Bowling Green State University Athletics
Toledo Blade Column on Dan Dakich
May 02, 2002 | Men's Basketball
May 2, 2002
Dan Dakich's mother attends church regularly near her home in northwest Indiana and always prays that her children will never let money become a false god.
Dakich mentioned that yesterday, then laughed and said, "I think she can move on to the next prayer now."
Dakich was in the money, the big money of college coaching, for one week. Then, in a move that was astonishing in large part because of its uniqueness, he was back out of the big money and back in as head basketball coach at Bowling Green State University.
Dakich spent a week as head coach at West Virginia University and never quite got around to signing the contract that would have paid him a minimum of $2.5 million over the next five years.
That made it possible for him to walk away when he realized that only the paycheck, not the grass, was greener down in them there hills.
We wonder how many coaches have taken new jobs, realized the same thing, but lacked the guts to walk away.
Well, no one can question Dan Dakich's guts. His sanity, maybe. But not his guts.
Dakich suggests there is no particular reason, at least no easily-explained one, for what he did.
But in the next breath he provides it.
"I have been miserable in coaching only one time in my life and it was for a very short period of time," he said. "I never want to be miserable coaching."
Exactly what happened at West Virginia? Dakich shrugs and shakes his head.
"There were so many factors involved, not just one thing you can point to," he said.
"And I'd really rather not get into all of it. It would serve no purpose.
"Look, I know it's hard for people to understand, but it was in the best interests of my family and that shouldn't be a tough concept to understand."
So he returned to Bowling Green and heard how challenging it would be for him to regain his players' trust. Right. Dakich isn't exactly touchy-feely and he is, after all, the custodian of the scholarships. It probably took about 15 seconds and went something like this:
"I'm the coach, you're the players. Anybody who's got a problem with that, let's step outside."
If his players and the rest of us didn't realize it before, we do now. Dakich is not your typical DivisionI college basketball coach, so many of whom jump on and off the carousel, the music pausing every time the next big job with the next big check at the next big school in the next big league opens up.
Sure, he heard the music stop at West Virginia. Then he realized the silence was deafening. And the money became irrelevant.
"Hey, I live a pretty simple life," Dakich said. "I drive down Wooster [Street] to come to work and I drive down Wooster to go home. I eat cheeseburgers at Al-Mar Lanes. What's wrong with being the coach at Bowling Green?
"What I did was different, and that doesn't always play well. But I don't care. Screw it, you gotta do what you think is right. I've never minded being a little different if it's right for me. I talked to a lot of people I respect, in and out of my profession, as this was going on and not one of them ever mentioned money as a factor.
"Everybody, to a degree, cares what people think about them, I guess. But I can't base decisions on what people might think. I worry about my wife and my kids, my parents and my brother and sister. I want them to think well of me. After that, who cares?"
People, perhaps Dakich included, can only guess what he might have done had the BG job not remained open or had athletic director Paul Krebs not expressed a willingness to rehire him. Nobody, certainly Dakich included, knows exactly what he'll do if and when the next big opportunity presents itself.
He only knows that the last one wasn't the right one.
He will get no references, we suspect, from the president and athletic director at West Virginia, but perhaps they should be grateful that Dakich, while realizing that WVU wasn't the place for him, also realized that he wasn't the man for the Mountaineers.
Cheeseburgers are cheap. And money doesn't buy happiness.
