There isn’t a shoe horn big enough in the SEC for the Vanderbilt head coach to get his shoe out of his mouth.
Second year head coach, James Franklin, has found himself in hot water after comments he made during a radio interview yesterday. When talking about coaching and recruiting, Franklin said he will not hire an assistant coach until he sees their wife. In his mind, if the assistant has landed a very attractive wife, that shows he has good recruiting skills.
“I’ve been saying it for a long time, I will not hire an assistant coach until I’ve seen his wife,” Franklin said in the interview. “If she looks the part, and she’s a D-1 recruit, then you got a chance to get hired. That’s part of the deal.
“There’s a very strong correlation between having the confidence, going up and talking to a woman, and being quick on your feet and having some personality and confidence and being fun and articulate, than it is walking into a high school and recruiting a kid and selling him.”
Some found this funny and others were not so amused. Of those on the latter was Vanderbilt’s Vice Chancellor of Athletics (too cool to call him Assistant AD?), who state that Franklin clearly made a mistake.
“I didn’t hear about the (comments) until (Thursday) and I have talked to Coach about it,” Williams said. “Coach is sorry that he made that statement. He’s issued an apology on Twitter. I’ve talked to him about how inappropriate his statements were and how offensive they could be to some people.
“He said he was really in a joking mode, if you like, and didn’t mean all of that. And I explained that’s a thing you don’t even joke about.”
And just to make it abundantly clear, Williams had to add in…
“None of those things are criteria for hiring at Vanderbilt.”
