NFL
By: Kevin Lucas
Early last week, news broke that long-time Virginia men’s basketball head coach Tony Bennett would be stepping down and retiring just under three weeks before the Cavaliers’ season starts. To some of us, this news was not surprising, but the timing of it shocked us all. With this news breaking, conversations re-emerged around top-tier college coaches dropping out of the game for one reason or another. In just the last five years, the college basketball world has lost Roy Williams, Mike Krzyzewski, Jim Boeheim, and most recently, Jay Wright.
Shoot, even Nick Saban called it a career earlier this year after a legendary 17-year run at the University of Alabama on the football side of things. Now, I know a majority of those names just mentioned retired mainly due to old age, yet all of them have voiced their displeasure on the current state of the NCAA. Saban recently made a comment on College GameDay about how the game is transactional, so coaches must become more transformational. Bennett, at age 55, mentioned in his final press conference that “the game and college athletics are not in a healthy spot. I think I was equipped to do the job the old way.”
Most would say Bennett’s style of play was old and outdated, as in his final game at UVA, his team only scored 42 points in a 40-minute contest. However both things are true, but let’s dive deeper into his comments regarding the current landscape of collegiate athletics. Presently, you have student-athletes on a roster wondering who their next school will be before they log in a single minute for their current institution. You have incoming freshmen and their agents making demands about NIL money when they haven’t even proved that they can produce at this level. Coaches must constantly re-recruit their own players because poaching talent is at an all-time high.
Let me make it clear, though, that the transfer portal and NIL are not the issue here. The problem is that the NCAA had years in advance to be proactive about these things but instead chose to play the wait-and-see game. So, even though I do not agree with Tony Bennett’s timing to retire, I do believe he is correct when talking about the current state of college sports. The on-court/field play is fine due to talent and evolution, but new rules and regulations must be implemented if we want to see sports grow in a positive direction when it comes to external factors. As for UVA, they just freshly named Ron Sanchez as their next men’s basketball coach. Sanchez has been with Bennett as an assistant from Washington State to Virginia.
He left UVA to take the head spot at UNC-Charlotte in 2018 but rejoined Bennett’s staff last season. Now, he will have a great opportunity to lead one of the premier programs in the entire country. For Bennett, the worst-kept secret in all of college basketball was how close he was to retirement due to being too old school. Leaving your players hanging just weeks before their season starts is frustrating and unfair. He had plenty of time to weigh his decision, yet didn’t make it until the last final seconds. He will go down as the greatest coach in Virginia’s history with a national championship hoisted just back in 2019. The ACC and college basketball world lost another giant far too soon.
