Say hello to your next head coach at Northern Illinois. Welcome back to the MAC Jimmy C. This move by BC should have happened three years ago. Incredibly overrated as a coach and always has been. He ends his seven-year career at BC with a 78-132 record, 26-94 record in the ACC and no NCAA tournaments. He must have had some pictures of someone at BC to last that long and be truly awful.

19 years as a Division-One Head Basketball Coach and 0 NCAA Tournament wins.

Can't help but feel warm and fuzzy inside upon hearing this news. Where exactly is a good fit for this guy?

The Citadel. Or a prison team.

Can't wait to read the 281st edition of "Bobcat Attack argues about Jim Christian and if he should be vilified in Ohio history or not."

Most people on here will tell you that JC failed in his two years at OHIO. All you have to do is listen to players he coached at Ohio and know how terrible he was on and off the court.

Rick Pitino is not as old as you may think. Bet he gets a call.

I don't think JC was here long enough to be as bad as he is made out to be on this site. Had he been around for, say, four years, maybe the program would have headed down a bad direction. We only lost to Akron in conference in 2013 who was also really freaking good that year. The 2014 team, from my vantage point (which was all but a couple home games) played harder and more resiliently than any other team in the last 15 years, IMO. I don't buy for a second that he set Saul up for failure in his first year. There's no reason a senior class with two point guards and an NBA freak athlete should win only 10 games.

I don't see NIU being his next gig. He wants to get back to a "P"-level school and quickly, because of his age (56). So, he needs a well-stocked program like he had at Ohio. NIU ain't it; that's at least a five-year rebuilding project. Look for him to go to a program that makes a deep run in the NCAA then loses its coach to a bigger program. Winthrop might do that this year. So could WKU or Wright St.

Why did Ohio want him? Why did BC want him? Connections. He's been around enough that he knows somebody almost everywhere, so landing at a better quality program probably won't be too difficult for him.

Unfortunately, in hindsight, this is exactly what happened. With the team he inherited, Dale Bandy or Billy Hahn could have won the MAC regular season, and probably the conference tournament. Am sure the JC apologists will now pounce, but that’s my considered assessment, and I’m sticking with it.

The 2013 JC team ended up as a two seed in the regular season losing the tiebreaker to Akron. Even though some of us want to criticize JC, that Bobcat team was as close as any to winning a regular season title since Larry Hunter did it 27 years ago. Although I think the last few months of JC's time in Athens were not good. Some players were tired of his coaching style. JC will find another gig somewhere if he wants to coach.

One part of this discussion is what his compensation was;
1) Being BC is in the ACC I think it would be safe to say he was paid over $1.0M per. Unfortunately we will not know as BC is a private school.
2) Did he have any more time left on his contract which BC will be responsible for?
If he did not over spend in Boston, due to higher cost of living, he could have banked a good amount of change.
Looking ahead, if he does move from Boston to an area of the country that's more affordable he will make out.
I for one was never in favor of him being hired at Ohio. I think Shaus made a big mistake with that hire, as he did with Saul, 7 bad years really hurt our program.
Now that his record shows he struggled @ BC he will more than likely drop back to a non P5 program and a much lower compensation package.




GO BOBCATS

OK, I am sure Coach Christian will do just fine. Financially he was reported to have made about 1.3 million a year. Do the math for seven years at BC and I am sure he wasn't going paycheck to paycheck when he left Ohio. He certainly wasn't one of my favorite coaches, but the hatred some have for the man boggles my mind. He was an East Coast guy with an attitude, I hate to break the news to some folks out there but not everyone is going to like their coach. I have talked to lots of players in various sports who didn't particulalry want to socialize with their coaches. Not saying Coach Christian couldn't be a jerk at times, but if you think he's an outlier sorry to inform you that's pretty much par for the course. Actually Coach Christian was as approachable as any Bobcat coach I have ever interacted with at Bobcat events.

As for comparing him to Coach Hahn, now that is where it really gets ridiculous. Coach Hahn had Snoopy Graham and Dave Jamerson, two future NBA players on the squad at the same time and we finished in the MAC basement. Anyone of us who have played or coached at the high school level or beyond couldn't have done any worse than that. The man was as approachable as anyone off the course. As I made mention in the past, I would see him at Sunday Mass at Christ the King where he accompanied his wife. I don't believe he was Catholic, but was nice enough to accompany her. He was the picture of civility, chatting with people after church, holding the door for people etc.

However, he was unstable as a coach, losing control with officials and not being able to instruct his players at timeouts because he just plain lost it with some poor call that was made on the court. He may have pulled it together when he left Athens, but there is a special kind of inepetness that comes with finishing in the MAC basement with two future NBA players. Part of me didn't even want to weigh in on this, since I am so grateful for Coach Boals and the staff we have now, but the whole comparing Coach Christian to Coach Hahn was just a bridge too far for me not to comment.