Georgia Tech's New Basketball Coach Has a Strict "No Golfing" Policy for His Assistant Coaches

AJC – New Georgia Tech coach Josh Pastner is not much for idle time. As a walk-on at Arizona, he graduated in 2 ½ years without AP credit or summer school, he said. He took 33 credit hours in his fifth semester to complete his degree before going on to earn his master’s by the end of his first semester of his senior year, he said. “So I’ve always been a driven guy,” he said. Perhaps not surprisingly, Pastner doesn’t golf, finding the four or five hours spent on a course to be an unproductive use of time. He wants his assistants to believe the same. “My first question to anyone I (might) hire is, ‘Do you golf?’” Pastner said this week. “If they say, ‘Yes,’ you can’t work for me, because that means five hours on a Sunday or on a Saturday. Can’t. Don’t want it. That’s for my assistant coaches. Any of my assistant coaches, if they’re golfers, not working for me.” 

There’s a lot to be said for golf, or recreational activity in general. Among other things, it can be useful to clear the mind and spend time with friends or family. Other coaches, notably North Carolina’s Roy Williams, have managed to find time for golf while still running successful programs. And even Pastner acknowledged his non-stop approach has its flaws. He said that, when he’s at home, he is often thinking about work and not completely engaged with his family. “It’s not always the best way to be at times, because you just go and go and go, but that’s just who I am,” he said. He shared the story of how he missed his high-school prom to spend the night in a gym working on his game, an example of the driven mindset that led him to be tabbed a prodigy coach and the head coach at Memphis at 31 and on his second job, at Tech, at 38. And, to be clear, Pastner wasn’t saying that an assistant coach can never be seen on a golf course ever again. Regardless, those who play regularly will have to find work elsewhere. “I know there are going to be some fund-raising (golf events) you’ve got to drive around, but I couldn’t handle five hours,” he said. “I couldn’t handle it and I wouldn’t want my staff to do it, either.”

Calling all assistant coaches! Calling all prospective AC’s! Would you be interested in working for an ACC hoops program? We’ve got a state of the art, brand spanking new athletic facility and we’re located smack dab in the middle of a great recruiting region. The only caveat is the head coach has to approve of all of your hobbies. You golf? There’s the door. Have you seen Titanic? Adios muchacho. Did the Braves game go into extra innings? How did you even know that? You should have been headed to the parking lot before the stretch. Just know that if any of your hobbies last longer than the length of a basketball game, well then they’re pretty much out. And don’t you dare lie to Josh Pastner about it. If he finds out you’re having tantric sex with your wife, he’ll sneak into your house, shove a finger up your ass, and milk your prostate so you guys can get back to a heated discussion about on ball screens. Sorry but not sorry. He didn’t skip his prom to work on his game so you could do the Flying Squirrel in your wife’s Lotus Patch for an hour when a well placed digit can get the job done before a 30 second shot clock expires.

Good god. This guy’s a lunatic. Although between the Memphis guys I know who all warned me that this was coming when Tech hired him and stuff like this:

I probably shoulda seen this coming. Oh well. If he can micromanage GT back into the NCAA tourney again, I’ll consider cutting out some fucking swear words too. Being a lunatic coach is only bad if you’re losing and he hasn’t done that yet so I’m all aboard the crazy train.