Top coach in state?

[quietfan 233]

Sorry this is about swimming, but I thought more people would see it here. Mods, move it to the swimming forum if you like, but I hope people can see it here for a little while.

http://www.al.com/sports/mobileregister/pf...7690.xml&coll=3

David Marsh meet John Wooden.

Please allow me to introduce the greatest collegiate coach nobody has ever heard of to the man considered the greatest collegiate coach of all time (Wooden won 10 NCAA titles at UCLA, including seven in a row).

In case you haven't figured it out by now, Marsh is the swimming and diving coach at Auburn University. His women's team won the NCAA championship a week ago and the men won last Saturday for the fourth straight year. It was the third time Marsh has won both the men's and women's championships and it now gives him his 10th overall NCAA title. He has won 12 SEC men's titles -- including 10 in a row -- and four straight women's conference titles. He also recently passed Bear Bryant for the most titles won by a coach at a school in Alabama.

A year ago, Auburn kept him from leaving for Stanford with promises of an Olympic-size swimming pool and a bump in salary to about $160,000 a year, plus bonuses. While that is the highest salary for a swimming coach in the NCAA, it's less than half what Al Borges makes as Auburn's offensive coordinator. Considering Tommy Tuberville's salary is inching toward $2.5 million, well, you can do the math.

In the parlance of football, he'd be making $5 million a year. He is Steve Spurrier, Bobby Bowden, Pete Carroll and Mack Brown wrapped into one.

In basketball vernacular, he is Mike Krzyzewski and Pat Summitt. Coach K has been to 10 Final Fours and has three NCAA titles. Summitt has six national titles and has been to 16 Final Fours.

Certainly, one can make a strong argument that the competition is tougher in the other sports. Still, the idea of being the dominant NCAA program in America at landlocked Auburn is almost unimaginable.

Marsh had done the impossible and it's nice that he's finally getting some recognition, although he's a long way from attaining rock star status.

Coaches like Tuberville and Coach K don't ever have Marsh's kind of problems. They have private planes at their disposal and more handlers than Paris Hilton.

Marsh isn't exactly unknown in Lee County, where he was an All-American swimmer and has been the head coach since 1990. However, if Tuberville and Marsh were to show up at a local establishment, whom do you think would be seated first, have the best table and not be in serious danger of having to pick up the check?

I talked to Marsh the other day in the wake of the women's title and on the eve of the men's final. I asked which school -- whether it be Arizona, Stanford, Texas or Florida -- he was concerned about most.

Auburn was his answer in a very Tiger Woods-like response.

"We're most concerned about our own team," Marsh said. "If we swim well, we'll win."

By the way, that wasn't cockiness or arrogance. Just the truth. The great ones always battle themselves more than the field.

A year ago, the buzz in Auburn was that Marsh had coached his last meet for the Tigers. Stanford, which has a blue-chip reputation of emphasizing sports other than football and basketball, made a serious run at Marsh. He visited the picturesque campus and gave it some serious consideration, much like he had Florida a decade earlier.

Marsh hedged at first because Jay Jacobs, the fifth athletic director he had dealt with at Auburn, was a tenderfoot and he wasn't sure the commitment was there. However, after days of negotiations, he decided to remain, signing an eight-year contract.

"I love Auburn and never wanted to leave," Marsh said. "Auburn is a special place and does special things to people."

One reason Auburn is so special is because of people like Marsh, a luminous coach who has beaten the odds and made Auburn the best in the country in swimming.

Auburn hasn't won a national championship in football since 1957. However, in swimming and diving, the small campus in Lee County is the center of the universe. Perhaps some of Marsh's magic can rub off on Tuberville as the Tigers get ready for the 2006 season.

[saniflush 0]

I vote leave it here for a while.....The lurkers in dark pink will start having fits.