Insightful Rams coach Miles sheds light on debate over MWC coach of year

Their teams shared the regular-season Mountain West Conference championship, so it seems only truth, justice and commissioner Craig Thompson's way that coaches Dave Rose of Brigham Young and Steve Fisher of San Diego State share the coach of the year honor, too, as was announced Monday.

Either that, or chads were hanging.

There's a panel that supposedly votes on these matters, and when the results were tabulated, and if it really was a tie, then a panel member should be added or subtracted to make it an odd number. 

That way, media and fans would have something to argue about until Thursday, when the MWC tournament heats up at the Thomas & Mack Center.

As much as one would like to muster a debate about Wednesday's play-in game between Wyoming and Texas Christian, at this point, that would pretty much be a waste of muster, not to mention carbon dioxide.

But how does one quantify who the best coach really is, anyway?

Is it the guy who wins the most games? Recruits the best players? Calls timeouts when timeouts are called for? Returns the most phone calls from the media?

It's enough to make Miami Heat players cry. Then again, so is a loss to the Bulls.

The first place to go in the Mountain West when seeking answers to questions such as these is Fort Collins, Colo., where an insightful and humorous guy named Tim Miles coaches basketball.

For how much longer is anybody's guess. This year, Miles took a bunch of Rammies, as he calls his Rams players, and turned them into winners and possible NCAA Tournament qualifiers -- just three years after they lost 16 conference games and didn't win any.

After the Rammies upset Wyoming in the 2008 play-in game, Miles told the media that after getting shut out in the MWC regular season, he could relate to how Walter Mondale felt after being full-court pressed by Ronald Reagan in the 1984 presidential election, when Mondale collected 13 electoral votes to Reagan's 525.

The assembled media, perhaps under the impression that Mondale was a power forward from Pensacola Junior College that Bob Huggins was having a difficult time getting into school, stared blankly at Miles, as if he was Dennis Miller making esoteric references on "Monday Night Football." It is a known fact that a Lon Kruger quote will get you only so far at this time of the year.

A Tim Miles quip or one-liner, on the other hand, could get you almost to Dayton for next week's NCAA Tournament, which is where his Rammies might be headed if they can summon a little more Ram toughness here this week.

"When I look at coach of the year, I look at who puts their team together with really good talent and then how they coached that talent," Miles said on the MWC conference call Monday morning, before the awards were announced. "It's easy to be an underdog and coach the crap out of 'em."

I think this was Miles' way of saying he did not deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as Rose and Fisher. While I would agree with that, at least in this particular year, it's also easy to be an underdog and ... well, to use his words, coach like crap. So if you want to breathe Miles' name into the equation, breathe away.

This was Insightful Miles speaking rather than Humorous Miles, and although I prefer Humorous Miles, Insightful Miles makes a pretty good point: That a successful college basketball coach is one who can wed the ability to recruit players with the ability to coach them, thereby creating a perfect marriage.

And when that criteria is applied, the conversation begins and ends with the honorable justices of the peace Rose and Fisher, never a coach or co-coach of the year until Monday, which seems blasphemous and a downright travesty.

"I think that's how coaches think, and I think Dave and Steve are the guys who have done that," Miles said.

Insightful Tim Miles was back at practice, probably coaching the crap out of Andy Ogide and the Rammies, when the awards were announced.

Humorous Tim Miles might have suggested that after they sawed the coach of the year plaque in half, Walter Mondale be summoned to sweep up the sawdust.

Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.