Success gives defectors the business

If a college football coach truly is a teacher, then he must be ready to skedaddle for the next job if only to impart to his players life’s most essential lessons:

•Always look out for No. 1, especially if you’re hip deep in No. 2, and;

•As Al Pacino assured his brothers before blowing away Sollozzo and the crooked police captain in “The Godfather,” it’s not personal, just business.

As for those left behind when the coach abandons ship, well, playing well is about the only revenge.

Do not think it hasn’t been noticed by the University of Idaho Vandals – in particular the handful of fifth-year seniors on the roster – that as they prepare for Wednesday’s appearance in the Humanitarian Bowl, neither of the two head coaches who bailed on them 10 months apart has such preparations to make.

“Karma,” said offensive tackle Bryce Sinclair.

Having used Idaho to wipe his shoes before re-entering the big time, Dennis Erickson is busy shopping for a new offensive coordinator at Arizona State, having thrown his old one under the bus to account for a second straight losing season. And when he’s not on the recruiting trail for Washington, defensive coordinator Nick Holt – already on his third job since turning in his keys after two seasons in Moscow – is practicing looking even more ferocious each time he gets a sideline warning in 2010, when the Huskies should finally end their bowl drought.

While it’s tempting to speculate that neither of these gentlemen had faith that they could pull off what Robb Akey has in steering the Vandals to their first bowl game in more than a decade, perhaps it was more their disinclination to invest themselves in the cause when bigger paydays beckoned. In such circumstances, there is the dollar – and then there is everything else. Even now as an assistant, Holt makes twice what Akey takes home – and that is hardly lost on the Vandals.

“After a while,” said guard Adam Juratovac, “you figure out it’s a business.”

Certainly it’s UI athletic director Rob Spear’s business, and having hired Holt and Erickson no one was more exasperated at whiffing twice.

“Believe me, I thought we had the right fit a couple of a times,” Spear said. “Unfortunately, those coaches moved on to what they would say are better opportunities and I can’t fault anybody for that. But we need to make sure we’re going to retain coaches.”

If you’re in a static salary endeavor or simply live in Sanity World, you may have trouble coming to grips with Akey’s contract being renegotiated to reward him for doing what he was hired to do. But it’s also true that his $258,000 contract does not measure up in a marketplace in which three other Western Athletic Conference coaches top $1 million a year.

Of course, none of this is mentioned in recruits’ living rooms, where the word “commitment” rains like confetti. So it’s natural for the players not to be so magnanimous when change occurs.

“I remember when the first staff left, we never really found out from the coaches,” Juratovac said. “It was Super Bowl Sunday and I read it in the newspaper that Nick Holt was leaving. It was weird not hearing it directly from the source, but I can see how that happens. And I’d only been up here four months. Then when Dennis Erickson left, I found out from watching ESPN – it was on ‘The Bottom Line.’

“As a player, you start to think it’s your fault – ‘What did we do wrong?’ – until you realize it’s not. Then it kind of gives you a chip on your shoulder that maybe they didn’t think we were good enough.”

The fifth-year linemen have played for four different offensive coordinators and three position coaches, and that degree of uncertainty is what they find the most upsetting.

“You see guys get lost because they don’t fit in to what the next guy wants,” Sinclair said. “You just have to depend on each other. That’s what I’ve been reflecting on. We’re the ones having success, but it’s the classes before us who helped instill in us to work hard, to keep at it, that we’re still a family – no matter what coach is here.”

Or what coach isn’t.

“A couple of us were actually talking about that the other day,” Juratovac said. “It’s interesting – and a little bittersweet. You look and see where we’re at and it’s kind of nice that they can sit back and watch us play in December.”

Nothing personal. Just taking care of business.