They Inherit the Wins

The jerseys say Oklahoma State, Texas Tech and Washington State.

They might as well read Sutton and Son, Knight and Son and Bennett and Son, because when each school’s basketball coach decides it is time to step down, his son is slated to succeed him.

At Oklahoma State, Coach Eddie Sutton’s son Sean, 37 -- named “head coach designate” in 2004 -- has taken over for the rest of the season and perhaps beyond, as his father seeks treatment for alcoholism following an accident and a drunk-driving charge.

At Texas Tech, Bob Knight’s son Pat, 35, signed a contract last year to eventually replace him. Washington State Coach Dick Bennett’s son Tony, 36, has a similar deal, and his father is hinting this season might be his last.

Call it nepotism, or call it the family business: People paving the way for their kin is part of American society, from politics’ Bushes and Kennedys to NASCAR’s Pettys and Earnhardts.

Yet the practice of hiring offspring to high-profile and sometimes well-compensated positions in college coaching raises issues about circumventing nepotism policies and fair-hiring practices, particularly at state universities.

At least 19 states have laws that restrict nepotism to some degree, according to the Center for Ethics in Government, and all 50 states either prohibit or suggest guidelines for conflict-of-interest situations.

Even at most private universities, employment policies address such issues, typically prohibiting workers from directly supervising or evaluating the work of a close relative.

When it comes to hiring coaches, those policies are sometimes skirted.

“There seems to be an exempt status for intercollegiate athletics that creates a double standard with the policies and practices of the rest of the institution,” said John Moore, a former president of Indiana State who addresses ethics for new presidents in seminars he coordinates for the American Assn. of State Colleges and Universities.

“I think it’s an unfortunate practice, and if it’s a trend it’s even more unfortunate.”

Though it has become increasingly common in academics for universities to relax nepotism policies to allow a husband and wife to be on the same faculty, even in the same department, some former presidents said allowing exemptions in athletics is not good policy.

“I think it can be more dangerous in athletics than other areas -- in part because the high-profile nature means you put a very special pressure on these relationships,” said former Florida State president Talbot D’Alemberte, who allowed Bobby Bowden to hire his son Jeff as offensive coordinator, making Bowden one of the cadre of elite college football coaches who employ their offspring, including Penn State’s Joe Paterno, South Carolina’s Steve Spurrier and USC’s Pete Carroll.

“It would be better not to do it, in my judgment,” D’Alemberte said.

The issue exposes what Adam Bellow, author of the book “In Praise of Nepotism,” and himself the son of Nobel laureate Saul Bellow, called “a contradiction in our attitudes.”

“Nepotism is something Americans dislike in the abstract. They don’t like the idea of it, because it seems un-American,” Bellow said. “But on a case-by-case basis, most Americans are really fine with it. Americans know the ultimate test of a nepotistic succession is performance. ...

“If your team doesn’t win enough games, no one will keep you on no matter who your father is.”

The urge to hire a relative has various roots, and can involve all sorts of kin.

At Duke, two of Coach Mike Krzyzewski’s three daughters work in the basketball program’s offices, one in external relations and one as a counselor.

Washington women’s basketball Coach June Daugherty’s top assistant is her husband. Iowa men’s Coach Steve Alford’s father was his assistant at Southwest Missouri State. In football, Arizona Coach Mike Stoops was once his brother Bob’s defensive coordinator at Oklahoma and now employs their brother Mark as his.

Knight is straightforward about the reasons he wanted Pat to succeed him.

“I don’t want to ... have it turned over to somebody who has no idea what the hell they’re doing,” the elder Knight told reporters before the season.

Bennett -- quick to point out that his daughter, Kathi Bennett, spent five years as Indiana women’s basketball coach without ever working for him -- acknowledged that helping Tony was one of the reasons he took the job at Washington State.

“I don’t know that I would have come out of retirement,” said Bennett, the former Wisconsin coach who had stepped down in 2000, citing the unrelenting demands of the job. “That was a big factor.”

In virtually every case, there is the emotional pull of a family bond.

“I just wanted him on my side,” USC Coach Pete Carroll said of his son Brennan, 26, the Trojans’ tight end coach. “It’s extraordinary. I know now why it’s so common.”

Some believe it should be relatively rare, particularly when it comes to the coveted top jobs.

“My bottom line is I don’t have an issue with capable people being hired anywhere, regardless of color and last name,” said Floyd Keith, executive director of the Black Coaches Assn. “But if you do in-house hirings in Division I-A football and, say, three out of 119 jobs stay in the family, that doesn’t give too many opportunities for anybody to break through.”

In many cases -- involving faculty and staff as well as coaches -- universities make exceptions to their own policies, working around rules that say employees should not directly supervise their relative, or make decisions about their hiring, salary or termination.

Most exceptions have been based on a judgment that the relative is qualified, administrators said.

At Oklahoma State, university President David Schmidly -- previously president at Texas Tech when Bob Knight was hired -- has stood by the agreement that Sean Sutton, a former player and 13-year assistant coach, will eventually replace his father despite Eddie Sutton’s alcohol-related incident.

“We have all the confidence in the world in Sean. ... That is why we made the decision two years ago to name Sean as head coach designate,” Schmidly said. “We know our program and our players will be in great hands.”

