re: Media responds to Avery Johnson to Bama - "Home run hire"

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After the way LSU's season ended, how the hell can y'all talk about ANYBODY'S coach?....man, please!

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Avery had a stacked team led by Dirk Nowitzki in his prime. It's not like the next coach didn't immediately replicate his success

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I am laughing that some of you, including Finebaum, somehow think this is a better hire than Gregg Marshall. That guy is an elite, proven, college head coach. That is just baffling.

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same thing we did with Steele before Ed O was announced. Just trying to be positive.

No reasonable person thinks this is a better hire than Marshall would have been.

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Most people realize that Marshall coming here would have been a pure money grab and not because he really wanted to be at Alabama. AJ seems to really want the job. That is why AJ is a better hire for Alabama.

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One of the most remarkable aspects of the hiring of Anthony Grant at Alabama has been the dearth of discussion of race. Instead, people have focused on his youth, remarkable résumé and, mostly, his enormous potential.

Who's to say if Alabama President Robert Witt, having been excoriated in his slipshod selection of Mike Shula over Sylvester Croom in May 2003, didn't learn from that debacle. Or whether he simply identified the best candidate this time instead of rounding up the usual suspects.

Regardless, there wasn't much quibbling among Alabama fans over Grant other than a few who would have preferred Missouri coach Mike Anderson.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson was front and center in the Shula/Croom debate six years ago. It's a tad difficult to round up much dissent this time and complain that one black man got the job over another. Something tells me the late Martin Luther King Jr. might be smiling down on us about that. At Alabama, of all places, he must be thinking, "Now, that's what I call progress."

You can be pedantic that perhaps the school spent too much money on Grant, considering his relative inexperience as a proven head coach. However, this was a case where Alabama started out the process boasting it was looking for a basketball partner to Nick Saban. For that to occur, it made more sense to head to Saks Fifth Avenue for the shopping spree as opposed to the Dollar Tree.

Nobody can say with certainty what Grant will do at Alabama. However, if history is any indicator, he should do pretty well. When you consider Wimp Sanderson went to 10 NCAA tournaments and six Sweet 16 appearances and Mark Gottfried went to five straight NCAAs and an Elite Eight, it's a safe bet Grant will make waves in March as well.

This isn't a program in shambles. This is merely a program that became stagnant under Gottfried. Alabama fans are ready and anxious to race back to Coleman Coliseum. With Grant, the school can facilitate a much-needed upgrade in relation to a basketball practice facility, important to wooing top recruits.

This is critical because Auburn also will be selling momentum and a brand-new arena and, if Alabama had made the wrong move in this hiring, the school could have been stuck in a ditch for a long time.

Basketball is not as important as football at Alabama and it never will be. It wouldn't matter if the coach hired were Grant or Bob Knight. However, basketball is more important at Alabama than it is at Auburn.

Another thing Alabama did better than Auburn was this coaching search.

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While Auburn's search to replace Tommy Tuberville became a national punch line, Alabama's process seemed methodical and under the radar screen. Making a coaching change early gave the school plenty of time.

The search was conducted seamlessly, while Auburn's hunt looked like your typical backwoods, smoke-filled room with the good old boys slapping each other on the back when it was over.

And for all of Auburn's trouble, spending big money on a search firm and jetting around the country in a bad economy interviewing mostly second and third-tier candidates, the school ended up with a 5-19 head coach who so far has been uninspiring.

Would Turner Gill have been a better choice than Gene Chizik because of the color of his skin? No. But it would have shown Auburn had joined the 21st century from a standpoint of having an open mind.

"UA's hiring of Anthony Grant was significant, as was the fact that at least three other African-American coaches were given some degree of consideration for the position," said Donald Maurice Jackson, a Montgomery sports attorney and author of "Fourth Down and Twenty-Five Years to Go — The African-American and the Justice System."

"That alone represents consid erable progress," Jackson said. "Whether by design or mere recognition of the merits of hiring capable, qualified coaches (of all races), this hiring was a fairly significant event."

Jackson went on to say the University of Alabama "should be applauded for their open mindedness on this coaching hire."

Other than sociological and historical significance, does the first black head coach at Alabama (in a major money-making sport) give the school any real advantage? Or is the value primarily in regard to PR?

"Coach Grant is obviously one of the rising young coaches in the country," Jackson said. "Most schools that compete on the national level have realized the significance of diversity in their head coaching ranks. In an age when many high-level college football and basketball programs routinely start as many as 20 African-Americans on the offensive and defensive sides of the ball (in football), and starting five African-Americans (in basketball) is as common as wearing Nikes, who can question the competitive benefits of hiring coaches who have cultural identification with the players?"

So score a big win here for Alabama. It was also a victory over its past hiring practices. Alabama not only made an historic hire in Anthony Grant, it made a quality hire.

In the end, that matters most of all.

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Why can't I? Recruiting is sales and if you don't believe what you are selling then you won't be very effective. Not a far fetched notion.

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