Doug Gottlieb embarrassed by DII team he called “Nobody U”, and nobody forgot

If you’re the athletic director of a mid-major Division I university who is thinking about hiring a boisterous media personality to run your football or basketball program, maybe you should reconsider. In response to Deion Sanders’ unprecedented success at Jackson State and then Colorado, UAB and Green Bay have attempted their off-brand versions to jumpstart largely irrelevant programs with Trent Dilfer and Doug Gottlieb, and almost immediately, both programs are worse off than before. 

Dilfer has led the Blazers to 4-8 and 3-9 seasons on the football field, and Gottlieb, who believed so little in his coaching chops that he literally didn’t quit his day job, is off to a 2-11 start in his first season with the Phoenix. But if the goal of this experiment was exposure, then well done Green Bay. 

On Wednesday, Green Bay lost its 10th game of the season, 72-70 to Michigan Tech, a failure for the Horizon League program, but a triumph of publicity (assuming you ascribe to the no press is bad press mantra of public relations). The loss came a week after Gottlieb, still the host of The Doug Gottlieb Show on Fox Sports Radio, called Michigan Tech, a Division II program that finished last season 11-17, “Nobody U” in a press conference. 

Naturally, social media is letting the thin-skinned “head coach” (the quotations are derogatory) have it. And you’d think that a man who, as his record reflects, still spends most of his time and effort talking into a microphone would understand the ramifications of such a comment. However, rather than defend himself, Gottlieb is flat-out denying that it ever happened, and he’s doing so by posting the video of it happening. Chess, not checkers. 

If you’re scoring at home, Gottlieb has now been the main character on sports Twitter, which is never a good thing, as many times in the past week as he has wins on the season. On Monday, Gottlieb got into a back-and-forth with NFL insider Adam Schefter that was an even more lopsided defeat than his team’s 102-69 loss to Ohio State back in November. 

After Wednesday's loss to Michigan Tech, Gottlieb, predictably, blamed the media, which he is still a part of I might add, for drawing attention to the idiotic thing that he said. Yeah, our bad Doug. 

“Whatever I do is gonna draw a ton of attention," he told reporters. "I have a certain tone sometimes to the way I speak and especially to the way I tweet, which can upset people. I promise you, even though it's in the negative now, it'll be in the positive soon. Keep all the receipts and we'll just keep doing our job."

Here’s the follow-up question that was never asked: “Which job Doug?” 

Though, Gottlieb still addressed his level of dedication to his time-consuming side hustle. 

"I'm as dedicated to this job as any human being has ever been," Gottlieb said. "And I'm going to see it through until we win a Horizon League championship. This is my dream job and I will not fall short of the 100% effort that's required."

Not to get all technical, but that’s impossible. No other coach in college sports history has done a full-time national radio show while leading their program. I didn’t fact-check that, but we can safely assume that it’s true. You could argue, as a matter of fact, that Gottlieb is the least dedicated to this job as any human being has ever been. At least Dilfer left the media (though, did he really have a choice or did everyone just stop listening?). But hey, Doug figured today was a good day to take off. 

It’s time for these experiments to come to an end in college sports. Gottlieb will never come close to a Horizon League title, and he knows it too because if he believed he could, then he would’ve quit his job. Deion Sanders has the gravity, and talented offspring, to make a personality-centric program successful, but Coach Prime is unicorn, truly the exception that proves the rule. Players aren’t dying to play for Doug Gottlieb cause they grew up loving his radio show the way they are to get to Boulder and learn from an NFL Hall of Famer. 

It’s easy to feel bad for the players but spare me the sympathy for the university. Yes, Gottlieb and Dilfer parachuted in with no experience as a collegiate head coach, and after a year or three will leave the program in ruins with no happy moments along the way, but somebody signed off on the hire. Stupid games: Stupid prizes.