Ed Cooley was one of Providence's own. Now, he'll get to see how much it hates him

The longtime Friars coach and Rhode Island native will return home for the first time since leaving for Georgetown last March. It will create a scene with few peers in college basketball history

There are arguably more important games with weightier implications going on the same afternoon – Kansas at Iowa State and Texas Tech at Oklahoma, both top-20 matchups, stand out – but on Saturday, the biggest stage in men’s college basketball will be in America’s smallest state.

When Ed Cooley left Providence last March for Georgetown, his return trip to face off against his old team was circled, even before there was a date set for it.

Coaching exits in major college sports are often brisk, with something vaguely resembling a formal goodbye rarely ever transpiring. For Providence fans, Saturday will provide that opportunity, a cathartic moment in which their pain and anger can be something more to Cooley than an expletive-laden tweet he’ll likely never see or a fiery letter that will never reach his desk at the Georgetown basketball offices.

Such a scene would have once been unthinkable. Cooley was, for all intents and purposes, Providence – not just the college itself, but the city and the region as a whole. 

He was born there, growing up in a poor South Providence neighborhood about six miles from the Providence campus. Once he had proven himself as a Division I head coach, he jumped at the opportunity to return to his hometown and try to guide its beloved Friars back to something resembling their prior glory. And once he did that, he stayed, even if it wasn’t for as long as some would have hoped.

But on Saturday afternoon, as Cooley’s Hoyas visit Providence, the man who was once a savior will walk into Amica Mutual Pavilion as a pariah, a traitor who turned his back on the city that molded him and the school and community he purported to care about so much.

“It’s such a contrast to think that this guy who’s a city native, who quite literally has a key to the city and who led Providence to such heights in his time there is essentially unwelcome coming home at this point,” Bill Koch, who covers all things college basketball for the Providence Journal, told me. “It’s fascinating in that way. It speaks to how deeply betrayed some people feel about this and how long it’s going to take them to forgive, if ever.”

With that single decision, Cooley helped arrange a scene that has few peers in modern college basketball history. Rick Pitino returned to Kentucky’s Rupp Arena in 2001 coaching archrival Louisville, slyly bypassing photographers and catching fans off guard by walking on the court through the home team’s tunnel. Two years ago, Chris Beard came back to Texas Tech as the Texas coach and was greeted by irate fans as soon as the Longhorns’ bus pulled up to the arena the night before the game.

Each of those homecomings, memorable as they were, had mitigating factors. Pitino was an outsider, a New Yorker who made Kentucky his home, and for as grave as his side-switching sin was, he didn’t jump directly from the Wildcats to the Cardinals. Instead, after an ill-fated four-year stint leading the Boston Celtics, he came back to the college game and took what he believed was the best job available at the time. Beard, despite his decade as a Texas Tech assistant, was a Texas graduate whose coaching career began with the Longhorns. No matter how much it pained Red Raiders fans, he was going home.

In the case of Cooley and Providence, the proverbial knife in the back pierces much deeper.

Why Cooley mattered to Providence. And why his departure stung the way it did.

From the moment Cooley was hired as the Providence coach in 2011, he leaned heavily into the larger symbolism of the new partnership. At his introductory press conference, he referred to his return to his hometown as a “match made in heaven for a long, long, long time.”

For many of the ensuing 12 years, those words seemed prophetic.

He led the Friars to seven of their 22 all-time NCAA Tournament appearances and would have taken them to an eighth had the 2020 tournament not been canceled. Prior to his hiring, Providence hadn’t been to the NCAA Tournament for seven years and his seven tournament appearances in his final 10 years matched the program’s March Madness berths from the previous 35 years. His 242 victories across 12 seasons make him the second winningest coach in school history.

Impressive as those numbers are, Cooley’s presence at the school went beyond them. He was not only from the area, but he seemed to understand it in a profound way that allowed him to connect with fans and alums who had spent much of their lives being abandoned by successful coaches and let down by middling ones. Cooley wasn’t a Providence graduate – he played at nearby Stonehill College, which was a Division II school at the time – but that biographical wrinkle only made him more endearing. By his own admission, Cooley wasn’t good enough to play for the Friars, but together, one underdog was going to link up with another to help make it a Big East power.

“He definitely felt like the guy who was going to stay forever,” Koch told me. “He definitely did. They marketed that. He embraced that. He used that as part of his image and the program’s image. He definitely was the most outward in that way. I was very surprised that he left. I certainly felt like he was going to be a guy who was going to stick around, much more so than the other guys, because he would say it as often as he did.”

