I'm a little confused...

So, Pat Knight has been hired as the next coach of Texas Tech's men's basketball program. Sean Sutton has been hired as the next coach of the Oklahoma State men's basketball program. Tony Bennett has been hired as the next head coach at Washington State's men's basketball program.

The only issue is that none of the three schools have openings for those jobs. All three are currently filled by the fathers of the new coaches: Bob Knight, Eddie Sutton, and Dick Bennett - three great coaches, all of whom still have years left on their current contracts, all three of whom are still being pretty successful.

Incredible.

I just don't understand this. Admittedly, there's been a movement of late for leaders in business to ensure that they have a succession plan in place long before they make their way out of the door, but this seems a fairly new development - or at least a weird fluke of timing for these three - in college basketball. Sure, it's been done a couple of times before - Joey Meyer following Ray Meyer at DePaul and Murry Bartow following Gene Bartow at UAB - but those two were disasters.

The argument made by Gregg Doyel in his column is that these three great - but old - coaches would start seeing a drop in their recruiting, as Gene Keady at Purdue did, if a successor who would keep continuity with the program wasn't named. Other coached would tell potential recruits that the old coaches would be out the door before the new player finished his time, hence the new player simply wouldn't come to those schools. He also writes that these three schools aren't traditional basketball powerhouses and wouldn't be able to draw the great coaches that a larger program could - Kentucky, Lousivlle, NC, Kansas, Indiana (dear god, please fire Mike Davis) - and the schools should do everything possible to guarantee that the current success at the schools continues.

My biggest problem here is that there are a ton of talented, young coaches out there who would give anything to have a shot at these jobs when they open up, coaches who have paid their dues at smaller schools and have worked their ways up through the ranks as it's been done for decades and decades. None of the three coaches-in-waiting have had any head coaching experience at any level. Each has interned under a great coach, admittedly, but they're going to be rookies when they step into the job.

I wish them each luck - well, maybe not Sean Sutton, but that's a beef I've had with his daddy since he was at Kentucky and left their program in a shambles that Pitino had to come in and clean up.