Sneed Can Read Between the Lines

If John Sneed hasn’t seen the handwriting on the wall, he’s seen the small print on Page 23 of the Feb. 12 NCAA News. It is a classified ad, posted by his school’s athletic department, and it announces that the school is now accepting applications for “future coaching openings.”

He knows Cal State Fullerton isn’t looking for a baseball coach.

Sneed also has heard the declarations of his first-year athletic director, Bill Shumard, who says such things as “Men’s basketball at Cal State Fullerton has to be our No. 1 revenue sport” and “There has been a history of success here in men’s basketball” and “I don’t think qualifying for postseason play in men’s basketball is an unrealistic goal. Precedent shows that we’ve been there three times in the last 12, 13 years.”

Sneed’s record shows no trips to any postseason basketball tournament, NCAA or NIT, in three-plus seasons, plus a 53-57 mark in three-plus seasons, plus a 10-14 overall mark in this present plus-and-minus season.

One more stat, crucially vital to Sneed:

His three-year contract expires next month.

There has been no talk of an extension, no promise of anything from Shumard except the standard, press release-ready, “My agreement with John is to evaluate his situation after the season.”

The sounds of silence have been burning Sneed’s ears for weeks. But that’s only around Sneed’s office and along the corridors of power inside the Fullerton athletic department. Outside, away from the palace, there is intrigue--speculation that grows louder with every Titan defeat.

Does Sneed have to win the Big West tournament to save his job?

Or is he gone already?

Before passing sentence, there’s a case to be made for the defense, although, typically, the defendant declines to make it. The pitfalls of coaching basketball at Cal State Fullerton are the same for Sneed as they were for Bobby Dye and George McQuarn--two coaches who won, stressed immensely, burned out and quit with no other jobs awaiting them. Along with Dye and McQuarn, Sneed could recite the litany--no recruiting budget, rickety old gym, tough conference, perpetually overcast weather due to the shadows cast by UCLA and USC.

But Sneed, being Sneed, won’t. Not for publication, anyway. “OK, this is off the record” is a speed bump Sneed slips into an interview at 90-second intervals. And off the record, Sneed can be as pointed and as opinionated as the next Big West coach, including the one still ducking and jabbing in Las Vegas. But when the war is waged on the record, Sneed turns conscientious objector. This is his problem, his burden, his dilemma. He’ll deal with it his own way, which is to say, alone.

“It can be a very tough place to coach,” Sneed will begin, “but I wouldn’t want to share our shortcomings with everybody.” Maybe later, but not now, not with his career, in his mind, hanging in the balance.

“I’m in a very tough, peculiar situation,” he says.

Sneed got there, in large part, by his own doing. He raised expectations, twice, once by deeds, once by words, and at Fullerton, you know that can only lead to trouble.

Sneed became head coach under the most dire of circumstances. After resigning once, rescinding the resignation and re-resigning three weeks before the 1988-89 season, McQuarn left Fullerton in a breach, with no other choice than to throw the program to McQuarn’s top assistant, close its eyes and hope for the best.

Sneed did better than that. Out of the ashes, he assembled a Big West contender, finished 16-13 and reached the semifinals of the conference tournament. That inexplicable interim season earned Sneed a three-year contract.

It also earned him an act he would never be able to follow, his next three teams checking in at 13-16, 14-14 and the current 10-14 holding pattern.

“I agree, expectations went up for us,” Sneed says. “Several times, we had teams capable of winning 18, 17 games and instead wound up with 13 or 14. But at the same time, the quality of our schedule increased.

“Can you name a Big West team with a tougher schedule than ours?” Las Vegas, maybe. “We played UCLA this year,” Sneed points out. “Houston’s a pretty good team. Butler, on the road. We played a pretty respectable schedule.”

And a very respectable game against UCLA, perhaps the game of Fullerton’s season, an 86-80 near-miss in Pauley Pavilion.

“But a month down the road, all people know about that game is that is was an ‘L,’ ” Sneed laments.

Raised Expectations, Chapter II: When the rest of the Big West coaches were tabbing Fullerton for eighth place in 1992, Sneed shook his head and tried his hand in self-confidence raising. He called Joe Small the best shooting guard on the West Coast. He raved about new point guard Aaron Sunderland, who was going to run Sneed’s offense better than Wayne Williams--and, better still, wasn’t going to organize team mutinies against Sneed. He sang the praises of Agee Ward and Bruce Bowen. He hit all the high notes.

People believed Sneed. That’s what on-the-record will do for you. People kept waiting for Fullerton to make a move in a Big West finally removed from the specter of UNLV. The move never came, unless backward counts.

This Titan team has its flaws--there is no depth and very little defense, Sunderland runs hot and cold and often amok, Small went into a shooting funk in early January and hasn’t returned--but an elephant isn’t this school’s mascot for nothing. Around Fullerton, people don’t forget and right now, people around Fullerton want to know one thing:

If this team was so good in November, what’s it doing at 10-14 in February?

Or, to take it one query further, does 10-14 this year and 53-57 overall warrant another year and another contract?

There is a pause. A long pause.

Finally, Sneed replies. “I’m very comfortable with what I have accomplished,” he says, very carefully, “under the circumstances.”

Someday, Sneed says, he will discuss those circumstances. “You would not believe,” he insists. Someday, for the record, he promises to state his case, to tell us why the Sneed era at Cal State Fullerton is worth a continuance.

Someday, of course, could be too late.