Tony Bennett sounds the alarm on the broken college sports landscape

Just 20 days from Virginia men’s basketball’s season opener against Campbell on November 6, head coach Tony Bennett abruptly announced his retirement. The 55-year-old has led the Cavaliers program since 2009 and has been a head coach in the sport since 2006. He led UVA to a national championship in 2019 and was the last remaining active national championship-winning head coach in the ACC. 

While the timing of the announcement may seem suspicious, Bennett told reporters in a Friday press conference that he, ”always wanted this (program) to be taken over by one of my staff members.” It has not yet been confirmed by the university, but all signs point to associate head coach, longtime Bennett assistant, and former Charlotte head coach Ron Sanchez taking over as the interim head coach for the 2024-25 season. 

Bennett didn't just explain the timing of his retirement on Friday, he also told reporters, “I realized I’m no longer the best coach to lead this program in the current environment.” Later expanding on the impact of the current state of the sport with the rise of the transfer portal and NIL on his decision, saying, “I think it’s right for student-athletes to receive revenue. Please don’t mistake me. I do. But the game and college athletics are not in a healthy spot. There needs to be change… it’s going to be closer to a professional model.”

Bennett is not the first collegiate coach who has become disenchanted with the job because they are no longer the only ones getting paid. The rise of the transfer portal and NIL has made the job much more difficult and that’s largely responsible for driving away Coach K, Jay Wright, and even Nick Saban on the football side. For years, my rebuttal to these coaches has been stolen from Don Draper in Mad Men, “That’s what the money is for.” 

However, it may be time for me and others to rethink that philosophy because losing coaching legends who still have a lot left to give certainly isn’t a good thing for the sport. “Adapt or die” Brad Pitt as Billie Beane in Moneyball told his head scout who wasn’t willing to embrace analytics, and that could be the same message to Bennett and others who aren’t willing to play the NIL/Portal game. But Bennett is spot on, “it’s right for student-athletes to receive revenue,” and “college athletics are not in a healthy spot.” So why should coaches adapt to a broken system?

Instead of branding coaches who are fed up with re-recruiting their own players every year and renegotiating NIL agreements after every 20-point game as ungrateful for their substantial salaries, and instead of ascribing all the sport’s problems to the greed of Gen-Z athletes who are scared to compete, we have to remember who the real enemy is, the NCAA.

The NCAA would love for us to pit the athletes and the coaches against each other. The NCAA would love fans to be enraged at former UNLV quarterback Matthew Sluka for redshirting after his NIL promises weren’t met or for those who are sympathetic to the student-athletes to direct their ire at UNLV head coach Barry Odom, but both sides need to remember to point their fingers at the NCAA. The organization that is too greedy to ever give the athletes a cut and once the Supreme Court forced them to, too incompetent to provide any structure, or at least any structure that every court in America won’t deem as an anti-trust violation. 

Let’s just make sure we all remember who the bad guy is here because it’s not Tony Bennett for prioritizing his life over an increasingly impossible job, and it's not the athletes who are rightfully taking advantage of the earning potential that their talents afford them. It's the organization that, despite providing absolutely zero oversight and having no ability to enforce any of its illegal rules regarding NIL payments, will collect about a billion dollars for March Madness.

Bennett wasn’t built to win big in this new landscape, one that requires constant recruiting over player development and defensive adjustments, and it showed in the results. Since winning the 2018 national title, Bennett’s Cavaliers have not advanced past the first round of the NCAA Tournament, and they missed it altogether in 2022. He's not quite a fish out of water, but he's no longer swimming downstream. If you don’t want to take my word for it, Bennett said it himself. 

“Will I miss the game? Do I love the game? Absolutely. But I don't think I'm equipped in this new way to coach and it’s a disservice if you keep doing that. I’m very sure that this is the right step. I wish I could’ve gone longer. I really do. But it was time.”

Still, this is a coach who led UVA to regular season ACC titles in the 2020-21 and 2022-23 seasons, and despite his painfully boring defensive style has the sixth-most wins in ACC basketball history with 364. He’s a great coach and now he’s done. 

The players needed more power and more freedom of movement, but it’s hard to say this current system is working. College basketball is not better without coaches like Jay Wright and Tony Bennett. The alarm has already been sounded and Bennett is the latest coach to hit the sirens. We can only hope we don’t lose any more great coaches before the NCAA, the conferences, or any of the federal branches of the United States Government find a solution. 

Maybe making the athletes employees with termed contracts is the answer, but maybe that'll have negative ripple effects for the non-revenue sports. Maybe this and maybe that, I don't have the answer to all the NCAA's problems, but then, I don't get paid to. At best, I can take Bennett's warning, and amplify the signal.

Head coaches have always been the stars of college sports but with more player movement than ever, recognizable faces patrolling the sidelines, and familiar styles of play have become the one constant that fans can grab onto as an entry point into the sport each year. If that continuity continues to erode, specifically in men’s college basketball, the sport will wade into even deeper, murkier waters and become even more reliant on March Madness as its only life raft. 

College sports need a solution; coaches need a chance to catch their breath, and athletes need a fair cut, but the NCAA won't provide one because it would rather hide in the background, eating the entire pie, even if that pie gets smaller year after year, hoping fans point fingers at the players and coaches instead of them.

It’s hard to blame Tony Bennett for his decision to walk away. He’s made life-changing money in a business that’s always been 24/7 but now needs an extra day of the week to get all the work done. And why would you blame him when you can just blame the NCAA?