The NCAA is an incompetent organization. It’s safe to say that unless you’re Charlie Baker, you probably agree with that statement. Still, you may be wondering exactly how the NCAA is directly responsible for Maryland head coach Kevin Willard getting booed by Terrapins fans in the team’s hotel on the way to the program’s first Sweet 16 since 2016. Let me explain.
Ultimately, this saga began when, after falling to UConn in the Big East Tournament quarterfinals and missing the NCAA Tournament for the third straight season, Villanova fired Kyle Neptune. However, the media circus surrounding Kevin Willard was sparked when the third-year coach let it slip that Maryland athletic director Damon Evans was heading to SMU as he explained why he hadn’t signed a contract extension to remain in College Park.
Then, after Willard’s first-round NCAA Tournament victory over Grand Canyon, he essentially laid out a series of demands for the Maryland athletic department over its plans to allot $14 million of the $20.5 million incoming revenue-sharing budget on football and just $4 million on the men’s basketball program. He used his rumored connection to Villanova, a Big East program without an FBS football program for its revenue-share dollars to go towards, as the implicit leverage while lambasting the media for the spread of those rumors.
Now, after the Terps Sweet 16 loss to Florida on Thursday night, Willard is expected to depart for Philadelphia shortly, though Maryland may make a last-ditch effort to keep him in place. In the postgame, he only added to the uncertainty, saying, “I don’t know what I’m doing” just days after a radio hit with The Team 980 when he said that he’s the Maryland head coach, “as of now.”
This is an objectively distasteful way to handle a coaching cycle, especially for a coach who made these same mistakes when he jumped from Seton Hall to Maryland in 2022. This postseason alone has given us multiple blueprints for how to successfully navigate this with your program and the media.
The shining example of unexpectedly refreshing honesty was Will Wade. The former LSU head coach was clear with his team and the media that he was in talks with NC State, a job he accepted mere hours after his McNeese Cowboys were bounced by Purdue in the Round of 32. Unconventional yes, but almost universally lauded.
The only problem with that plan, as it relates to Willard’s situation, is that Maryland is not McNeese. Everyone understands why Wade would leave Lake Charles, Louisiana for Raleigh, but College Park for the Main Line is a different story altogether.
The other option is the one that almost every other head coach on the move has chosen: silence. Say nothing, and when you think you’re not saying anything, say less than that.
Willard chose the third option in the muddy middle and now everyone involved feels like they need a shower. It’s been gross, and yet, I’m here to absolve this socially awkward head coach for turning the first Sweet 16 in nearly a decade for a program starved for success into a somber situation because as with every problem in college sports, it’s the NCAA’s fault. And there’s a simple solution.
The only reason that Wade was in discussions with NC State and Willard was so desperate to hold Maryland’s feet to the fire with NIL demands during an NCAA Tournament run is because the transfer portal officially opened on Monday, March 24, mere hours after Derik Queen’s buzzer-beater sent the Terps to the Regional Semifinal.
Programs know that to turn things around quickly, which is the new expectation for head coaches after the success of Dusty May at Michigan, Mark Pope at Kentucky, and Pat Kelsey at Louisville in Year 1, they need to hit the transfer portal hard. With hundreds of players pouring into the portal every day, Villanova is desperate to have its head coach in place to begin reconstructing its roster.
The season is still going on, as of Friday morning, 12 teams are still alive to win the National Championship, yet even those 12 head coaches are likely spending about half of their waking hours evaluating players who aren’t on their team because spending money on the right portal additions could make or break next year’s title run. It’s absurd, and it’s the NCAA’s fault.
The same thing happens in college football, and this past year it led to players like Penn State backup quarterback Beau Pribula, who departed the program ahead of the College Football Playoff to land a starting job elsewhere. That situation isn’t exclusive to football, but Michigan’s Justin Pippen isn’t an important piece to the Wolverines, so his portal entry this March hasn’t caused the stir Pribula’s did in December.
While it’s plainly obvious that “student” is no longer – and frankly never has been – the most important part of the archaic phrase “student-athlete” at least college football can blame the end of the fall semester for the urgency of the portal window. Players need to be enrolled in their new school for the start of spring classes, and with the National Championship game inching dangerously close to February, it’s tough to wait.
For basketball, the end of the spring semester is still almost a month after we catch a glimpse of One Shining Moment through teary eyes. Move the portal window back, and everybody is happier. Maryland fans get to enjoy this run without the specter of Jay Wright’s championship rings encircling their head coach, Kevin Willard can avoid stepping on countless rakes during his first-career trip to the Sweet 16, and Villanova doesn’t have to shed a tear for every talented transfer that Queen’s bank-shot at the buzzer cost them.
From the very start of the introduction of the NIL and transfer portal era, the NCAA, terrified of losing yet another court case over its years of exploiting athletes for its own financial gain, has simply put its hands up and let chaos ensue. The NCAA may not survive athletes becoming employees, and any pushback against player movement would almost certainly lead to that outcome. Still, this is such an easy fix that Baker, captaining his ghostship of an organization, can execute it with his hands tied. But, assuming that this will be fixed by next March, would be a fool's errand because it assumes that the NCAA is operating with a modicum of competency and with any other motivation than its own self-interest, and that hasn't been the case for a while. Was it ever?