Posted by Spartan Phil on 1/8/2008, 11:43 pm
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SJSU football: Would Tomey take the Hawaii job?
By Jon Wilner
Tuesday, January 8th, 2008 at 10:20 pm in San Jose State, WAC. Five words of warning to Sparta:
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Hawaii is open and I believe SJSU Coach Dick Tomey will give it serious consideration. I wouldn’t be the slightest bit surprised if he took the job.
But not that job.
I don’t think Tomey wants to be the Hawaii football coach for the second time, but my guess is that he’s thinking long and hard about becoming the UH athletic director.
The Warriors just canned Herman Frazier for failing to keep June Jones and for general ineptitude (Frazier is well-liked but not considered very sharp).
I mean, what could be better for Tomey?
* He’s beloved at UH and in Honolulu for turning around the football program in the 1980s.
* As the AD, he wouldn’t have to deal with the grind of coaching/recruiting. He could raise money from people who adore him.
* For a turning-70-year-old, being the AD would be the perfect coast-into-retirement job.
* To Tomey, Hawaii is home. He has owned a house there for decades.
A hometown retirement job for a school that loves him, that wants him? Sounds pretty good.
And Hawaii wants him in a big way — not the school, the state.
Heck, a section of Tomey’s bio in the SJSU media guide is titled “A Revered Figure in Hawaii.”
Consider what longtime Honolulu Advertiser columnist Ferd Lewis wrote: That Tomey should be the AD and the football coach:
“But he can provide what UH needs most in the short term, stability and credibility until a timely transition can be made and he rides off into a celebrated retirement.
“Never mind that he is coaching at San Jose State and has loyalty to the Spartans, who gave him a late-career opportunity.
“His heart is here, where he has always maintained a home since leaving UH in 1986.”
Obviously, it would be bad news for SJSU if Tomey left, and athletic director Tom Bowen is probably compiling aa short list of replacements.
Meanwhile, Tomey isn’t talking (at least he wasn’t the last time I checked, late afternoon). He’s at the coaches’ association meetings, no doubt getting bombarded about the UH job.
If he weren’t interested — in either the coaching or AD jobs — he’d have said so.
Silence just might be bad news for the Spartans.
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One Response to “SJSU football: Would Tomey take the Hawaii job?”
Spartan Phil Says:
January 8th, 2008 at 11:39 pm
I’m starting to think that DT is thinking about going back to Hawaii especially with no word from him or the athletic department as Jon mentioned. Coach, please stay, your work is not finished here yet. I think I’ll drop by the coaches meeting and see whats up.
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