Ex-Iowa coach Fran McCaffery, wife accused of trying to get longtime radio voice fired in brutal allegations

hbkmyr

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Dec 29, 2009
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Seems like everyone is right:


According to this Newark Star-Ledger story detailing Seton Hall's search for a new men's basketball coach, the school bypassed Fran McCaffery in 2006 in favor of Bobby Gonzalez.
Four years later, Seton Hall met with McCaffery about a replacement for the fired Gonzalez. Interest apparently wasn't overwhelming on the coach's side.
 
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HallX2

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Some reputations are earned. SHU dodged a bullet on this one.

We may have wanted him but he didn’t want us. He’s never been accused of man purse theft so I’d say he’s several rungs below Gonzo on the crazy scale but definitely wound tight. If we had hired him and avoided the Gonzo era we would have been better off IMO.
 
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BrklynGrad

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I think McCaffery's first year at Iowa was Willard's first at the Hall. If we showed interest, certainly Iowa was a no-brainer for him. Cooley also showed no interest; waited a year, then left Fairfield for PC. In 2006 when we hired Gonzalez, Mc had just completed one year at Siena. The same tenure there that Orr had. Maybe we were gun shy: too bad. Gonzalez was rumored to be Orr's replacement before the '05-'06 season. Ironically, we opened v. Manhattan that Nov. with a win at CCA. And it is well-documented here that we did Manhattan a huge favor by taking Gonzalez off their hands. They either pulled-the-wool over our eyes or we didn't do a good job vetting him: probably both. We may have decided on him going into Orr's last (NCAA tournament) year with us.
 

NYShoreGuy

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SHU was not interested in McCaffery after Orr. SHU was interested in McCaffrey after Gonzo but he was not so much interested in SHU.
 

NYShoreGuy

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Pat Hobbs, now at Rutgers, was the athletic director at Seton Hall at the time. That school was looking to replace Bobby Gonzalez as its head coach.

“Pat Hobbs was running the search,” McCaffery said. “There are not many people more professional than that guy. He is tremendous, and he’s done a phenomenal job at Rutgers. He treated me and Margaret (McCaffery) with such respect. That is the kind of guy you want to work for. And we were real close on that one.”
 

NYShoreGuy

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Let me ask the thread this...I presume you are highly educated business world people. You are a company...you had a worker from a previously employer that did not work out. You would go back to that previous employer for the next leading candidate chance?
 
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Hall1996

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Some reputations are earned. SHU dodged a bullet on this one.

Tried to hire him 15 years ago to replace Gonzo, accusation just coming out, if we had hired him pretty sure would have been long gone by now, so not sure what we dodged.
 

Halldan

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You dodged the nonsense with his wife and the same with him. He and she are both media disasters. The fact that we hired another coach with major issues doesn't mean he would have been a good hire.

If he and she couldn't handle the Iowa media how would they have handled the spotlight in the metro area? His wife has a well deserved reputation as a miserable person. They were hard passes as far as I was concerned.
 

NYShoreGuy

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You dodged the nonsense with his wife and the same with him. He and she are both media disasters. The fact that we hired another coach with major issues doesn't mean he would have been a good hire.

If he and she couldn't handle the Iowa media how would they have handled the spotlight in the metro area? His wife has a well deserved reputation as a miserable person. They were hard passes as far as I was concerned.
Worse than wife of gregg marshall?
 
Mar 10, 2022
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You dodged the nonsense with his wife and the same with him. He and she are both media disasters. The fact that we hired another coach with major issues doesn't mean he would have been a good hire.

If he and she couldn't handle the Iowa media how would they have handled the spotlight in the metro area? His wife has a well deserved reputation as a miserable person. They were hard passes as far as I was concerned.
I get what you’re saying but zero chance the media at seton hall is as tough as Iowa

That is crazy
 

BrklynGrad

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Was anyone else seriously considered when Gonzalez was hired? I thought he was the heir apparent even before Orr's last season began.
 

dehere23

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I get what you’re saying but zero chance the media at seton hall is as tough as Iowa

That is crazy
It was a different media world during the period Dan is referencing, but yes I tend to agree that it seems the fishbowl would be smaller and more scrutinized in a place like Iowa where professional sports are non-existent and Iowa football/basketball are a big deal.

Now if Fran had gone off a la Mike Rice, where it becomes a national story, that's a different issue and I totally agree with Dan. Would be worse here IMO than out there.

But absent that, I don't see it.
 
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Section112

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McCaffreys wife is nuts. Has been for years. Probably cost him a few opportunities but he’s done well in spite of her and his awful personality. So glad we never hired him. He used us if I recall to get Iowa to believe we were going to hire him.
 

dehere23

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I know someone who played for Greg Marshall. His wife's reputation is obviously known, because I saw it posted in this thread. But he and his family confirmed that as crazy and hard *** as Marshall was, the wife was 1000 times more nutty.
 

NIL BAD

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& he totally embarrassed us in Orr’s last year. Total coaching mismatch.

Regarding the OT, there’s a case to be made that the media still thinks they’re more important than they actually are in todays current environment.
 

Seton75

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& he totally embarrassed us in Orr’s last year. Total coaching mismatch.

Regarding the OT, there’s a case to be made that the media still thinks they’re more important than they actually are in todays current environment.
Who embarassed us?
 

TommyD82

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Let me ask the thread this...I presume you are highly educated business world people. You are a company...you had a worker from a previously employer that did not work out. You would go back to that previous employer for the next leading candidate chance?
Good point. Saint johns must have asked the question back then are we going to hire another coach from Manhattan?
 

TommyD82

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Legend has it the St John's President told us to stay away from Gonzo and our president thought he was being disingenuous.

Now, St John's had not done well with a hire the last 30 years until Pitino, but ...
Steve Lavin was decent. Roberts and Anderson not so much but did not embarrass the university like Gonzo.
 

Bud Boomer

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Was anyone else seriously considered when Gonzalez was hired? I thought he was the heir apparent even before Orr's last season began.
If memory serves, Joe Quinlan preferred Tim O’Shea from Ohio. Other names included Tom Pecora, who thought he was better than us (in reality, he sucks) and Bob McKillop who we thought was too old (whoops).
 

dehere23

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In fairness to us, we were not the only ones who didn’t think McKillop could translate to a higher level. Which in retrospect was a mistake.
 
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In fairness to us, we were not the only ones who didn’t think McKillop could translate to a higher level. Which in retrospect was a mistake.
All due respect to McKillop, he had a great run at Davidson and had his fair share of auto qualifiers to the dance out of the Southern / A-10 conference.

But he never did coach at a higher D1 level and his only tournament success was tied to Stephen Curry.

So why was it a mistake?
 

dehere23

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All due respect to McKillop, he had a great run at Davidson and had his fair share of auto qualifiers to the dance out of the Southern / A-10 conference.

But he never did coach at a higher D1 level and his only tournament success was tied to Stephen Curry.

So why was it a mistake?
I think he would have done well here, certainly better than Gonzo. He won COY a ton, numerous league and tourney titles, and succeeded even post-Curry. No sure thing of course.