Desmond Oliver Fired as ETSU Head Men’s Basketball Coach

It simply had to happen

Marky Billson

It’s refreshing Desmond Oliver is no longer the head coach at ETSU.

Refreshing not in that a man has lost his job. But refreshing in that ETSU’s historic demeanor of telling everyone everything is sensational when it isn’t, so prevalent under former athletic directors David Mullins and Scott Carter, may at last be coming to a close.

Oliver probably wouldn’t have been fired if either of those former athletic directors, both hired because of their internal ties within the athletic department (Carter got his start working in athletics under Mullins) and for little other reason, were still on the job.

Because they never fired coaches. When Murry Bartow, after inheriting a turn-key team to the NCAA Tournament in 2003, followed a conference championship season in his first season with a 10–19 record in his second, he was actually given an extension.

Another Bartow fact. After taking ETSU to the NCAA Tournament with the team he inherited from Ed DeChellis in 2004, his next two teams combined to lose 32 games splitting time in the Southern and less-prestigious Atlantic Sun Conferences. He stayed on for another nine years.

In baseball and softball, the Buccaneers could lose on an annual basis and the coaches would keep their jobs.

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