His Bio on the website says it all. 17 years as the head coach at ETSU and absolutely ZERO mention of his overall record. Just a lot of individual player mentions and one championship.
He was sub .500 entering year 17, and at the end, he's still a sub .500 baseball coach. One would think that's enough of a sample to let us know what to expect as long as he's the coach, bottom half finishes in the conference with losing records.

Well the season has been over for a week and there hasn't been any news from Thomas Stadium, so I assume we'll get Coach Skole and his staff back for another year.

That's what it looks like. It's ridiculous when you consider Appalachian fired a guy with a couple of years left on his deal this week. It's even more frustrating that they got rid of Karen Kemp who had won more, but he stays around with less championships and a losing record. It's a double standard. His sorry ass is making 88 thousand a year to lose. He's essentially stealing from ETSU.

If there's a buy-out, then I can kind of understand. They've got bigger fish to fry at the moment with the money they have. I would personally rather see them use money for a Skole buy-out for a Forbes retention contract instead. If not and he stays, that means at least a 1-year extension. That would concern me.

I think we have our answer and what the university genuinely feels about the baseball program. As long as they graduate players, and don't embarrass the university off the field or be VMI bad, Tony Skole has a job.
The differing expectations for the programs is disappointing.

(06-09-2016 11:13 PM)Buccaneerlover Wrote:  I think we have our answer and what the university genuinely feels about the baseball program. As long as they graduate players, and don't embarrass the university off the field or be VMI bad, Tony Skole has a job.
The differing expectations for the programs is disappointing.

But isn't that the point of the tiers? At the end of the day, college athletics should be about graduating their players. If he is doing a good job at that and being a good mentor to the young men (I have no idea whether this is the case or not), then baseball isn't held up to the same standard for winning as basketball and football.

Having said that, the stated expectations for the tier 2 sports was that they compete for conference championships on a regular basis. I am not sure how one could look at our baseball program and determine that is the case.

Your last line says it all, and the bottom line is tiering is a funding model. That doesn't mean that teams can't aggressively go and find ways to get more funding on their own through the use of camps and coaching clinics. After 17 years, there's enough data to know what Tony is. He's a likable guy outside of letting his kids wear Ole Miss stuff to university functions and running his players until they're unconscious in their own vomit, but he's a sub .500 coach with one championship in 17 completed seasons. One. The same athletic director is holding two coaches to different standards. Sander fired Karen Kemp after a similar period of time, even though she'd won more conference titles and had been to more postseason tournaments.
It would be incredibly easy to make it about race/gender. They fired a black woman for lack of performance on the field/court but have retained the white male that has a worse track record on the field. Kemp graduated her players, so did Skole. All things being equal, Skole should be gone, period. As a tier 2 sport that can utilize education lottery scholarships and give instate tuition to athletes within a four hour radius, ETSU should be better. They have a great game day facility, and really good workout/training facilities. To paraphrase what Jack Swarbrick said about Ty Willinham when he let him go: "He's won on everyday of the week except gameday." It's time to make a change.

Yes, we need a change. I think we have all seen the type of performance that Coach Skole's teams achieve. He also had more players drafted this year than any program in the Southern Conference. And we finished 5th. We are losing the majority of our lineup and most of our pitching also. Get a young guy who is hungry to come in here and make us better. We will be way worse next season....WAY WORSE!

If they haven't done anything by now, they'll keep him around. Apparently Sander and Carter are content with girlfriends/parents with one sellout a year for a product that has a losing record on the field. If you have that many players drafted and can't be in the top 2-3, that should tell them everything they need to know, but he'll retire on his own terms at ETSU which is a disgrace.

Does anyone actually know the extent of Skole's contract. As in, how long it is. I just wonder if he was actually renewed or if his contract was extended. Also, there are still coaches being let go (Montez at JU and Tomas at Liberty) in the last week. Wonder if there is still a chance that we are able to move in a new direction. I would think July 1 is the cut off date with the fiscal year rolling over

The Financial year starts in a couple of days. If there's no announcement made by the end of next week, he's the coach.