UW Green Bay men’s basketball coach Doug Gottlieb admits he’s having a rough week, losing to Michigan Tech and getting roasted by ESPN’s Adam Schefter on social media. But Gottlieb told Front Office Sports he will be back on the air for Fox Sports Radio on Thursday after raising eyebrows by skipping his eponymous show today.
“No, I’m not running from doing my radio show. I had a game at 11. The games are two hours long. I start taping my pod at 1 every day. Live at 2. There was no time to do it,” Gottlieb told FOS Wednesday night.
Despite the tight timeline, Gottlieb said he wanted to do Wednesday’s show. But two or three weeks ago, Fox Sports Radio senior vice president Scott Shapiro decided there wasn’t enough time to do both. Gottlieb said he’ll skip his son’s out-of-state game Thursday in order to host his program.
“I completely understand that when you’re a public figure, and a sports radio host, and you said or tweeted things that people get mad about, that when you become a coach, and you start losing games, everybody wants to have their turn,” he says. “I get it. Understood.”
On Wednesday, Gottlieb’s Green Bay Phoenix lost 72–70 to Division II Michigan Tech, which caused a clip from last week where he referred to lesser opponents as ‘Nobody U’ to make the rounds.
The Fox Sports Radio account tweeted that Dan Beyer and former NFL player Kerry Rhodes would fill in for Gottlieb, who eventually tweeted a defense of his ‘Nobody U’ bit postgame.
Gottlieb says it had zero to do with Michigan Tech. “I don’t know where that came from. We were talking about our schedule—and that we didn’t play bad teams. It was actually the opposite of how it’s being portrayed,” he said. “If you listen to the context of what was said, I said they’re really good. I know that [Marcus] Tomashek is a hell of a player. He’s from Green Bay. I would have loved to have him. He wasn’t in the portal—so I had no opportunity to recruit him.” Gottlieb emphasized, “There has never been an ounce of disrespect toward any opponent. Nor will there ever be.”
As for hosting a three-hour weekday radio show, Gottlieb argued that nobody is faulting new UNC head football coach Bill Belichick for continuing his media gigs with ESPN’s Pat McAfee Show and Monday Night Football‘s ManningCast as well as the CW’s Inside the NFL.
“It’s all different if you win games. So I have to get better. The team has to get better. We have to do the best we can.”
Gottlieb also tackled the touchy subject of his war of words with Schefter on Monday. It began when ESPN’s senior NFL insider tweeted Sacramento State had “over $50 million in NIL” to help its pursuit of Michael Vick. The pugnacious Gottlieb scoffed at the figure, telling Schefter he should “edit what agents tell you.”
Gottlieb, a veteran of Fox, ESPN, and CBS, admits he comes off more harshly on social media and texts than in person. But he thought Schefter got too personal when he came off the top rope by countering: “Jeezus, Doug. A seven-game losing [streak] and last place in the Horizon League? Less time on social media and more time in the gym.”
As Gottlieb says: “My point was an accurate one. It was too much in terms of making Schefter feel like I was calling him out personally. And he reacted as such. The reality is they don’t have $50 million in NIL.”
The 48-year-old Gottlieb has never hesitated to criticize the sacred cows of sports media. So some of his colleagues in the media piling on at the first sign of weakness was predictable. Ultimately, he believes he and Schefter should have settled it like professionals over the phone; not publicly on a social media platform.
“You live and you learn. I’m a big boy. I know I have a unique ability to tick people off. It’s a gift,” Gottlieb said.
As of Wednesday afternoon, the Phoenix are one of just nine men’s teams in all of Division I with 11 or more losses. KenPom rates them as the 326th-best team in the 364-team D-I. They have the worst record in the Horizon League and have yet to notch a conference win.