Earlier, Schmidly said Oklahoma State weighed the decision to name the younger Sutton the next coach carefully because of policy issues.

“You have to have good reason, because you didn’t advertise the position. It becomes a [human resources] issue,” Schmidly said. “Should it be common? No. But we felt we had a very good reason. Coach Sutton was toward the end of his career, and in trying to recruit players it would come up.

“We wanted to keep him as long as we could and we didn’t want him at a disadvantage, and his son had done a superb job as associate coach.”

The Texas Tech board of regents approved the decision to announce Pat Knight as his father’s successor after Pat was courted by other schools.” There were no obstacles,” Bob Knight said.

But as is typical in cases where nepotism policies are in place, Pat Knight technically does not report to his father.

In approving Pat Knight’s hiring as an assistant in 2001, the Texas Tech regents stipulated that “all personnel actions, compensation decisions, performance evaluations, merit increases and all other administrative decisions will fall under the direct purview of the Texas Tech University Athletic Director.”

Gerald Myers, the Texas Tech athletic director and himself a former coach, says he doesn’t see any problem with the policy, as long as the person is qualified, adding: “Pat is.”

D’Alemberte, who allowed offensive coordinator Jeff Bowden to report to defensive coordinator Mickey Andrews instead of Bowden’s father, said such arrangements sometimes “paper over the problem.”

Former UCLA coach Jim Harrick, whose son, Jim Jr., later worked for him at two schools, called the practice of skirting nepotism rules “kind of a sham.”

“We got around ‘em at Rhode Island and we got around it at Georgia,” he said. “They tried to hide it in some kind of way, but they did it because they wanted to do it.”

When a school is trying to hire a prominent coach, allowing him to hire his son as an assistant is sometimes part of the negotiating. Bennett sought to get an assurance his son would replace him before he took the Washington State job. Athletic Director Jim Sterk told Bennett he couldn’t guarantee anything, but that he knew Tony was “an up-and-comer” and he would make an assessment later. In two years, with the approval of the university president, the succession plan was official.

“There was, I call it, a prenuptial agreement,” Sterk said.

But as in marriages, sometimes things go bad.

Four years after Georgia lured Harrick by allowing him to hire Jim Jr. as an assistant in 1999, Harrick resigned amid a scandal that centered on the conduct of his son, including a finding of academic fraud in a class taught by the younger Harrick.

University President Michael Adams, a friend of Harrick’s when both were at Pepperdine, was sharply criticized for allowing the exception.

“I don’t think it is a good idea, and I’ve learned some of that the hard way,” Adams said. “We sometimes do things even when we have reservations because of all the pressures.”

The elder Harrick still defends the practice.

“There’s a million lawyers whose children are lawyers and a lot of doctors whose children are doctors,” he said. “I think that’s the greatest thing in the whole world. I would lean toward that’s the way life should be. I’m so happy for Pat Knight and Tony Bennett and the Suttons. They’ve worked hard, and they’re ready.”

Ready or not, the level of scrutiny is often intense.

At Florida State and Penn State, the sons of Bowden and Paterno have been touchstones for criticism.

Last season, after the Florida State offense struggled in a 34-7 loss to Florida, a banner hung near the stadium read “Fire Jeff Bowden.”

“It irritates me, as soon as we lose a ballgame, [people say], ‘Let’s fire Jeff Bowden,’ ” said Bobby Bowden, who wondered aloud after a triple-overtime loss to Penn State in this year’s Orange Bowl what would get the blame, his age or his son.

Jeff Bowden -- whose brothers Tommy and Terry have both been successful head coaches -- said he has found ways to cope. “I have just learned to shut my eyes and close my ears,” he said.

Lou Holtz unsuccessfully sought to have his son, Skip, designated as his successor when he was hired as South Carolina’s football coach in 1998.

“We were hiring Lou, not Skip,” said Mike McGee, the athletic director at the time. “To tie up the succession in such a way, we would in fact be hiring Skip, and we couldn’t do that. I was not prepared to make any such recommendation to the president of the university.”

Instead, Skip was hired as offensive coordinator and given a long-term contract with a large buyout clause to assure he would at least be considered as a candidate to replace his father if he left. Officially, he reported to McGee because of nepotism prohibitions -- a provision McGee admits was not formally practiced.

“No, to be honest,” he said. “We met every once in a while and I reminded them there was a reporting line, simply touching that base.”

In 2003, after a 63-17 loss to Clemson ended a 5-7 season, Holtz took control of the offense himself, eliminating the job title of offensive coordinator -- and essentially demoted his own son.

By the end of the 2004 season, Holtz had announced his retirement, clearing the way for Spurrier. Skip Holtz, who had given up a head coaching job at Connecticut to work for his father, was named head coach at East Carolina.

Spurrier, in turn, hired his son, Steve Spurrier Jr., to coach the receivers at South Carolina.

The younger Spurrier worked for his father at Florida and with the Washington Redskins, with stops at Oklahoma under Bob Stoops and Arizona under Mike Stoops.

“Mike Stoops’ hiring me at Arizona was important. I needed someone who knew me to hire me outside of my dad,” he said. “... But how’d I end up coaching at Florida, at 27? I knew the right people.”

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Times staff writer Chris Dufresne contributed to this report.