of those jobs, he’d be throwing away all the work he’s done to build momentum and job security (and local ties in the case of SLU). He’d be taking a more difficult job that provides minimal competitive advantage. You can get paid more in a job like that, but that’s irrelevant for Steele.
The jobs to be most worried about would be Butler and Cincinnati (if there’s not too much baggage there). He could also theoretically take some random power conference job if he’s desperate to get back to that level, but I can’t imagine him leaving for anything outside of one of those conferences.
JMO, but I find the discussion of the in-law’s wealth kind of unseemly. Travis is 22-0, it’s not like he had to have his in-laws buy him a coaching job. If they want to donate to the cause, no one can stop them, but Travis seems like a guy who has earned his own way.
Not really beneficial to be speculating in such a way. Unless one has communicated directly with Steele, I don’t think anyone knows what he’s thinking.
I don’t think the reference to the family wealth was meant to degrade Travis or his coaching ability. It was more to argue that he presumably wouldn’t just jump at any power conference job for the massive pay raise alone.