Glenn Dickey

So now, Rick Neuheisel admits he talked to the 49ers about their coaching job. What a shocker. Just proves what everybody around the sports scene knows: If you want your son to grow up to be a coach, you have to teach him to lie.

Terry Donahue, the 49ers' general manager, said he wanted to protect the "confidentiality" of college coaches by not revealing who he talked to. That's understandable because it can put coaches in an uncomfortable position with their schools when they probably aren't serious about leaving.

In Neuheisel's case, though, it was natural that he'd talk to Donahue because of their long association, going back to Neuheisel's playing days under Donahue at UCLA. If he'd just admitted talking to Donahue, it wouldn't have become the big story it was when his transparent deception that he was in the Bay Area to play golf became public.

Instead, he made a statement on the University of Washington Web site that he had not been contacted by the 49ers. It was similar to the statement he made when he was coaching at Colorado -- shortly before he took the job at Washington.

Now, his mea culpa raises another question: Is he just trying to strengthen his position at Washington, implying that he is so good he was wanted by the 49ers? Utah basketball coach Rick Majerus has raised this strategy to its highest level, using every overture as leverage for a better contract.

In fact, those I talk to think Neuheisel would have taken the 49ers' job if it had been offered. It wasn't, because Donahue had a better candidate, Dennis Erickson, whom he hired.

Neuheisel has nothing on Erickson, who is notorious for announcing at each stop that this was the place he had always wanted to be. At Oregon State, he told players he was thinking of coaching there until he retired. A couple of days later, he was in San Francisco, talking about the 49ers job being his dream.

It's quite possible that Erickson has believed what he was saying. The best coaches are always great salesmen because they have to convince players that they're the ones who can do the job for the team. For a salesman, the line between truth and falsehood is often blurred; what sells the product is the most important. The best salesmen are those who truly believe what they're saying, whether or not it's true.

On the recruiting trips which are the lifeblood of college athletics, truth is often an endangered species. Coaches will use anything they can to downgrade other coaches. In this last recruiting season, coaches spread rumors that Pete Carroll was going to the pros to try to hamper his recruiting. It didn't work -- USC had a great recruiting season -- and, of course, Carroll hasn't gone anywhere.

On the pro level, a coach is judged strictly on his record. With the 49ers, Steve Mariucci always had a few players he gave special attention to because he wanted them to be the playing leaders. If one of these players fell off in his playing, he would be upset to learn that he was no longer so special to Mariucci, but on the pro level, players are also judged on their performance. The head coach is not a player's best friend, even if the coach wants to give him that impression.

It should be different on the collegiate level, where coaches are bringing in impressionable 18-year-olds. He's usually the one person a player listens to, because the coach and players spend so much time together -- and because players are usually at a school because they've been recruited by the coach.

When the coach leaves, it's a shock to the players, especially when, such as Erickson, he leaves right after the players sign their letters of intent. But unlike their coach, the player contracts are binding; if they leave for another Division I-A school, they lose a year of eligibility.

I don't blame coaches for bettering themselves. Erickson jumped to a different job each time as he went through the steps: Idaho, Washington State, Miami. He slipped backward with a bad experience with the Seattle Seahawks -- poor players and a chaotic ownership -- but certainly, his move from Oregon State to the 49ers is a forward one.

But the NCAA should change the rule so that, if a coach leaves, any player he brought to a school should be allowed to transfer without penalty.

It's the only way to protect the athletes. There's nothing that will keep the coach in place if he wants to leave, even if he has told the players he's recruited that he is there to stay. Lying comes naturally to a good salesman.

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