Whatever sense of invincibility surrounded the Cooley-Providence marriage began to crumble late last season when initial speculation linking him to the expected vacancy at Georgetown gained traction and became something much more realistic.

By the time it was made official, Cooley’s choice itself almost took a backseat to the way he went about making it.

Around the time the Georgetown whispers began, Providence appeared to be on its way to another remarkable season, with a 20-7 record and a top-20 ranking. From there, its fortunes cratered, with the Friars losing five of their final six games and bowing out in the first round of the NCAA Tournament (their lone win during that stretch came against, oddly enough, Georgetown).

Within a day of him leaving for the Hoyas, Cooley’s $1.9 million home went on the market, but intrepid internet sleuths discovered that a notice of sale disclosure was signed on March 3, 14 days before Providence’s season ended and 20 days before Georgetown announced his hiring (for what it’s worth, Cooley insisted that he and his wife, with their children grown and out of the house, simply were looking to downsize).

At his introductory press conference in Washington, D.C. last March, Cooley described coaching the Hoyas as “Divine Providence,” an extremely poor choice of words under the most generous interpretation and something much more sinister when parsed another, perhaps more realistic way. 

As for those hometown ties he boasted about so often? He championed them up until and even beyond the very end, saying that Providence was his dream job even after he had gotten to Georgetown. As he explained it, he and his family were simply ready for something new.

“Was it really hard to leave? One thousand percent,” Cooley told The Field of 68 at Big East Media Day last year. “You’re leaving home. I’ll always be from the city. I’ll always be from the state of Rhode Island. I’ll always love and care for that. I’m going to cheer for Kim [English] and Providence more than any coach that’s probably worked there that left because I’m from there and I get it. But at the same time, everybody says ‘Hey, why Georgetown? Why?’ Change. I think in all of our lives, change is healthy for everyone. I think when you live in an area your whole life, every now and then change is exciting. It’s invigorating.”

Other potential, non-basketball reasons for the break-up have been bandied about by Providence fans on social media and message boards, some more salacious than others, but none of them verified with anything substantive.

The cruelty of Cooley ditching his hometown program was exacerbated by the fact that his move to Georgetown was, quite literally, without precedent. Since its inception in 1979, the Big East had never seen a men’s basketball coach leave one member institution for another. The schools within the league may fight and argue with one another, but underneath all of that bickering is a collegiality and an understanding that, for all their differences, they were all in this together, particularly after the football-centric forces of conference realignment left it for dead in the early 2010s.

With Cooley, though, that was all disregarded. Had he simply left for another, higher-profile job, there would have been hurt feelings, sure, but there would have been a broader appreciation for what he had done for the program and, because of that, a more graceful exit could have been orchestrated. Instead, because of his desire to stay in the conference, what would have otherwise been a business situation became a betrayal.

Whatever furor that was already aimed at Cooley was stoked by Providence athletic director Steve Napolillo, who pointed to that camaraderie within the Big East while addressing why his marquee coach had just bolted town.

“The Big East was built on dignity, respect and camaraderie,” Napolillo said. “When we reconfigured in 2013, we were all in it together. We root for each other when we’re not playing each other. I just don’t think it’s a good look for a fellow institution…as I said, should I be going out right now and hiring another Big East coach? There’s a trickle-down effect. We love the league way too much to start that type of carousel.”

Cooley, for his part, hasn’t made it much easier on himself with some of his public comments. While he has largely been gracious to Providence – continually expressing his love for the community and heaping praise on his successor, Kim English – he has been defiant at times, including when he has downplayed the ramifications of his intra-conference move.

“That’s not something I’m going to apologize for,” he said to The Field of 68. “I’m not apologizing for taking care of my life. End of discussion.”

Ending that discussion, however, won’t be as simple as Cooley wants it to be.

Should Providence fans be as angry as they are? And will that ever disappear?

Providence fans are mad. That much is easy to see with even a 30-second search of Cooley’s name on Twitter. But should they be, at least to the extent they are?

Cooley was an undeniable success at the school, someone who inherited a floundering program and turned it into a consistent NCAA Tournament presence in a way it never had been previously, even in its best years.

Though the circumstances surrounding his departure were unique, Cooley was hardly the first Friars coach to bolt for supposedly greener pastures from a position that had been treated for much of its existence as a stepping stone. Joe Mullaney, the winningest coach in program history, left in the late 1960s to coach the Lakers. Rick Pitino bounced after just two seasons to take over the Knicks. Rick Barnes left not for an NBA job, but Clemson, the ACC’s football-mad stepchild. Barnes’ successor, Pete Gillen, took off for Virginia.

