For one season, home becomes the best fit for Dakich

The big top crumbled on the circus known as Indiana basketball, and just like Kelvin Sampson, Jeff Meyer and pretty much everybody connected with the program, Dan Dakich found himself unemployed and thus unsure of his next move. Sure, he would've liked to have jumped right back into coaching because he's a basketball coach, and that's what basketball coaches do. But the hiring frenzy passed after last season without a sensible opportunity presenting itself. So Dakich was left with a lot of free time, which is always a tough transition for folks used to going nonstop.

That's when his wife, Jackie, spoke up.

Dakich enjoys his new-found family time. (Getty Images)

"She said 'You've never coached our kids before,'" Dakich explained. "She said 'Why don't you coach our kids?'"

Dakich's response: Why not?

And that's the gist of how Dan Dakich went from interim head coach of the Indiana Hoosiers to volunteer coach at St. Charles Catholic School. He plans to coach his son's eighth-grade and daughter's sixth-grade basketball teams this winter. But right now it's football season. So Dakich is the quarterbacks coach for St. Charles, working every day with his son, Andrew, who threw a pair of touchdown passes this weekend.

"I'm the eighth assistant in charge of telling them stuff," Dakich said with a laugh. "That's it. But it's a lot of fun."

For those curious, St. Charles is 0-3 in its first season of CYO football.

But that's really beside the point.

Because this isn't a column about the trials and tribulations of an eighth-grade athletics program as much as it's a column about a father taking a year to do what too few fathers in the coaching profession get to do, i.e., spend precious time with their children on a daily basis. It's not that coaches don't love their children, mind you. They love them just as much as you love your child and I love my son. It's just that there are far too many professions that force people to choose between their careers and personal lives, and there aren't a whole bunch of people capable of being top-notch at both.

College coaching is one of those professions.

Which is not to suggest Dakich hasn't been a good father.

He's spent the past decade at the dinner table and his children's events, like any father should. But it's one thing to be present and another to be actively involved and there in mind and body, and that's the constant struggle for men always having to react to recruiting developments, always having to take calls from AAU coaches, always having to think of new schemes, always having to be everything to everybody who ever bought a season ticket.

"Since I've been home my kids have made so many comments about 'Dad, you weren't here for this or that.' My daughter, in particular," Dakich said. "And that has really hit me because I thought I always made an effort to be there. I really did. But you realize the difference between being there and really being there. Like a lot of times coaches are at home, but they're always on the phone when they're home. I was always on the phone. I'd be talking to my kids while I was talking on the phone, and they notice that."