Tony Bennett Resigns Amid College Sports' Landscape Changes

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00:00Tony Bennett walked away from a fantastic coaching job and career at Virginia in Charlottesville.

00:13I mean, the guy did it all there.

00:15When he walked away initially, when we broke the story on here, we thought maybe he was

00:21sick or something.

00:22We didn't know why, but you know, hours later we would find out basically it's because of

00:28what's happened to college athletics that's, you know, made him walk away.

00:34Could you believe it?

00:36I'm not surprised.

00:37There had been a lot of discussion about the possibility that he might go in this direction.

00:41The surprise, obviously, is that he declined to do it in the aftermath of the previous

00:48season, signed a contract extension in June, and then decides to do it on the very eve

00:55of the season.

00:56Gosh, he even attended ACC Media Day.

00:57Why would you go through that if you didn't want to coach?

01:00But he did.

01:01And I, you know, my position on this is really simple.

01:06That the changes in college sports that he acknowledged drove him out into retirement

01:15from college coaching are, okay, so they're problematic for him, and they certainly make

01:21it really difficult, really consuming, I think is the word, for college coaches.

01:27It's very difficult.

01:28You have to be on high alert all the time, and that's a really exhausting life.

01:32But what about the changes that occurred in the 15 years prior to that, Scott, when the

01:39University of Texas decided that paying their football coach at the time, Mack Brown, $3

01:44million, which is more than anybody else was making, wasn't enough, and that he had to

01:48be paid $5 million.

01:50That massive increase set off an absolute firestorm of salary increases in college coaching.

01:57And as a result, when Tony Bennett was finishing his career for the last good number of years,

02:03he was making over $4 million a year.

02:06And over his last 11 years, he made $38 million.

02:11So those changes allowed him to have the freedom to say, you know what, I'm done.

02:16So there are changes that impact everything in this equation, and all we focus on are

02:22the changes recently that have granted a significant amount of power to the athletes, and not the

02:30changes that precipitated that, that granted an inordinate amount of money to the coaches.

02:37Do you think that's why Jay Wright walked away, too?

02:41He had all that money, and he just didn't need it anymore, any of the nonsense?

02:47Now I understand what you're saying.

02:48It's not just because of NIL and paying players.

02:52This is a lot deeper than that.

02:54But I mean, here's a guy that, you know, what didn't he win?

02:58He won the NCAA tournament.

03:01What didn't he win?

03:02He won several ACC titles.

03:04He won more games than anyone ever at that school.

03:08Honestly, what didn't he accomplish?

03:11And you're right, I didn't like the way, fair enough, it's his choice.

03:17But the way he handled it, I thought was weak, right before the season starts.

03:21And then he went through the motions of signing a new deal, and then he went to the media

03:25days.

03:26I mean, what was he thinking?

03:28Like he, don't tell me he made his mind up in the morning at breakfast and then made

03:32this decision by the afternoon.

03:35He had to have been drumming this up.

03:37Well, the way he explained it was that he and his wife took a weekend vacation and they

03:43talked about it a lot and came to this decision.

03:46I think Tony Bennett's a wonderful man.

03:48I've known him for 25 years and couldn't like him more.

03:51He's terrific.

03:54The trap you get into when you're in this circumstance where you're thinking about walking

03:58away is that you're going to impact somebody negatively one way or the other.

04:04If he had left in April, his coaching staff, his entire support staff would have basically

04:10been out of a job.

04:11And that's problematic for them.

04:13He leaves now and the players who all signed up to play for Tony Bennett and everything

04:18that entailed, then they are out of a coach.

04:21So there's really no good time to do this.

04:26I can understand why people complained about it.

04:29And I understand why there is another side to it as well.

04:33But for me, the real thing comes down to is that college basketball is a terrific sport.

04:41The players do have an exorbitant amount of power now because of instant eligibility.

04:46What we use colloquially as the transfer portal.

04:49The portal itself is not the problem.

04:51The problem relative to the coaches and the stability of the sport is the immediate eligibility

04:58anytime you want to leave.

05:00That's the problem.

05:01The solution to that is to make the athletes employees.

05:05But that creates a whole nother set of problems.

05:07And it's why the universities and colleges aren't really all that eager to do that.

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