There is no point in shedding crocodile tears for any man who had the luxury of retiring at age 55 because he made more than $40 million coaching college basketball and decided it was no longer worth the trouble.
It is equally futile to put your coins in the jukebox every time this happens – and it’s going to happen more than you might think going forward – and play the same lament about the good old days, when the scholarship and the promise of a far-off payday were enough to attract an athlete to a Hall of Fame coach.
Though unusual and frankly uncouth to pull the plug on a career of this magnitude a couple of weeks before the season starts, it’s hardly a surprise. Bennett wasn’t built for this new reality where money is often the deciding factor in a recruitment, and college athletes can change programs as often as it suits them. As Virginia’s year-in, year-out excellence waned in the NIL era, the whispers among Bennett’s colleagues that he wasn’t long for college basketball had become screams.
“When I looked at myself, I realized I’m no longer the best coach to lead this program in the current environment,” Bennett admitted Friday in an earnest and sometimes tearful news conference that left no ambiguity about why he’s leaving. “There’s still a way to do it and hold to our values, but it’s complicated. And to admit honestly that I’m not equipped to do this is humbling. It’s still right for student athletes to receive revenue, but the game and college athletics is not in a healthy spot.”
Though the sport’s greatness will endure no matter what and the allure of March Madness remains as strong as ever, Bennett has a lot of company in his misgivings about where college basketball is headed.
It’s overly simple, though, to say this is merely a group of grouchy middle-aged men who have made ridiculous amounts of money whining about the power balance suddenly shifting to the athletes who had too little of it for too long.
In recent years, I’ve watched basketball coaches I’ve known for more than a decade – mostly progressive people who have always advocated for players to get more – grow embittered about the transactional nature of everything now in their sport.
It’s not even about the recruiting battles, most of which were grimy and cutthroat anyway. Then as now, everyone had to decide how far they could go to get a player. In some ways, making it all legal has been freeing.
What’s changed are the relationships. Coaches at the lower levels know any good player they recruit will likely leave at the first opportunity. And at the higher levels, the threat of any player picking up and leaving hangs over nearly every interaction like a guillotine.
Nobody is arguing that the problem is players making money. The issue is that the current system of free-market mayhem has turned college coaching into a profession where authenticity in any interaction with a player is no longer possible.
It may be unfashionable to say these days, but 18- to 22-year-olds still need to be coached, developed and disciplined in order to fulfill their individual potential and that of the team. It’s where a program like Virginia, being run the way Bennett knew how to run it, was inevitably bumping up against the current reality.
De’Andre Hunter, the best player on Virginia’s 2019 national championship team, redshirted his first year on campus because he wasn’t likely going to get a lot of playing time. He ended up becoming the No. 4 pick in the NBA draft. Malcolm Brogdon was a five-year college project who has made more than $110 million as a pro. Joe Harris bought into Bennett’s system before Virginia had won anything and won an ACC title as a senior.
All coaches, especially in basketball, understand those stories are not likely to happen anymore. They’ll be unwound by playing time demands and outlandish financial expectations – and an entire generation of NIL agents who aren’t qualified to negotiate the price of a soda, much less a six-figure contract.
“Nick Nurse and I are pretty close,” Wake Forest’s Steve Forbes said, referring to the Philadelphia 76ers coach. “And he’s like, ‘How do you do this?’ The hardest thing for me is not recruiting, it’s retention. Because I know my players, and they have (a) number in their mind. And I’m like, ‘Are you crazy?’ This is why they have a (general manager) in the NBA, because you don’t have to coach them. The business model is wrong.”
If anything, it’s a surprise so many coaches still have the personal ambition to stay in the game at this point. More and more, I hear from coaches in their 40s who are overstressed year-round, have become cynical about what players want out of their programs and are actively plotting an exit strategy once they reach the level of financial security they want.
These sentiments are easy to mock and dismiss from a profession of salesmen who have made a fortune off the work of young people and whose career choices have also followed money at the expense of loyalty.
But they are learning in real time what many of us have been saying for years: The only way for the NCAA to comply with antitrust law while also maintaining order is to collectively bargain a new system that provides for salary caps, contracts and restrictions on player movement.
It’s stunning – and frankly insulting – that college presidents still refuse to consider that path while hoping NCAA president and former Massachusetts governor Charlie Baker can get his buddies on Capitol Hill to pass friendly legislation.
A couple of years ago, you’d have had pretty much every coach and athletics director lining up behind that effort. Now, cracks are starting to form.
Quite recently, in fact, I heard from a highly respected athletics director at a prominent school who blasted Baker for doing nothing substantially different tactically or rhetorically from his predecessor, Mark Emmert, despite coming into the job with the reputation as a bipartisan and pragmatic reformer who successfully governed a liberal state as a conservative.
And just last week at ACC basketball media days, you had coaches talking openly about how much they’d prefer a system where players signed contracts like professionals.
“Everybody says, ‘Well, coaches can leave,’ ‘ Forbes said. ‘No we can’t. I mean, we can leave, but there’s a buyout. These guys have unlimited transferring with no penalty. It’s hard to sustain that model. I would feel a lot better about that kind of business model of dealing with the players.”
This isn’t just about how much sleep college basketball coaches are getting at night. If Bennett or anyone like him doesn’t want to do the job anymore, there are thousands of others who will gladly take the problems along with the huge salary.
But it does feel like we’re reaching an inflection point for the entire American developmental system.
Through its own poor legal strategy and inflexibility, the NCAA went from being able to make the rules to the point of unfairness to having no rules almost overnight. Now, a generation of athletes who have not proven themselves come into college with the mentality to get as much as they can, from whomever they can, whenever they can, at the expense of other factors – like being developed by good coaches – who play a huge role in what they’ll ultimately become.
To think that’s not going to have an adverse impact on the way some players transition into the NBA or NFL would be extremely naïve. In fact, front offices in both leagues are already seeing it and having to account for it.
These aren’t the world’s biggest problems, but it would be a mistake to dismiss them. Bennett’s retirement is just one more data point in a malfunctioning system that is blinking red and in need of repair. Nobody really cares if a rich coach doesn’t like his job anymore, but whose interests are served by a 55-year-old all-time great in good health walking away from their life’s work?
If the NCAA doesn’t acknowledge reality – and soon – a lot more are going to follow Bennett out the door.
