We’ll start at the very beginning, a place where Doug Gottlieb absolutely does not want us to start.

In 1995-96, Doug Gottlieb was the starting point guard at Notre Dame, leading the Irish in assists, steals, and minutes played as a freshman. He also shot 32 percent from the field and 25 percent from beyond the arc on a team that went 9-18, finished last in its division of the Big East, and lost a February game to Manhattan by 21 points.

This would prove to be Gottlieb’s only season in South Bend, after he was discovered to have stolen a roommate’s credit card and racked up charges.

In the pre-transfer portal era, he was left without a home for a year, choosing to attend Golden West College, a community college in southern California. While there, he practiced with the basketball team and sat on the bench as a quasi-coach, serving next to his former high school coach who ran the program.

After that season, Gottlieb was hotly recruited and chose Oklahoma State, where he would later lead the nation in assists as a pass first and pass second and pass again point guard. His final collegiate game came in the Elite Eight, when the Cowboys lost to Florida at the Carrier Dome in Syracuse. Gottlieb was 0-2 from the field and did not score.

After a Quixotic professional career, which included a spat with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar who was coaching the Oklahoma Storm in a league I’ve never heard of, Gottlieb turned to a career in sports media. He worked in radio before joining ESPN and later CBS Sports, a fixture of each of their college basketball broadcasts. He was a sharp talker with even sharper opinions. Had he emerged ten years later, he’d surely have spent time trading takes with Stephen A. Smith, Skip Bayless, or both.

Instead, he eventually found his way to Fox Sports Radio, where he hosted a daily radio show. There he continued to spout takes that frequently drew the ire of fans and other media members. The most notable, perhaps, was the suggestion that Caitlin Clark is not an elite shooter of the basketball.

Another was a dip into baseball, where Gottlieb reported the Atlanta Braves never counter-offered when Freddie Freeman signed with the Dodgers. Freeman’s agent sued Gottlieb for libel before Gottlieb apologized and retracted.

Then, this past summer, Gottlieb was named the new head men’s basketball coach at Green Bay.

The Green Bay program was at an interesting inflection point. In 2023, the Phoenix were an abject failure, posting a record of 3-29 and ranking 361st (3rd worst in Division I). The school fired Will Ryan and hired one of the best named coaches in the business, Sundance Wicks.

Sunny turned the Phoenix around in just one year, with Green Bay going 18-14 and finishing 3rd in the Horizon League. Wicks received conference Coach of the Year and National Coach of the Year honors, before accepting the head coaching job at Wyoming, where he had worked previously as an assistant.

Green Bay’s next hire had a real chance to continue the momentum started by Wicks. The 2024 team that performed well was one of the youngest teams in college basketball, ranking 347th in experience per KenPom. Wicks started just one senior and two freshmen. With the right hire, Green Bay could retain a lot of that talent and look to stay competitive in 2025.

Instead, they hired Gottlieb, whose resume included no collegiate coaching experience. His only coaching experience at all came as an assistant at the Maccabiah Games (the “Jewish Olympics” held every four years in Israel) and in his year at community college as a 19-year-old. He’d never been a head coach at any level.

Worst of all, Gottlieb’s announcement as head coach included the detail that he would continue to host his radio show. Excuse me for screaming, but he would do so ON A DAILY BASIS. In an era when some of the great coaches in the sport like Tony Bennett and Jay Wright are retiring due to the grind of constant recruiting of high schoolers, transfers, and your only players, Green Bay hired a man who was slated to spent three hours per day, five days per week talking about the Dallas Cowboys or New York Knicks.

As you’d expect, the Gottlieb hire did not entice the players at Green Bay to stick with the program. Noah Reynolds, a 20 point per game scorer, left for TCU. Second leading scorer Elijah Jones headed to Charleston. Promising freshman David Douglas is at Fresno State.

Three other contributors did stay, leaving the door open for the Phoenix to rise again this year (pun obviously intended). Early in the season, it became clear that New Mexico State transfer Anthony Roy would be a major factor for Green Bay as well. Deep into December, he leads the nation in scoring at 25.7 points per game.

Through two weeks, the Gottlieb era had some promise. The Phoenix trailed Gottlieb’s alma mater Oklahoma State by just one point at halftime, before fading away in the second half. They would do the same against Providence, building a seven-point second half lead before losing the game by 14 points.

Green Bay was 2-3 after five games, but then the wheels began to wobble.

The Phoenix lost to Evansville (KenPom #298) by 17 points, allowing the Aces to score 98 points despite 19 turnovers. They then lost to Ohio State by 33 points.

