KANSAS CITY, Mo. — There are only six coaches left in Division I men’s basketball who know what it feels like to hoist a national championship trophy.
Two of them are in the Big 12 Conference.
That’s why Kansas’ Bill Self and Baylor’s Scott Drew, especially after watching another title winner, Tony Bennett (Virginia), abruptly retire last week on the eve of the new season. This is a good place to express your opinion on the situation of the match.
“There’s always change in any profession. We’ve gained a tremendous amount over the last few years,” he said after defeating Gonzaga in the 2021 NCAA Tournament in the COVID-19 bubble. said Drew, who won the U.S. title.
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“I think as a human nature, we all prefer certainty to uncertainty. We want to know what the rules are, what we’re supposed to do, how we’re going to work. , I think that’s the same in any profession,” Drew said. “We’re still in a transition period and it’s probably going to take some time for everything to settle down, and you don’t want to lose a good coach in the process.”
Drew and Bennett have been friends for decades, long before either of them followed in their father’s footsteps into coaching. Drew’s father, Homer, coached at Valparaiso in the late 1980s and ’90s when Bennett played for his own father, Dick, in Green Bay.
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The game these days is a lot different than it was when Homer and Dick were on the sideline.
It’s a lot different than when their kids started coaching.
A wave of conference realignment has forced programs to cross multiple time zones for games, often more than once a week. The transfer portal turns coaches into de facto general managers who not only re-recruit their own players each season, but are often forced to rebuild entire rosters with transfers and freshmen.
But perhaps most jarring is the flood of name, image, and likeness rights that has turned famous college athletes into overnight millionaires and turned recruiting into something akin to free agency in professional sports.
“Sports and college athletics are not in a healthy place,” Bennett, 55, said last week after announcing his resignation less than three weeks before the start of the season. “We need change. I think I had the ability to work here the old-fashioned way. That’s who I am and that’s what it was.”
Jay Wright, who led Villanova to two national championships, similarly retired two years ago, citing burnout as one of the reasons for his sudden resignation at age 60. The rapidly changing landscape of college sports hastened his retirement a year into his tenure. Inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
“I don’t agree with what somebody did or why they did it. I don’t think I feel exactly the same way they feel at this point,” Self said Wednesday. “From a college sports perspective, the world we live in right now feels very uncertain, but I think there will always be a balance. I don’t know exactly what that formula is. But I think in a few years we’ll look at our sport and look at college athletics and find a balance.”
On the other hand, there are plenty of coaches who see the changing college landscape as an opportunity, where creativity, vision, work ethic and, of course, money can turn struggling programs around almost overnight.
“All of these changes are facing us all,” said Jerome Tan of Kansas State University. For me, it’s a challenge every day. I have a very creative staff, young at heart and body, who always push me. ”
The Wildcats reached the Elite Eight in Tan’s debut season, but took a step back last season when poor shooting and inconsistent post play kept him from qualifying for Selection Sunday. In years past, it might have taken years to overcome such a setback, but Tan embraced the era of the transfer portal and NIL money and quickly rebuilt the roster.
“I don’t get caught up in what’s wrong, but I focus on what’s right and take advantage of it,” Mr Tan said.
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