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Assigned Reading: Brad Wolverton on Elwyn McRoy’s coaching journey

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The life of a basketball coach seems like it’s glamourous.

And at times it is, particularly if you’re coaching at a level where you travel on private jets, network with millionaire boosters and play every game on ESPN.

But for the majority of coaches in college basketball, that’s not the case. Most spend their days grinding, driving for miles and miles and miles while spending days at a time away from their families and cashing checks that do just enough to make ends meet.

Brad Wolverton, writing for the Chronicle of Higher Education, penned a terrific story on one of those coaches, Elwyn McRoy. McRoy has bounced around at every different level of coaching, from high school to Junior College to Division I. He even made it to the Big 12 and Iowa State for a season before that job went away.

He spent the 2012-2013 season as a Division II college in Alabama, earning $3,000 while living in a dorm and eating off of a meal plan. His family, four kids and a wife, were in Seattle at the time. McRoy’s struggle was somewhat of an extreme, but it’s a good example of why the turning of the Coaching Carousel is so stressful for coaches.

Take the ten minutes to give the story a read.