Maybe she more than doubled her salary. Maybe there are other “ perks”. Maybe other personal reasons. Lots of “maybe’s”.
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Mollie Marcoux Samaan was AD for the Berube hire in 2019, one of her several outstanding hires (e.g., Sean Driscoll, Carla Tagliente, et al.) during her tenure from 2014-21. Let’s hope John Mack and his search committee have the same ability to scout talent to find Carla’s perfect successor.
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Berube doesn’t have to win the Big 10. If she gets them to the middle of the pack and maybe makes the tourney, that’s a good result. If she wants the UConn job, maybe this is an opportunity to have another successful stint somewhere. She’s achieved almost as much as she can at Princeton.
Also, Meg doesn’t make $800k.
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He has a win on the hockey coach, so far.
I think the key here is Northwestern is a very similar program to Princeton that is willing to heavily invest in women basketball. +1M in revenue share is not a joke. I think she likes the challenge to build a wbb culture at a place that has not had a great wbb ever. But it has all the ingredients. Top 2 league in the country, great academics, great location, and now great coach and investment. If she can make the tournament in the short run and prove to the AD this is a program worth investing a lot on, she could turn around the program to one of the best in the country in the long run. Something that, probably for economic and location reasons (invluding being in the Ivy), she couldn’t do at Princeton. I believe Griffith and Moore are looking for similar oportunities.
An ambitious coach also has to sell at the top of the market. If you’re going to leave, you have to do it coming off a period of success. Seems like a great time for Berube to do it. A few mediocre years and she might lose her shot. Happens all the time.
Reminds me of Sidney Johnson, who clearly left for the money and the chance to springboard even higher.
I think she tripled her salary, at least, and now she can recruit on a larger stage. And yes, a better springboard to the UConn job. But only if she succeeds.
For Sidney, unfortunately, it did not work out.
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Sydney had a difficult task elevating Fairfield. He rebuilt Princeton following the Scott debacle and could have rode that wave to a better landing spot than Fairfield.
Fairfield was flying high when Johnson took over from Ed Cooley. They were 25-8 the year before and Cooley got the job at Providence, where he was very successful (now at Georgetown where he is doing better than his predecessors but hasn’t gotten them over the top). Johnson won 22 games his first year with Cooley’s recruits and went downhill from there. I think he was seeing Cooley moving up to the Big East. Didn’t work for him.
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Yup- went downhill. And right out the door. Grass isn’t always greener.
I think this post gets at two big drivers behind the move:
- Life changing money with the opportunity to build wealth for her family and children
- If she does want to be Geno Auriemma’s replacement, which this move suggests she does, it seems like she needs to prove herself to be a winner in a Power 4 conference before U Conn will hire her.
As much as Coach Berube and her family sincerely seemed to love the Princeton players and town, this was the logical move to me sadly. The move certainly comes with great risk as it could go south like Sydney Johnson at Fairfield but far greater rewards than were attainable at Princeton.
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Well said.
I don’t think she is doing this thinking about the UConn job at all. I don’t even think she wants to be “the one after Geno”.
Going back to my earlier question, you said that the $1M revenue share is “no joke” but how does that compare to other Big Ten, SEC, ACC, and Big 12 schools?
I think Carla will do somewhere between OK and fine. Of course she’s an excellent coach and should be able to recruit well. But she’s also in a pond with a lot of major competition. If she and NU are OK being top half of conference but not at the top, everything should be copacetic. I can see why NU would accept that given their history. I agree that if she wants a top flight job, P4 is a better stepping stone than Ivy, assuming she does well.
My other thought is purely parochial - Chicago summers are great, but winter weather can be absolutely brutal (and yes, much worse than what she saw in Medford).
Perhaps this is true. The other pathway is to take Northwestern to national prominence, and perhaps spend her career there. Or move up to any other perpetual powerhouse.
(It’s fun speculating, even though we judge only by externals.)
Now I am reminded of Carmody, who improved the Northwestern program, and was widely considered an excellent coach, but never achieved quite the success the school desired.
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Berube knows where to find really good recruits who want great educations, she’s proven as much. Now she can offer them full scholarships and NIL so her reach expands a lot. This is a great move.
I believe p4 women’s basketball teams that are well-supported, typically get about 5% of the $20.5 Mil revenue share amount. In another post, we read that Rutgers was expected to allocate $1 Mil to $1.3 Mil to the women as an example.
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Those are the numbers for programs that care about wbb. I’ve been told that Alabama’s actual revenue share is 250k, for example. BC was similar and they are offering 500k for the new hire. I would say 1M is probably the average in B10, and I’ve heard that Northwestern was offering between 1M and 1.3M too.
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According to this article interviewing Coach Berube, she really loved Princeton ice cream shop The Bent Spoon. The Northwestern pitch must have been quite strong to get her to leave The Bent Spoon behind because if you know, you know!