Has Cronyism Compromised Integrity of CSUN Job Search?

This is the tale of three towns that got milk but no men’s basketball coaches at their colleges.

For a few more days, anyhow.

It’s also a story about their approaches to finding suitable people for the jobs. The process should be fair and equitable, as required by federal and state labor laws, but one of the three schools seems to have forgotten that.

Let’s start with the basics: Over the past few weeks, Cal State Northridge and Ventura and Oxnard colleges have been searching for men’s basketball coaches.

The position became vacant at Northridge in March, when Pete Cassidy was fired after guiding the team for 25 seasons. Paul Bubb, then the interim athletic director and now firmly entrenched minus the “interim,” did the deed.

At Ventura, the job was opened because Virgil Watson held the post for only one season as an emergency interim hire after Phil Mathews left to take over the program at the University of San Francisco.

The walk-on coaching position at Oxnard, held the past three seasons by Ron McClurkin, was upgraded to a full-time teaching and coaching position and therefore was required to be opened.

Essentially, Watson and McClurkin had to reapply for their own jobs. Neither said they were bothered by the process.

“I understand that they are trying to keep it a fair process for everybody,” said Watson, who coached the Pirates to the state title. “They are going to hire the best candidate.”

All of the schools formed committees to screen applicants and select the strongest ones according to specified criteria. Because of affirmative action guidelines, the committees are expected to treat all applicants the same.

Once the committees choose the finalists--normally three to five people who sometimes are ranked in order of preference--the lists are presented to school officials who either accept or reject them.

If the list is accepted, a high-ranking school administrator interviews the finalists and ultimately hires one. At Ventura, for instance, the school president conducts the final interviews and recommends a candidate for approval by the Ventura County Community College District board.

McClurkin was interviewed Tuesday by the Oxnard committee and Watson will be interviewed Friday by the Ventura committee.

The process at Northridge is supposed to be similar but its integrity has come under fire.

Last week, Bubb rejected a list of five final candidates submitted to him by the six-person search committee. He said Wednesday that the committee had not followed the procedures and instructions he had outlined. When the committee complied, an applicant named Joe O’Brien had been added to the group.

O’Brien, 41, is Bubb’s former basketball teammate at Monmouth College in Illinois. His last coaching job was at Lincoln College, an Illinois junior college, from 1990-95. O’Brien is now an insurance salesman.

He is scheduled to be interviewed Friday, the last finalist to visit Northridge this week. The others are Mike Miller, coach at Los Angeles City; Bobby Braswell, top assistant at Oregon; Bobby Castagna, an assistant at UC Santa Barbara, and Percy Carr, coach at San Jose City.

Bubb denies that he unduly influenced the committee.

“[O’Brien’s] name was not on that [original] list,” Bubb said. “But there was a person [Mark Bernson, a New Mexico State assistant] on that list that the committee wanted to take off . . . . I stand by the procedures that were outlined to the committee.”

Maybe so, but the series of events leaves plenty of room for conjecture.

Was the committee incompetent? Not according to Bubb, who said the group performed well despite not having followed procedures.

Was O’Brien truly among the top candidates, considering the caliber of the other finalists? There were about 35 people who applied for the job, including some with Division I head-coaching experience.

Also, what’s the point of forming a search and screening committee when someone can unilaterally alter the process?

That’s exactly what committee members must be wondering. One committee member said that the panel followed proper procedures.

The member also said that the committee originally winnowed the list of applicants to about 10 or 12 and then eliminated about three more people. From the last seven names, the committee gave Bubb a list of five finalists, ranked in order of preference. Bubb requested that the candidates not be ranked although the committee member said that the group unanimously agreed to do so.

O’Brien was not among the top 10 candidates.

“Paul reconvened the committee based on the premise that we had not followed the rules,” the member said. “He did it under false pretense.”

The member said that Bubb added O’Brien’s name to the list of finalists.

Whether O’Brien actually benefits from what seems to be preferential treatment from Bubb appears in doubt. Jeanette Mann, director of affirmative action at Northridge, said she has never heard of anyone being hired by the school who wasn’t recommended by a search and screening committee.

But it goes to show that, even in this age of political correctness and legions of watchdogs, in some cases it’s still not what you know but who you know.