116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
Ex-Iowa coach Fran McCaffery is ‘staying in the fight,’ intends to be ‘coaching somewhere’ in 2025-26
Fired Iowa men’s basketball coach wants to go to a place where he can ‘build a program’ again
The Gazette offers audio versions of articles using Instaread. Some words may be mispronounced.
IOWA CITY — Iowa’s firing of Fran McCaffery last week might not necessarily spell the end of the 65-year-old’s coaching career.
McCaffery is “staying in the fight” and “going to be coaching somewhere next year,” he said on the Betting Above The Rim podcast.
“I love the game,” McCaffery said on former college basketball coach James Young’s podcast. “I love being in the gym. I love working with my guys and watching them succeed. … Those relationships endure over a lifetime.”
McCaffery, who will turn 66 in May, went 297-207 in 15 seasons at Iowa. He became the men’s basketball program’s all-time wins leader in the 2023-24 season. Before his time in Iowa City, McCaffery became the first coach to take three different teams from one-bid conferences — Lehigh, UNC-Greensboro and Siena — to March Madness.
Asked about coaching situations that would interest him, McCaffery indicated his desire to “build a program” rather than a place where he has to “go get eight guys out of the portal” and another seven the following year.
“I want to have relationships with my guys, and I want to have an administration that works closely with me,” McCaffery said on the podcast. “We work together to build a program, to represent the institution the right way, bring in character young people that we’ve talked about before, play a style of play that fans want to see and then be in a place that has a fan base that enables me to interact with them in a way that sells the program and provides opportunity for our guys.”
McCaffery believes there are “a number of different places out there that that’s what their goal is.”
The podcast, which was released Tuesday morning, marked McCaffery’s first public comments since being fired from the Hawkeyes at the end of last week. Iowa is in the midst of a national search for McCaffery’s replacement.
Comments: john.steppe@thegazette.com
Sign up for our curated Iowa Hawkeyes athletics newsletter at thegazette.com/hawks.
Daily Newsletters