If anything, it could be argued that Cooley displayed a sense of loyalty few of his predecessors did. He had been publicly linked to various jobs over the course of his tenure, most notably Michigan in 2019, but he opted to stay. By the time he took the Georgetown job, he had been at Providence for 12 years, tying him with Mullaney for the longest run in program history.

While remaining in the Big East presents its own set of complications, he left for what could be reasonably viewed as a better job. 

Georgetown is a championship-winning program nestled in perhaps the most fertile recruiting area in the country. Its $3.3 billion endowment is more than 10 times what Providence’s is. In a 2018 survey of Big East coaches conducted by college basketball journalist Jeff Goodman, Georgetown was ranked as the Big East’s best job, even after Villanova had just won its second national title in the past three years. Providence was 7th in what was then a 10-team league. His move to the Hoyas came with a significant pay raise, as he makes about $6 million a year after bringing in $3.75 million in his final season with the Friars. A $30 million practice facility that stands as a gleaming example of what Providence can provide for a winning basketball program still doesn’t quite measure up against Georgetown. In 2016, two years before the Friars unveiled their basketball jewel, the Hoyas opened up a $62 million practice facility.

Then, of course, there’s a pull to Georgetown that has nothing to do with local recruiting, facilities or even money. For a generation of Black basketball players and coaches – particularly for someone like Cooley who grew up in the 1980s at the height of the Hoyas’ reign – Georgetown means and represents something more, a place that fostered and showcased Black excellence on the court and the sideline in a way that few, if any, major programs in college basketball history had to that point or have since. For many, this is still John Thompson’s program, even more than 20 years since his retirement (the same Thompson, who, interestingly enough, played at Providence).

When all of those assorted variables are added together, it’s fair to wonder why there’s such rage over Cooley’s exit.

But viewing it through such a cold, removed lens, ignores the raw and visceral emotions that guide fandom and that make us care about things in such a deep, sometimes illogical way. This isn’t supposed to make sense, at least not to those who immerse themselves in it and dedicate some fraction of their lives to it.

Other coaches had left before, but Cooley was supposed to be different. He was supposed to be one of their own.

Throughout their time in the Big East, the Friars and their fans had watched with envy as most of their conference-mates had a successful coach who became synonymous with the program as he led it to conference titles, Final Fours and even national championships. Georgetown had Thompson. St. John’s had Lou Carnesecca. UConn had Jim Calhoun. Syracuse, while it was still in the league, had Jim Boeheim. Villanova, those selfish bastards, had two of them – Rollie Massimino and Jay Wright.

For years, that’s what Cooley was…until, through his own doing and his own free will, he wasn’t.

Providence and its fans can be grateful to Cooley without being eternally indebted. He revived the Friars, but they weren’t some woebegone pushover with no history until Cooley stepped on campus. They had won a pair of NITs in the early 1960s – back when that actually meant something – and had made the Final Four twice in a 14-year stretch from 1973-87, further strengthening a loving and unshakeable bond between the basketball team and the city it called home. This was the program of Dave Gavitt, Jimmy Walker, Marvin Barnes, Ernie DiGregorio and even God himself (God Shamgodd, that is).

It’s hard to be lectured that another job and program is better when it hasn’t been for the better part of a decade and when the team Cooley will bring to his old arena is among the worst major-conference teams in the country.

What comes from those weeks and months of acrimony is a long-awaited encounter that one side dreads while the other has fans waiting out the harsh New England winter to get a front-row seat for it.

Cooley’s abrupt departure left behind a massive void he had happily occupied for a dozen years. That emptiness has been ostensibly filled, with a popular young coach overseeing an injury-ravaged but overachieving team that still plays in front of one of the best, most rapid home crowds in the sport. 

Lurking beneath that contentment, though, is a sense of indignation and resentment that likely won’t be exhausted in a single afternoon, no matter how much they boo Cooley, how many obscenities they hurl his way or how badly they beat his new team. Barring some truly unforeseen sequence of events, it’s unlikely to ever disappear

“I think when you make the decision to leave and you make a decision for your life, it’s to be expected that people aren’t going to be happy with it,” he said. “Those are peoples’ own emotions. Those are their own feelings. I think we all want to be liked, but I want to make sure that I’m taking care of my own soul at the same time. Will it be hard? Of course it will. I’m human. Everyone’s human. But again, until you sit in the seat we’re in when you’re a leader and you make change, you just have to deal with the decisions you make and roll with the punches. Anger is a secondary emotion. Everybody will get over it.”

As 12,410 black-and-white-clad fans will eagerly remind him Saturday, Cooley might have to wait a while for that day to come, if it ever does.

(Photos: Washington Post, Associated Press)