By Bill Koch
On the Tuesday morning after UC’s Nov. 18, 2006 upset over No. 7 Rutgers, a large contingent of reporters was on hand for head coach Mark Dantonio’s weekly press conference.
When it was over, I corralled Dantonio for a few questions of my own, as I often did when I had something I wanted to ask him that I didn’t want the other reporters to hear.
I wanted to know if, in the wake of such a momentous victory, UC athletic director Mike Thomas had approached him about a contract extension. He danced around the question and then danced some more when I asked him to restate his intention to remain at UC for the long haul.
Noticing that he was acting rather strangely for a coach who had just presided over the biggest victory of his young head-coaching career, I asked him if something had changed. Just a few months earlier, during the summer before training camp began, he sat in his office and told me, sincerely, I thought, about his desire to remain at UC. His family loved the city, he said, he didn’t want to uproot his kids again, and he liked the school. He was an Ohio guy. This was where he wanted to be.
I had covered enough coaches to understand that most of them say similar things when asked about their commitment to whatever school they work for at the time. A few years later, when Butch Jones was being rumored for another job – it might have been Colorado – he lamented how he wished the rumors would go away.
“Well,” I said, “you could stop the rumors by saying publicly that you are not in the running for another job and that you’re committed to UC.”
“Oh,” he said. “I can’t do that.”
For some reason, when college coaches lie about such things, everyone just winks and assumes that’s the way things are done. But I thought Dantonio was different. I had never known him to lie to me and I still believe he meant it when he said he wanted to stay in Cincinnati. That’s what made his hesitation so difficult for me to understand.
As I was processing all this, he paused and asked me to turn off my tape recorder because he wanted to talk off the record. Then he told me he was conflicted because he had been offered the head-coaching job at Michigan State, where he had coached as an assistant for five years before he went to Ohio State in 2001. He really meant it, he said, when he told me he was committed to UC, and he really loved his players. He didn’t want to leave.
But this was Michigan State, a prominent Big Ten school offering a lot more money and a much better situation in all respects. He still had a lot of friends there and he had strong ties to the administration. He said he didn’t know what to do.
I told him I had to figure a way to write what he was telling me. It was too big of a story not to. To my surprise, he agreed. He told me to go ahead and write it, but that I couldn’t use him as the source.
I drove downtown to the Enquirer and wrote a story that essentially soft-pedaled what Dantonio had said. I wrote that he had emerged as one of the leading candidates for the Michigan State job.
I figured the story would appear on the cover of the sports section, but when I picked up the paper the next morning, I saw this headline on page one of the entire paper: “UC coach Dantonio could bolt,” with a subhead that read: “He might wind up at Michigan State.”
In the story, I quoted Thomas, who said he was determined to keep Dantonio at UC. I wrote that Thomas must act quickly “to convince Dantonio that the Cincinnati job can be as lucrative as the Michigan State job…That’s a tall order. It might even be impossible.”
Before long, I was being bombarded by emails from UC fans who refused to believe that Dantonio would leave.Many of the emails were nasty. One accused me of trying to ruin the program by sabotaging recruiting. Most were of the opinion that I was a crummy reporter who hated UC and didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. Of course, I couldn’t tell them the story had originated with Dantonio.
Within a week, Dantonio was named the head coach at Michigan State.
Dantonio stayed at UC for only three years, but he made a major impact. The Bearcats went 19-17 during his tenure and played in two bowl games. More importantly he steered the program through its first two seasons in the Big East and produced the win over Rutgers that jump-started the program for future success. He also recruited many of the players who would lead UC to the Orange Bowl and the Sugar Bowl.
And he’s at partly responsible for his friend, Luke Fickell, being at UC now. When Fickell asked him about the job in 2016, he had nothing but positive things to say about the school. In addition, he recommended Fickell to former athletic director Mike Bohn, the man who hired him.
“He did a great job while he was there,” said former UC cornerback Mike Mickens, who was recruited by Dantonio and played his first two seasons under him. “If he felt that was best for his family to take that opportunity, you can’t fault him for that. He helped the program grow and he helped his career grow too.”
