Coaching changes exposed: Walters starts own 'Survivor'

The smoke leaping off the torches was stifling — even in the cavernous confines of Jadwin Gym. The entire Princeton athletic community — from the Zamboni driver to Bill Carmody to "The Difference Maker" — was summoned to a morning meeting, turning the basketball court into a veritable warehouse of Princeton-insignia Boathouse gear.

Field hockey head coach Beth Bozman was biting her nails. Men's lacrosse head coach Bill Tierney and assistant Dave Metzbower stood in quiet counsel. Men's and women's volleyball head coach Glenn Nelson was ready to clean out his well-stocked refrigerator. Club and Intramural Sports Coordinator Matthew Tsimikas had begun a bake sale as part of a funding drive.

And then the familiar balding man stood before them.

"The tribal council has spoken," he said.

Another one bites the dust.

Her torch extinguished, then-head coach of the women's basketball team Liz Feeley had been voted off the coaching staff.Feeley was ushered away by Public Safety officers to a waiting "Gator." She joined former men's hockey head coach Don Cahoon and "retired" men's tennis head coach David Benjamin on the debriefing eight-man crew boat.

In the ensuing months, softball head coach Cindy Cohen and men's basketball head coach Bill Carmody were added to the list of disappearing head coaches — all under mysterious circumstances.

It was made out to be a coincidence.

Until now.

A three-month investigation by The Daily Princetonian has revealed the shocking details of the coaching changes. There was no coincidence. Those five coaches simply could not outwit, outplay, outlast. They could not survive a change in Department of Athletics employment policy implemented by Director of Athletics Gary Walters '67 last year.

A tribal council — consisting of Walters, basketball legend Bill Bradley '65 and Dean Cain '88, host of TV's "Ripley's Believe It or Not" — has been revealed as the ultimate judges of Princeton's coaches.

After the firing of former football head coach Steve Tosches, Walters conducted an internal review of his process of annual internal reviews of the Princeton athletic program.

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"Am I pleased that my former colleagues had to endure this?" said Tosches, who is currently the head coach of the Tiny Titans of the Greater Heightstown Pee Wee Football League. "No. No I'm not. Do I always answer a question with a rhetorical question and then answer that question with a single word? Yes. Yes, I do."

Assistant Director of Athletic Public Affairs and celebrity radio personality Jerry Price — the Jeff Probst to Walters' Mark Burnett — developed the reality show-based employment competition.

The coaches had to compete in a number of tests of will and feats of strength against potential replacements and Princeton coaching colleagues.

"There's only room on this campus for one nationally-prominent program," Tierney said following his dominating victory over Carmody in Beirut competition.

"[That was dick. He had home field advantage]," we think Carmody mumbled, referring to Tierney's T.I.-laden squad.

"Beirut was a breeze," said Nelson as he sipped "apple juice" out of his trusty thermos. "Tierney better watch his back."

After defeating Cahoon in the co-ed naked "Polar Bear" competition in Lake Carnegie last winter, women's hockey head coach Jeff Kampersal '92 was awarded the right to induct his Baker Rink cohort into the Hair Club for Men. Cahoon later attributed his shaved melon to a motivating bet with his team.

Price applauded the move and chaired the welcoming committee for Cahoon's initiation into the Mercer County chapter.

While Walters intended to take a page from the presence of Fight Club on campus with an all-out brawl between Feeley and Bozman, the ground conditions in the 1903 courtyard quickly turned the match into an old-fashioned duel of mud "wrastling."

Feeley vented frustrations of another disappointing season and had the early edge, but Bozman won out on the strength of her unrelenting will.

"Talk to the hand," Bozman said as she stomped off the premises toward an unidentified bagel establishment.

The most degrading of the challenges was a game of Scrabble — officiated by the great wordsmith himself, Walters — between Cohen and water polo head coach Luis Nicolao.

Walters chortled on the sideline as Cohen and Nicolao struggled to comply with the Bard's strict interpretation of the game's rules. Nicolao prevailed when he stumped Cohen with "syzygy" — triple word score.

Walters nodded in approval.

The Director of Athletics declined to discuss the revelations until he could consult with University administrators as well as Roget's Thesaurus.

Spencer Gloger himself was unavailable for comment.