Sports Broadcaster Doug Gottlieb's Fantasy, Which Was Ridiculed, Comes True - He's Now A Major College Coach

Career sports broadcaster Doug Gottlieb, currently of Fox Sports Radio, first started talking publicly about his desire to be a major college head men's basketball coach eight years ago when he was at CBS Sports after leaving ESPN.

Without any significant coaching experience, he actually said in interviews that he wanted to start right off as a head coach, because he was past age 40 and didn't want to spend many years as an assistant coach. National media made fun of his supposed Walter Mitty-like fantasy.

But Oklahoma State, where he was a star point guard from 1997-2000 and led the nation in assists twice, and Tulane considered him before hiring other head coaches.

Fox Sports Radio host Doug Gottlieb will keep his radio show while performing in his new job as head men's basketball coach at Wisconsin-Green Bay (Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports)

Gottlieb kept hunting and was considered for the lowly Wisconsin-Green Bay job last year before it went to Sundance "Sunny" Wicks. Wicks inherited a program that had gone 3-29, 5-25 and 8-17 the three previous seasons. He went 18-14 and was named the Horizon League Coach of the Year. Then he got the Wyoming job last weekend.

And Gottlieb got a call from Wisconsin-Green Bay athletic director Josh Moon.

"Are you still interested?," Moon asked.

"And I said, ‘Hell, yeah,’" Gottlieb, 48, said on the Dan Patrick Show on Wednesday after being introduced as the Wisconsin-Green Bay coach on Tuesday.

"Look, there's the ego part to it that I want to prove myself," Gottlieb said. "I want to prove that all the talking into a headset, all the AAU coaching and overseas coaching is legit."

Now, Gottlieb has a chance to prove himself legitimate, and the doubters wrong.

That includes Patrick, who made