Doug Gottlieb and college basketball's most audacious experiment

The longtime pundit was hired as Green Bay's coach in May. He'll balance that job with his gig as a national sports radio host

Update on an earlier story: On an otherwise bleak night for the Democratic Party on Tuesday, Royce White, the former Iowa State basketball star whose odd ideological journey I wrote about back in August, fell well short of his bid to become Minnesota’s next U.S. Senator, losing handily to incumbent Amy Klobuchar 56.3% to 40.5%, with 97% of expected votes in.

In what have been an eventful few days for the experiment of American democracy, I wanted to touch on a subject that’s been weighing on the minds of so many across the country – the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay men’s basketball program.

The Phoenix began their 2024-25 season on Monday with an 89-76 loss at Oklahoma State, but really, the game’s final result was only so much of the story.

For Green Bay coach Doug Gottlieb, it was a homecoming, a return to his alma mater and the place he said is where everything good in his life began. Though it was on the opposing sideline, he once again got to step foot on the court where he set the program’s assists record and where his coach’s signature is emblazoned on the hardwood.

The mere existence of the phrase “Green Bay coach Doug Gottlieb” is a different kind of development worth examining.

In May, Green Bay made one of the more audacious basketball coaching hires in recent memory, turning to the 48-year-old Gottlieb, a national sports radio host who had no previous college coaching experience and who has worked for the past two decades as a college basketball analyst for various outlets.

The concept of a “celebrity hire” is hardly a new one in the world of college sports. Deion Sanders, who we’ve devoted more than enough digital ink to over this newsletter’s existence, certainly qualifies, though he had coached high school ball before heading over to Jackson State and, with the Tigers, showed his abilities as a program-builder enough to make the jump to Colorado. Even resident Front Porch punching bag Trent Dilfer was at least a high-school head coach who oversaw a winning program before heading to UAB.

There’s a track record of coaches with no experience on the sideline stepping into the job and excelling. Doc Rivers and Steve Kerr went directly from the broadcast booth to coaching, with both winning coach of the year honors and NBA titles. At the college level, Fred Hoiberg built Iowa State into a national power despite having no prior coaching stints on his resume and most recently working in the Minnesota Timberwolves front office before he returned as a conquering hero to Ames.

Still, Gottlieb is a different kind of leap of faith.