Memo to Steve Forbes: Stay at ETSU

As former ETSU head coach Ed DeChellis used to say, “my father said the grass is always greener on the other side but you still have to mow it.”

Marky Billson

Kudos to Erik Ainge. The one-time Tennessee Volunteers quarterback has had his sports talk show, rated as the 17th best mid-major sports talk show of in the country by Barrett Sports Media, picked up in the Tri-Cities market.

As such, Ainge interviewed both ETSU football coach Randy Sanders and Buccaneers’ head men’s basketball coach Steve Forbes during his first week heard over the air in the Tri-Cities.

Additionally, his interview with Forbes has the community buzzing with excitement, as he spoke glowingly about the Tri-Cities area and ETSU athletic program.

But Forbes also was responsible enough to mention that he wasn’t married to the program. So while Buccaneers fans have focused on his “I love it here” sentiments in the interview, they might best remember Ed DeChellis used to say the same thing to me when he was the ETSU coach.

DeChellis, shown here coaching the Bucs, has been Navy’s head coach since 2011. Ironically, one of his first recruits to ETSU was Navy transfer Greg Stephens, who led the Bucs in scoring in 1998 and 1999.

And just as DeChellis interviewed at Duquesne and College of Charleston during his seven-year stint in Johnson City before leaving for Penn State, Forbes has interviewed at two programs during his ETSU tenure, New Mexico and Arkansas.

It’s not that Forbes deserves blame for interviewing with the Lobos and Razorbacks. He doesn’t. Who would deny someone else from a higher paying position in their field with more exposure?

It’s that when these interviews are in the public’s memory, and for that matter when the full context of Forbes’ statement to Ainge is essentially saying that ETSU is great but there are better places out there, it’s pretty hard not to think Bucs fans have an inferiority complex and these comments are just a bit hollow.

For instance, Forbes mentions Gregg Marshall saying “you don’t mess with happy.”

A contributing factor to Marshall’s happiness is he is one of the highest paid coaches in college basketball, making $3.5 million annually from Wichita State.

So sure, ETSU President Brian Noland is the best basketball president there is . . . until the major conferences start calling with their seven figure annual salaries.

This said, it is likely Forbes’ tenure at ETSU isn’t even at the halfway point. He’ll be 56 when the next round of major colleges start looking for coaches; long in the tooth for many programs, something he even touched upon in the interview.

His publicly snapping at me for asking if he played M’laden Armus with a concussion in the 2019 Southern Conference Tournament when all evidence strongly implied he did, rather than giving an answer proving he didn’t or stating he didn’t realize it at the time, wasn’t a good look for him, either. Would an athletic director want to hire someone if he thinks he’ll receive a similar response for a similar line of questioning?

Forbes’ $650,000 annual salary will keep all but major conference programs away, the show cause penalty he suffered as a one-time Bruce Pearl assistant and Forbes’ preference for junior college transfers will likely limit other opportunities, and it’s not like his alma mater Southern Arkansas, will take him away like Penn State lured DeChellis from ETSU in 2003 or North Carolina State nabbed Les Robinson in 1990.

One has to go back to Sonny Smith’s departure to Auburn in 1978 to find an ETSU head men’s basketball coach that left the Buccaneers for a school that wasn’t his alma mater.

No, it’s not impossible. Mike Young went to Virginia Tech from Wofford last year at the roughly same age Forbes will be next March.

Young was 16–16 in his first season at VPI after the Hokies had posted four straights seasons of 20 or more victories.

But Young was returning to his native southwest Virginia.

One could speculate. IF Forbes would like to go back to his native Iowa, statements on the ETSU community and airline travel be damned, and IF the Bucs would return to the NCAA Tournament next season, and IF Iowa State continues to slump next season, and IF the Cyclones decided they wanted to buy out the last four years of Steve Prohm’s contract, and IF ISU decided they wanted to go the same direction they did when they hired Prohm (a successful coach from a mid-major program in the south) and not a different way, and IF Iowa State was willing to take a chance on a coach of Forbes’ age when most major men’s basketball coaches hired after 55 are not successful unless they’ve already proven themselves at a major program, then, yes, maybe Steve Forbes could leave ETSU.

But that’s a lot of ifs.

And that’s good for ETSU. Fans who can remember the “Glory Days” of the 1990s have always dreamed of the Buccaneers returning to the Top 25, and with Forbes in place for the next decade or so one might imagine the Bucs reviving such glories and becoming a mid-major basketball powerhouse with more emphasis on “major” than “mid.”

Things have consistently been looking up for Steve Forbes during his five-year tenure at ETSU.

Which explains why Forbes was speaking so glowingly of his lot at ETSU. It really isn’t a bad one.

It’s just he didn’t say he was committed to making ETSU the next Gonzaga, other potential suitors be damned.

And Forbes might want to realize at this stage of his career that might be his best chance of making a mark in the college basketball world.

Follow Marky Billson on Medium, You Tube, and Twitter, and listen to Ainge’s interview with Forbes here.