Giacoletti 'resignation,' other thoughts

With regard to the big news of Ray Giacoletti's "resignation," the upcoming coaching search and MWC Basketball Tournament, a few thoughts ...

It seems like everybody in Uteville is dreaming about the possibility that former Stanford coach Mike Montgomery will be their new basketball coach. And it would be a coup for the Utes, even if he stuck around for just a few years. The question I have is, why would Montgomery, who turned 60 last week, want to leave a comfortable life in the Bay Area, where he's had a home for two decades with plenty of money from his NBA job at Golden State, to move to Salt Lake City and try to revive a once-proud college basketball program? If he does have an itch to get back into coaching, it'd be fun to see him in Utah ...

It's interesting how athletic directors usually don't want to fire coaches, so they try to get their coach to resign instead.

Obviously Giacoletti would have preferred to stick around at least another year to see if he could get more victories out of the players he recruited and didn't just resign because he didn't want to try anymore. But being a so-called "team player," he went along with Chris Hill's apparent suggestion to resign and did his best to say it was "my decision." That was unlike Ron McBride, who was asked to resign before the final game against BYU, but refused to, and was fired the Monday after the game, a 13-6 Ute victory ...

While Giacoletti's dismissal wasn't a surprise, the timing seemed strange, coming a day before the game against the school's biggest rival. If it was to happen before the end of the season, it seems like today would have made more sense. The guess from here is that the decision to let Giacoletti go had long since been made and the U. didn't want to take the chance of the Utes beating their rivals, like McBride did in 2002, thus making the announcement of Giacoletti's "resignation" two days later even more uncomfortable ...

For his final game, coach Giacoletti didn't wear his famous red "Giac-et" that he had worn to previous Utah-BYU games. I couldn't blame him, because he didn't need to call any more attention to himself under difficult circumstances. Instead he opted for a plain black suit and tie. That prompted a TV reporter to ask the tackiest question of the week, if not the year, when he said, "I can't help but noticing you're wearing black, is there some sort of symbolism there?" Although he probably wanted to scream, "Are you freaking kidding me?" Giacoletti just shrugged and said, "I was just pulling something out to wear."