Update: Jim Christian himself denies the rumors via textual message: "Nothing is official."
Update 2: Believe whatever source you want, but DJ Cooper tweeted to somebody that Jim Christian is his new coach. So, OK.
CBS is going hard on this confirmation that current TCU coach Jim Christian, formerly of the Kent State Golden Flashes, is going to take the vacant Ohio Bobcats basketball job left by John Groce this past week.
Talk about one out of left field. His name was floated out there this week but I thought it was kind of a joke, and not a hilarious one — but rather a joke that your office coworker tells you and you fake laughing because everybody likes being happy.
Guess we'll have to wait for confirmation from the schools but Christian is obviously a man who OHIO fans enjoyed ribbing the man, even though his KSU teams had some success against the Bobcats: Kent State was 10-5 under Christian against OHIO.
Right now I don't see the fit, especially since Christian is taking a team into the Big XII next year. Maybe he smells the smoke emanating from his chair in Fort Worth. He finally had a winning season with TCU this year but who knows how good they'll be next year with their top two productive seniors graduating and then entering the Big XII. To go from that team to the one in Athens would smack of an opportunistic money grab. This could go very well or this might be a true implosion.
What I find to be truly ironic is how Kent State managed to maintain success before and after Christian: they promoted from within and went from assistant to assistant even as they took other jobs. Jim Christian was replaced by Geno Ford at Kent State and you'd think that OHIO would follow this tried-and-true model in a conference known for being poached by other conferences. And Geno's younger brother Dustin Ford was the purported players' favorite to be the new head coach, but instead his seat looks to be filled by Christian, suddenly a "flashy" hire.
On the bright side? If this is a true story, the MAC can say they lured away a Big XII coach.