Mulligan Waits for Next Calling

Is Bill Mulligan bored?

“Look here,” Mulligan tells a visitor as he opens the garage to his Irvine home. “I fired the gardener and bought a lawn mower. Got a weed-whacker, too. Doing it myself now.”

Is Bill Mulligan bored?

“Look at this TV set the boosters gave me. It’s something, isn’t it? A 36-inch screen. And I get WGN. I watch Cubs’ games during the afternoon.”

Is Bill Mulligan bored?

“I’d love to play racquetball, but I’ve got a new hip and I can’t move quick enough anymore. I don’t golf. But I’m gonna get another bicycle and go riding with my wife. Right now, I use the stationary bike. I get both papers, both sports sections, and get on the bike. You know, you can get a lot reading done that way.”

Is Bill Mulligan bored?

“Right now,” he says, “I’m itchy as hell.”

Cabin fever has hit hard, less than four months into retirement. As cabins go, Mulligan’s is as comfortable as they come--a three-bedroom spread on a hill overlooking the UC Irvine campus--but all Mulligan can do is pine for the missing amenities.

No sidelines to stomp.

No empty arena seats to curse.

No players to scream at.

The good life.

“For 35 years, I always had something to do,” Mulligan says. “Now, I’ve got nothing to do. My son Billy worries about me. He says, ‘Dad, what are you gonna do?’ ”

Mulligan is still searching. You hear the rumors--Mulligan’s applied for the Dartmouth job, he’s looking into the vacancy at the College of the Desert. You hear them and you think they should post signs: Watch Out. Out-of-Work Coach On The Loose.

“I did apply at Dartmouth,” Mulligan admits. “But it was mainly on a lark. Bob Olson (UC Irvine sports information director) and I were reading the NCAA News one day and see that Dartmouth’s looking for a basketball coach. Olson says, ‘Why don’t you put in for that?’ And I said, ‘Naw . . . Aw, why don’t I just do it?’

“I just sent in a resume and didn’t do anything. It wasn’t a serious thing. But once it was in the papers, I probably had a hundred people come up to me--’I hear you’re going to Dartmouth.’ ”

All Mulligan got out of it was “a nice letter from Dartmouth saying that they received my resume and that they’d hired the assistant. A few days later, I got a phone call from (Princeton Coach) Pete Carril who told me they were going to hire the assistant all along.”

Still, the possibilities: Mulligan in the Ivy League. The mind boggles.

And Mulligan thought it was tough getting players into Irvine.

“But at least there, guys are playing with the same standards as you,” he says. “It’s more even than the other way.”

COD? Mulligan shakes his head.

“Billy probably started that one. We spent some time out at Rancho Las Palmas--Rich McElrath, who played for me at Saddleback, has a place there--and Billy loves it out there. Me, I don’t like it that much.

“Now, if something opened in Tahoe, I might be interested in that.”

Coaching clinics. That’s a way to kill a few days. This summer, Mulligan will hit the usual spots--Occidental College, UC Riverside--and the unusual--a reservation for Native Americans 50 miles outside Flagstaff.

But, mostly, Mulligan sits and waits for the phone call, from Creative Sports Marketing, which he says is supposed to come any day now. Creative Sports handles the television broadcasts for Big West basketball. The chair behind the color analyst’s microphone is currently empty.

Mulligan says he and Creative Sports have been talking.

“What I really want to do is the TV,” Mulligan says. “Supposedly, I’m one of the leading candidates.”

And if not, why not? Put a basketball in Scott Brooks’ hands, put a mike in front of Mulligan’s face--same result.

They can fill it up.

“I think the whole thing is to just be yourself,” Mulligan says. “Bray Cary (of Creative Sports) did say to me, ‘The only reason we hesitate sometimes to hire ex-coaches is that ex-coaches sometimes don’t ever want to say what they really think.’

“I told him I wouldn’t have that problem.”

We interrupt this column for a brief audition.

Mulligan, on getting old: “I was at a birthday party for (Irvine athletic director) Tom Ford. He’s 50. I told him, ‘Tom, 50 wasn’t bad. Not bad at all. It’s 60 that kicks your butt.’ ”

On Jerry Tarkanian: “Whoever takes his place, I don’t envy. I took his place at Riverside City College. I mean, it’s a bitch.”

On basketball players from Mater Dei: “I saw (Mike) Hopkins, the player for Syracuse, at Jeff Herdman’s graduation party. I said, ‘Hopkins, if you stay at Syracuse, you’re gonna be the first Mater Dei guy who’s a big time player to ever stay at one school for four years.’ I’ve told (Gary) McKnight that, too. You look.”

On what retirement has meant to his wife, Dorothy: “Her greatest statement to me was, ‘I don’t know why you quit. I really liked the job.’ ”

On why he should get the Big West analyst’s job: “The big thing with me doing the TV, as opposed to someone else, is that I’ve got time. I can go to a school a day or two early and get to know the players. I have free time and I’d really bust my butt doing it, as opposed to a guy who has another job who maybe can’t get enough time away to really do it right.”

It’s either that or buy a house with a bigger lawn.