Getting off the coaching merry-go-round

I know I shouldn’t be babbling on about the new and perhaps improved Golden State Warriors or the suddenly fallible San Francisco 49ers this week. Maybe we’re even talking about free agency and the San Francisco Giants. But in my role as college sports quasi-purist, I feel like I need some ventilation. And thankfully, you, my loyal readers, are a lot cheaper than a psychiatrist’s chair.

Tony Bennett resigned this week. No, not the guy who left his heart in San Francisco or the guy who went on tour with Lady Gaga. This Tony Bennett was a basketball coach. It’s a very good thing.

Just five years ago, Tony Bennett won the NCAA basketball championship as coach of the Virginia Cavaliers. He did this by turning good student-athletes into very good basketball players. It slowed down the game. Their children graduated. And with a few exceptions, you’ll never read their names in NBA scores again. He was a good guy who recruited good kids and could really coach. I always said Tony Bennett should be at Stanford.

I bring up Tony Bennett because he is the last Hall of Fame college basketball coach to say “I did it.” The game is no longer a coach’s game. It’s a game of managing egos, managing managers, and pandering to a “student athlete” who makes almost as much money as the coach and only plays for him because the check clears. And if your program turns out to be more successful than expected, see you later and thank you coach. It went to the higher bidder.

I thought about this when Jay Wright, an excellent coach who, like Bennett, won national championships at Villanova but still had a moral stance, suddenly resigned.

Then the esteemed Mike Krzyzewski, who ran arguably the most successful college basketball program in the country, decided he no longer wanted to coach.

And finally, Tara VanDerveer, the winningest coach in college basketball history, said she will no longer coach the Stanford women’s team.

Four people who loved their jobs, loved their school, and loved what they did for a living got excited and decided they didn’t like it that much anymore.

There’s a definite reason. Great coaching is no longer the key ingredient to great teams.

Recruitment has always been a dirty business. Stories of secret payments to players are rife. Longtime UNLV coach Jerry Tarkanian was legendary. Someone once suggested that Tarkanian would face the death penalty if recruiting was a serious crime.

When Bob Boyd was coaching at Mississippi State and Hugh Durham was coaching at Georgia, they were predominantly recruiting the same kid – but unfortunately he didn’t qualify. So Hugh Durham went to the boy’s high school and paid fifty thousand dollars to change the boy’s grades. Bob Boyd went to the boy and gave him fifty thousand dollars. The kid went to MSU. Later, Hugh Durham called Bob Boyd and said: “Looks like you left me behind for this kid.”

While working at NBC Sports, I was assigned to write a recruiting story. So I went to college coaches all over the country to ask about this. I ended up at Texas A&M where the coach was a very funny guy named Shelby Metcalf. “95% of the coaches in the NCAA are not violating any recruiting rules,” he said confidently. This led to the obvious follow-up question: “What about the other 5%?” Metcalf didn’t miss a beat: “They’re nationally ranked.”

Those were ugly times. But the reality is that once a new player signs a contract to play for that coach, he is usually there for four years, or at least until the NBA swallows him up. So one coach knew what he had.

Every coach I’ve talked to over the last few years has the same complaint. Now you have to recruit not only incoming players, but also your own players. The transfer portal and extraordinary NIL payouts have turned the game into a dribbling version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.”

The result: The rich get richer, and just like in football, there are about 20 teams with a shot at winning the NCAA tournament, while everyone else is just playing for a ticket to the dance.

For some reason, Tony Bennett’s resignation was the final blow to college basketball for me, as far as I know.

He was a small town guy from Wisconsin. He played collegiately at Green Bay, Wisconsin, for his father, who was also a legendary coach.

I met Tony when he was his father’s assistant at Washington State. As with Green Bay, Dick Bennett built the Cougars into a winning team before leaving the job to his son Tony.

Tony immediately turned Washington State into a conference champion with a group of good players and hard workers. That’s who he was. And it was good enough to get him an offer to take over the reins at Virginia, where he used the same style and system to win the national championship.

Like his father, Dick, Krzyzewski, Wright and VanDerveer, Tony Bennett felt coaching was his calling. Make a student-athlete a better player, a better person and a better contributor to society.

I have always felt that University players should be compensated for their efforts and contribution to the reputation of the University. But now it’s the wild, wild west.

Now it comes down to how long, how long, and how do I get out of here? The game hasn’t changed, but the system has. Duke will always be among the best. Villanova has become less important since Wright’s departure. Virginia is consistently beaten by more athletic teams. And for the first time in 25 years, the Stanford women are not ranked in the preseason top 20.

You may not be able to buy happiness. But rest assured that you can buy a national ranking these days.

I’m sorry Tony.

Barry Tompkins is a 40-year television sportscaster and San Francisco native. Email him at [email protected].