News broke Thursday that the Los Angeles Lakers are targeting UConn‘s Dan Hurley to become their next head coach after leading the Huskies to back-to-back national titles. Which if accepted would represent a recent trend of collegiate head coaches across football and basketball stepping away from the college level amid changing times in college athletics.
NIL and the transfer portal have drastically changed college sports, often criticized for their lack of structure as head coaches are now tasked with a professional sports level of roster management along with fundraising. Which college basketball analyst Seth Greenberg addressed Thursday morning on ESPN’s Get Up.
“Until we have contracts in college athletics, if we continue to have year to year free agency, you’re going to see more guys leaving,” Greenberg said regarding college head coaches moving on. “Why did Coach Saban walk away? Why did [Jim] Harbaugh walk away? They walked away because of the culture of our sport right now, the leadership is not acceptable, the rules don’t work for not only just for the coaches but for the players, for the institutions, and you lack revenue streams.”
The new era of college athletics favors larger programs with bigger bankrolls and stronger donor bases in recruiting. As many desire nationwide NIL legislation to help even the playing field.
But until then, college athletics in revenue generating sports like basketball and football will remain as a quasi-professional landscape with murky waters and clear winners and losers. Which may not be desirable for all head coaches.
“It is a statement on the state of college athletics, and college athletics aren’t amateur athletics anymore, they’re professional athletics,” Greenberg said. “When Pete [Thamel] said, ‘Well it’s kind of like professional athletics.’ It is professional athletics. If you look at the numbers that are being paid, the numbers that have to be generated, you’ve got to find new revenue streams.”
Greenberg elaborated on how program’s like UConn in the Big East pale in comparisons to the revenue generated by programs in the SEC, Big Ten, and Big 12. Which paired with the overall attitudes head coaches have on the nuances of the job could result in Hurley and others continuing to make the jump from the college level.
“College basketball coaches are blunt about this, they don’t like the rules of engagement right now,” Thamel added. “They liked it better when they had more control over the roster, when players couldn’t transfer freely. When they didn’t spend all their free time going to chicken dinners to raise money to try to get a backup power forward.”
“Will some of this become clearer in the wake of the House vs. NCAA settlement?” Thamel added.
“We’ll see, but power has really left that position and I think that’s what the core of this is, those guys wouldn’t say that out loud, but I really think college coaches used to be the most powerful person on campus. They lorded over their programs and now the players have more power, the players can move, the players can come in their office and demand more money. It’s just a sign of where we are right now in college athletics.”
It will be fascinating to see if Hurley stays with the UConn program and pursues a third straight championship with the Huskies or decides to lead an iconic and historic NBA franchise. But it will be more interesting long term to see if any changes will be made to college athletics that can prevent head coaches across all sports from jumping ship in the future.
“But right now, college athletics, we’re seeing what’s happening. There is a problem, until we find a solution we’re going to see more of this whether it’s in football or whether it’s in basketball,” Greenberg concluded.
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