Boston U. hockey coach is happy for job he didn’t get

WASHINGTON (AP) — Like many successful, hardworking employees, Jack Parker felt he deserved a promotion. More to the point — his ego felt he deserved a promotion.

So he got one.

Oh, what a mistake. He was miserable. The job he gave up was the one he was meant to have. College hockey would be a poorer place had Parker decided to keep the job as Boston University’s athletic director 20 years ago.

If he had truly retired as the Terriers’ coach, he wouldn’t have won another national championship. He wouldn’t have reached 814 victories — the most for any hockey coach at one school. And, tonight, he wouldn’t be back in the NCAA title game, leading heavy favorite BU against the Frozen Four first-timers from Miami (Ohio).

“Ego got in the way,” Parker began Friday when asked to relate the tale of his temporary career move in 1989.

It all started when the AD’s job came open during the hockey season, and Parker was feeling good about what he had already accomplished in 16 years as the school’s hockey coach.

“I never said to myself, ‘I want that job,’ ” Parker said. “I was thinking, ‘Why would they look beyond me?’ It was strictly ego.”

There was a news conference introducing his hiring. A school official began by reading off a grand list of accomplishments of the longtime coach. Parker, sitting next to the school’s even longer-tenured swim coach, remembers saying to his colleague: “Great, he must be talking about you — or me, I’m not sure which.”

The swim coach replied: “Oh, they’re not talking about me. I’m a coach.”

“The minute he said that,” Parker said, “it kind of shocked me.”

Parker went downstairs to break the news to his team that he was hanging up the skates at the end of the season.

“As I was saying those words, I realized I’d make a mistake,” Parker said, “that I am a coach, and what was I thinking?”

He had a meeting scheduled with the university president. They were supposed to discuss the “philosophy of the department.” Parker began by saying, “We’ve got a big problem. I don’t want to be the AD. I want to go back to being the hockey coach,”’ Parker said.

“He said, ‘Geez, we can fix that. I thought you were going to tell me your daughter was real sick or something. You’re the hockey coach. So who should we get to be the AD?’

“That’s how simple it was, and I was fretting it for two weeks.”

Parker has coached BU to 22 NCAA tournament appearances, the most of any active coach and the most of any coach at a single school. The Terriers have won 47 tournaments under his watch, including Frozen Fours (1978, 1995), six Hockey East championships and four ECAC crowns.