Here's the Down in the Valley post from Friday night confirming that the rumor has some legs:
Two calls to Kevin McKenna inquiring about being offered an assistant coach position at Oregon were not returned on Friday.
McKenna was playing in a charity golf tournament on Friday, so I can understand if his responsibilities there prevented him from calling back.
I talked to several people and others contacted me on Friday. Nearly all believe the rumor is false. I’ve been told by multiple sources that McKenna has denied the rumor in private. Unfortunately, none of those sources wanted to go on the record with that information.
One source did go on the record. One thing that came to my attention on Friday out of all of this was that Oregon allegedly asked permission to talk to McKenna about an assistant coaching position, but was denied permission by ISU.
I called ISU Director of Athletics Ron Prettyman about that and he left me a text message addressing the situation:
“[Oregon coach Dana] Altman did call me soon after getting job about possibly talking to McKenna. They are good friends and talk often. Unsure where they are or if they have talked about job.”
Obviously, that does NOT confirm that ISU has denied permission. But it does confirm that there was/is interest on Altman’s part to hire McKenna.
Whether McKenna is interested? We won’t know until he addresses the issue himself.
On a related topic, I know there are ISU fans out there upset that I addressed these rumors at all and didn’t simply ignore them.
I can understand that feeling, but not all rumors are created equal. Many can be ignored, this one cannot.
Like it or not, and for the record, put me in the “not” camp, I hate this nebulous stuff as much as anyone, this rumor is out there from Eugene, Ore. to Omaha to Iowa (where one-time Omaha radio host and Creighton denizen Matt Perrault Twittered about it on Thursday) to Terre Haute. This isn’t some isolated thing someone conjured up in their basement.
This is a big issue on the minds of everyone involved with the Sycamore basketball program and is also on the minds of ISU’s recruits (long before I wrote the original early Friday blog entry on this subject). I wouldn’t be doing my job if I ignored something that could affect the future of ISU’s program. In fact, I’d be doing fans a disservice by acting as if none of this is out there being talked about.
It doesn’t mean I condone whether the rumor is true … but ISU fans deserve to know that the rumor is out there and deserve to have it quashed or explained. The truth is all I care about.
Hopefully, that truth will come out soon.
