Louisville coach Scott Satterfield said Monday he would handle any job opportunity in the future differently, after his informal conversations with South Carolina drew a public backlash from the school’s fan base over the weekend.
In his first public comments since the situation unfolded, Satterfield apologized to the fan base and said the only reason he talked to South Carolina was because of its proximity to where he grew up and spent the bulk of his playing and coaching career.
After the conversation, he quickly realized he wanted to stay at Louisville and publicly said so, but the scrutiny on his decision to talk to them in the first place — after denying interest weeks earlier — set off an outcry.
“If something in the future popped up and if you want to look at it, you better be very, very serious and it’s because I don’t want to put our fans, I don’t want to put our players or anybody through what’s transpired over the last 48 hours,” Satterfield said. “I’m not interested in doing that. So, if it is something out there that is enticing it’s going to have to be very, very serious and something you can be out front about, and we’ll go from there. For me, this was a learning process and going through this, I don’t want to put anybody in this situation.”
Satterfield, in his second season with the Cards after spending six seasons as the head coach at Appalachian State, was also asked how he can expect a full commitment from his players when he himself spoke with another team. (South Carolina ultimately hired Oklahoma assistant Shane Beamer for the job).
His response drew additional heat, because he implied players don’t have the same responsibilities as coaches.
“As players it’s a little bit different than coaches,” he said. “As a player, you’re there for three to four years and then you’re done … and as players you don’t have a family, it’s just you. Coaches have wives and kids as a job. Are they going to be at a job for 40 years? With the players, it’s 3 or 4 years and they have to be all in. It’s hard as a player to go to class, go to meetings, go weight training, go practice come back and study then go perform on a game day. You have to be all in with it and I think as coaches it’s a little bit different, you’ve got a career in coaching. I was at one school at a long time, I’d rather it be that way. You want to be at a place you can thrive and win and have a great life, but there is a little bit of a differential between a player and coach.”