I was curious about the oldest coaches ever hired in the Big 10 and started doing a little research on sports-reference. It grew to the ACC because I didn't find a Big 10 hire older than mid-50's. While in the ACC, I found Jim Larranaga who was hired by Miami at the age of 61, so I asked Google if Larranaga was the oldest college basketball coach ever hired... I found this article Hiring Age
If you read the article you'll find that no coach over the age of 61 has been hired in the ACC, Big 10, SEC, Big 12 or PAC 12 going back to 1985. On my own research I was going back 50 years and I have a feeling that 61 has a good chance of standing up all the way back to the early 70's.
So Larranaga, Tubby Smith (Texas Tech) and Mike Montgomery (Cal) are all mentioned in the article, but Knight turned 61 during his first season at Texas Tech himself. Of those 4, only Larranaga was still coaching in his 68th year.
I was a promoter of Mike Woodson back when we hired Crean and was all but laughed off the board. I still think that Woody is likely undervalued as a coach, and I was kind of excited to see people actually writing articles promoting him. All of that said, isn't it just a bit crazy to hire the oldest coach of the last 50 years to a power conference school? To make matters worse, the other guys who landed top gigs in their sixties were already proven masters of the college game. Woodson would not only be the oldest, but also the least experienced in the college sense at least.
It's aggravating on the one hand, because it would have been nice to see Woodson get his due consideration 13 or 14 years ago. On the other hand it's pretty dang concerning that there seems to me an all out media push for him now that he's 63 years old and all of the sudden I'm on the wrong side of the Woodson bandwagon yet again... lol
If you read the article you'll find that no coach over the age of 61 has been hired in the ACC, Big 10, SEC, Big 12 or PAC 12 going back to 1985. On my own research I was going back 50 years and I have a feeling that 61 has a good chance of standing up all the way back to the early 70's.
So Larranaga, Tubby Smith (Texas Tech) and Mike Montgomery (Cal) are all mentioned in the article, but Knight turned 61 during his first season at Texas Tech himself. Of those 4, only Larranaga was still coaching in his 68th year.
I was a promoter of Mike Woodson back when we hired Crean and was all but laughed off the board. I still think that Woody is likely undervalued as a coach, and I was kind of excited to see people actually writing articles promoting him. All of that said, isn't it just a bit crazy to hire the oldest coach of the last 50 years to a power conference school? To make matters worse, the other guys who landed top gigs in their sixties were already proven masters of the college game. Woodson would not only be the oldest, but also the least experienced in the college sense at least.
It's aggravating on the one hand, because it would have been nice to see Woodson get his due consideration 13 or 14 years ago. On the other hand it's pretty dang concerning that there seems to me an all out media push for him now that he's 63 years old and all of the sudden I'm on the wrong side of the Woodson bandwagon yet again... lol