For the first time in seven years, Oklahoma State is looking for a new head men’s basketball coach. The school fired Mike Boynton late last week after posting a 119-109 record. Fox Sports Radio’s Doug Gottlieb, a former Oklahoma State point guard, has openly and publicly campaigned for the position in the past. It was brought up again recently on The Doug Gottlieb Show.
“If you go back seven years ago, when I had just started at Fox Sports Radio, that’s when Mike [Boynton] was hired,” Gottlieb said, “and I was, I think, a finalist…What you should know since then is, yeah, I’ve tinkered around with college coaching. I’ve always tried to protect still doing the radio show. One, because I love this, and two because I’m treated really, really well. And three, I was never in a position I thought, financially, to just walk away from stuff and start all over.”
“…I have been a consultant this year for the program, spent a lot of time there,” Gottlieb continued. “Last year at this time I was actually a finalist for a job at Wisconsin-Green Bay.”
Later, Gottlied got right to the heart of the matter, saying, “I think there’s a less than remote chance that I would get that job, and I know that because I have a good relationship with the Athletic Director Chad Weiberg…He called me, honestly, right after the news broke and in the very nicest way possible said, ‘Look man, I just had a coach for seven years who had not been a head coach before. I can’t hire another coach who has not even been a college assistant before.’
Gottlieb makes a case for himself stating he thinks he would be welcome in gyms and homes where he would need to be in order to recruit. He also says he has many connections between his own coaching in AAU basketball as well as his family’s history and connections in the area. “I think I fit how college basketball is now more so than previously,” he said.
Gottlieb told his audience, “I was offered a job to be an assistant coach at Oklahoma State last offseason. Initially, the plan was to be able to do radio and be an assistant. Then that plan kind of changed, they were like, ‘Hey, you gotta make a decision. Do you want to do the radio show and all of the other stuff you do, or be an assistant coach?’ I wasn’t ready…my girls are seniors in high school, it felt like a sacrifice, frankly, not worth making.”
In the end, Gottlieb made it clear he knows he may never be the head coach at his alma mater and part of that is because of how much he enjoys what he is currently doing. “I am not chasing anything,” he said. “… It’s an itch that I don’t know if it will ever be scratched. I love what I do and the people I get to meet along the way. But, if the right thing presents itself and it feels right, well yeah. But, I don’t think I need to pack anytime soon to be the head coach at Oklahoma State. Even if I do believe that I’m the right guy there, I truly believe that.”