Green Bay then lost five more, to the murderer’s row of Campbell, IU-Indianapolis, Cleveland State, Milwaukee, and UC Santa Barbara. During this stretch, Gottlieb became vocally critical of Roy. In the loss to Campbell, Roy had 20 points and 9 rebounds, but shot 2-11 from beyond the arc and fouled out. Gottlieb expressed frustration in his postgame presser:

“He’s either gonna do it my way or he’s gonna play less,” Gottlieb stated. “I know if I play him enough minutes he’ll probably lead the country in scoring but I’m not gonna let him if he’s gonna play like a jerk, if he’s not gonna do what we want him to do. Again it’s not all him, I’m not putting it all on Anthony, but I’ve seen this enough. You got to be willing to lose a game in November if you wanna win games in March. You’re not gonna win taking the types of shots he took in the first half.”

Roy then scored 34 of the team’s 75 points in the loss to IU-Indy. When the Phoenix took the floor against Cleveland State, Roy was noticeably absent. He did not play, later admitting he was late to shootaround earlier in the day. Green Bay had 19 turnovers and 19 made field goals, losing a home game by 22.

Then, after the loss to Milwaukee, Gottlieb made a comment about Green Bay’s schedule that has reverberated in the following weeks.

“Part of the reason I want to play better teams is like, it’s 2 degrees outside, it’s snowing. I don’t really like the idea of Nobody U coming in here,” he said. “What do we learn playing a game where we win by 20? There’s a methodology to it, and I’m going to have to adjust moving forward. Every game on our schedule is a game that we can lose,” Gottlieb added. “And nobody else does that. Now you know why.”

Now, at face value, there’s a sound methodology to what he is saying. Iron sharpens iron. Good teams learn by playing other good teams.

In reality, this was a totally asinine thing to say about a team that had played 11 games, with just three coming against power conference teams and five coming against teams ranked 140th or lower by KenPom. It’s also an incredibly odd thing to say after losing a third straight game played against a conference opponent. Yes, Danny Hurley belly-aching about his team’s trip to Maui was pedantic but it held some weight. The head coach of Green Bay should not be talking about the pros and cons of playing against Milwaukee, a school the Phoenix play every year twice a year.

Those comments then took a turn for a deeper circle of hell when, following another loss to a good UC Santa Barbara team in which Roy suffered an injury, Green Bay lost a home game to Division II Michigan Tech. If you are going to call lesser opponents “Nobody U.”, a D2 school that sounds like it’s from a fictional TV show about a football coach’s family life would certainly fit the bill. And if you’re going to say there’s no point in beating Nobody U. by 20 points, you probably shouldn’t let Nobody U. come into your building, have a guy drop 30 points, and beat you.

Here’s where we stop to catch our breath.

Teams going on eight-game losing streaks all the time. First year head coaches struggle a lot. D1 teams lose to D2 teams with a small, but not insignificant amount of frequency. Coaches at all levels discipline their best player to send a lesson.

None of that is the issue.

The issue is that Gottlieb is doing all of that while still hosting a three-hour radio show every day. The radio show is not about Green Bay basketball.

He’s talking about Kirk Cousins and Bill Bellichick and somehow still Caitlin Clark.

On the night before the loss to Michigan Tech, Gottlieb was getting in a social media spat with ESPN NFL reporter Adam Schefter, who used the opportunity to throw a windmill, tomahawk dunk on Gottlieb’s head.

Now, as all of this criticism mounted, Gottlieb has taken to the site formerly known as Twitter to defend himself and his team. Saying that the Green Bay schedule has been difficult, including Michigan Tech. Yes, he’s trying to tell us that a D2 team that has 3 losses, including 16-point drubbing to Concordia-St. Paul, is a tough team on the schedule. Yes, he’s trying to tell us that KenPom’s 232nd ranked schedule is a gauntlet. Green Bay ranks lower in that metric than Horizon League mates Oakland (18th), Northern Kentucky (155th), Wright State (163rd), Detroit Mercy (204th), and Milwaukee (227th), all of whom also have more wins than Green Bay.

Again, it’s tempting to delve into all of those specifics, but none of them really matter here. In the wake of Deion Sanders and JJ Redick, for some reason, the powers that be in certain spots talk themselves into a sexy name rather than recognized coaching prowess. UAB did this with Trent Dilfer as its football coach and the results have been pitiful, with several media dust-ups in his own right.

Gottlieb is both the first real college basketball example in this trend and also the first of these hires to retain his job in the media.

When a mid-major program is hiring a head coach, of course they want to see success on the court, but beyond that there’s a responsibility to represent the school, to care about the community, and to create some positive interaction.

Instead, Green Bay hired a coach who did not prioritize the school or the team in his life and it’s shown. As Gottlieb racks up losses on and off the court, the decision to hire him under these conditions looks reprehensible, turning Green Bay into the “Nobody U.” he derided so snidely, as we sit back and watch his team implode.

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cover photo via Tork Mason/USA Today

Shane McNichol is the founder, editor, and senior writer at PalestraBack.com. He has also contributed to ESPN.com, The Action Network, Betway Insider, Rush The Court, Larry Brown Sports, RotoBaller, and USA Today Sports Weekly. Follow him on Twitter @OnTheShaneTrain. You can find every post from this blog on Twitter by following @PalestraBack.