On the Tuesday morning after UC’s Nov. 18, 2006 upset over No. 7 Rutgers, a large contingent of reporters was on hand for head coach Mark Dantonio’s weekly press conference.
When it was over, I corralled Dantonio for a few questions of my own, as I often did when I had something I wanted to ask him that I didn’t want the other reporters to hear.
I wanted to know if, in the wake of such a momentous victory, UC athletic director Mike Thomas had approached him about a contract extension. He danced around the question and then danced some more when I asked him to restate his intention to remain at UC for the long haul.
Noticing that he was acting rather strangely for a coach who had just presided over the biggest victory of his young head-coaching career, I asked him if something had changed. Just a few months earlier, during the summer before training camp began, he sat in his office and told me, sincerely, I thought, about his desire to remain at UC. His family loved the city, he said, he didn’t want to uproot his kids again, and he liked the school. He was an Ohio guy. This was where he wanted to be.
I had covered enough coaches to understand that most of them say similar things when asked about their commitment to whatever school they work for at the time. A few years later, when Butch Jones was being rumored for another job – it might have been Colorado – he lamented how he wished the rumors would go away.
“Well,” I said, “you could stop the rumors by saying publicly that you are not in the running for another job and that you’re committed to UC.”
“Oh,” he said. “I can’t do that.”
For some reason, when college coaches lie about such things, everyone just winks and assumes that’s the way things are done. But I thought Dantonio was different. I had never known him to lie to me and I still believe he meant it when he said he wanted to stay in Cincinnati. That’s what made his hesitation so difficult for me to understand.
As I was processing all this, he paused and asked me to turn off my tape recorder because he wanted to talk off the record. Then he told me he was conflicted because he had been offered the head-coaching job at Michigan State, where he had coached as an assistant for five years before he went to Ohio State in 2001. He really meant it, he said, when he told me he was committed to UC, and he really loved his players. He didn’t want to leave.
But this was Michigan State, a prominent Big Ten school offering a lot more money and a much better situation in all respects. He still had a lot of friends there and he had strong ties to the administration. He said he didn’t know what to do.
I told him I had to figure a way to write what he was telling me. It was too big of a story not to. To my surprise, he agreed. He told me to go ahead and write it, but that I couldn’t use him as the source.
I drove downtown to the Enquirer and wrote a story that essentially soft-pedaled what Dantonio had said. I wrote that he had emerged as one of the leading candidates for the Michigan State job.
I figured the story would appear on the cover of the sports section, but when I picked up the paper the next morning, I saw this headline on page one of the entire paper: “UC coach Dantonio could bolt,” with a subhead that read: “He might wind up at Michigan State.”
In the story, I quoted Thomas, who said he was determined to keep Dantonio at UC. I wrote that Thomas must act quickly “to convince Dantonio that the Cincinnati job can be as lucrative as the Michigan State job…That’s a tall order. It might even be impossible.”
Before long, I was being bombarded by emails from UC fans who refused to believe that Dantonio would leave.Many of the emails were nasty. One accused me of trying to ruin the program by sabotaging recruiting. Most were of the opinion that I was a crummy reporter who hated UC and didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. Of course, I couldn’t tell them the story had originated with Dantonio.
Within a week, Dantonio was named the head coach at Michigan State.
Dantonio stayed at UC for only three years, but he made a major impact. The Bearcats went 19-17 during his tenure and played in two bowl games. More importantly he steered the program through its first two seasons in the Big East and produced the win over Rutgers that jump-started the program for future success. He also recruited many of the players who would lead UC to the Orange Bowl and the Sugar Bowl.
And he’s at partly responsible for his friend, Luke Fickell, being at UC now. When Fickell asked him about the job in 2016, he had nothing but positive things to say about the school. In addition, he recommended Fickell to former athletic director Mike Bohn, the man who hired him.
“He did a great job while he was there,” said former UC cornerback Mike Mickens, who was recruited by Dantonio and played his first two seasons under him. “If he felt that was best for his family to take that opportunity, you can’t fault him for that. He helped the program grow and he helped his career grow too.”
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