North Carolina Tar Heels: Larry Brown resigns at SMU
Former North Carolina Tar Heels player Larry Brown resigned as the head basketball coach at SMU yesterday.
Yesterday saw a normal event in the life of former North Carolina Tar Heels player Larry Brown. Brown resigned from his post as the head coach of Southern Methodist University. Brown spent four years at the school. The last two years were pretty good for the school if you forget that the team was on a postseason ban last year.
This is Brown’s modus operandi. He comes to a place that needs a resurgence in its basketball. He achieves it but eventually wears out his welcome at the place and moves on to the next job. If it is a collegiate job the NCAA usually comes calling around that time as well. Just ask UCLA, Kansas, and SMU.
Brown reportedly pushed for a five year extension from the school. They hesitated as Brown is 75 years old and just put them on NCAA postseason probation. The school had to be realistic, and I’m sure they did not want to jeopardize a potential move to the Big 12 if that conference was to ever take up expansion again. So they turned him down and he decided to walk out the door.
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So the Brown saga continues. He will probably try to seek another job somewhere. Somebody will no doubt bring in him too, because someone always does. He returned the Spurs, Clippers (temporarily), and Pacers to relevance. He took the 76ers to the finals and the Pistons to the title. Kansas still has a 1988 NCAA Championship banner. His former players swear by him.
Still he cannot remain in one place for too long. As SMU has discovered, he is less interested in the NCAA’s rules than he is in winning basketball games. They got an infusion of talent, but also that postseason ban. Similar things could be said of his time at UCLA and Kansas.
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The interesting light on this is that Brown had a heavy interest in becoming the coach at Chapel Hill. He was never seriously considered either time the job came open. Given the problems the school has been dealing with lately, it is probably a good thing that Brown never came back. Additional NCAA scandal might have caused more damage, and there is a good chance that Brown would have had just that.