Out in Twitter-space, members of the national and local media are "tweeting away" with opinions on Penn's decision to fire Glen Miller mid-season. For example, even ESPN's Dick Vitale chimed in and commented, "Penn just fired Coach Miller- this NBA mentality is absurd in colleege hoops-no place for mid -season firings!"But more directly pertinent to Cornell, some journalists are already speculating that Penn would seek to replace Miller with Big Red coach, Steve Donahue. For example, Jeff Goodman of FoxSports writes, "You would think Cornell's Steve Donahue - a former 10-year Penn asst. - would be at top of Quakers list." We respectfully disagree.
For several reasons, we do not believe that there is mutual interest between Penn and Donahue.
From Donahue's perspective, Penn is no l0nger a very attractive position. First, Penn is a total rebuilding project and is at near rock bottom of Division I (RPI 345 out of 347). Second, the respective jobs offer a comparable salary and a similar level of prestige. Further, Penn is in no better position as a program to advance in the NCAA Tournament and compete on the national stage than Cornell. Thus, the move makes very little sense with the noted exception that Donahue and his family are originally from the Philadelphia area.
From Penn's perspective, the Quakers would be setting a very poor precedent by hiring its second basketball coach within the league in the last five years. Penn plucked Miller from Brown University four years ago. By poaching on Cornell, the Quakers would be implicitly opening up their entire Athletics Departments' coaching staff to poaching from the rest of the Ivy League. This is almost certainly a slippery slope that Penn would unlikely wish to create for itself.
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