Pessimism is often a defining trait for the temperamental creature that is the college basketball coach. At times, many seem almost to revel in the anxiety this work brings. For many, the idea of success cannot be realized unless there is more than a modicum of misery. You won’t win unless you whine. Catch them at the right time and these guys can be some of the most miserable people you’ve ever seen. And they know it. Kvetching is thoughtful.
Oakland coach Greg Kampe attests: “The coaches, as a whole, are the most paranoid people I’ve ever known in my life.”
That said, there is a real crisis facing college basketball. It’s an annual tradition for coaches to complain about the offseason schedule, but it’s apparently never been worse than today. There is no more offseason.
Due to 1) the transfer portal, 2) zero earning potential for players, 3) the COVID bonus year that stretches over two additional seasons, and 4) a recruiting schedule that is both cumbersome and old-fashioned for the current climate, the collective mood around college basketball isn’t grumpy or restless — it’s discouragement.
“Our industry is not sustainable with the current model,” an SEC aide told CBS Sports. “All the coaches say it. We are all exhausted“.
The recruits and players already at university are also widely affected. For coaches — and this goes as much for the lower-class assistants making $35,000 as it does for the multimillionaire faces of the profession — the masses have never felt more strained.
“The schedule isn’t working. I’m not saying it’s anyone’s fault. It’s not working,” said Towson’s Pat Skerry, and like almost every coach interviewed for this story, he was quick to admit the obvious. “I think all of us are overpaid, but at different levels.”
But the money earned does not prevent health problems. Earning a good salary does not prevent anxiety, depression or acute stress. There may be a better way. Many coaches aren’t looking for sympathy, they’re looking for logical overhauls. CBS Sports has spoken to more than two dozen people in college basketball over the past month about this topic, and it’s abundantly clear that most think the offseason schedule has lost the plot.
“I’m very concerned about our young coaches,” Auburn’s Bruce Pearl said. “I worry about them, as fathers, who don’t see their kids during the season, and when the season is over, their wives are probably expecting to see your son play baseball, or your daughter play softball, or see a play. But no. We’re talking about marriages and kids. That’s the conversation.”
After Kansas’ Bill Self was forced to rest and not coach his team in last season’s NCAA Tournament due to a medical procedure, Pearl was forced out and went to see his team doctor.
“I worry about Bill Self having heart problems (and) Mike Leach worries me,” Pearl said, referring to the Mississippi State football coach’s death last year. “I’m 63, so there is a health problem.”
Something has to give. If not, some sort of exodus could occur.
“If we don’t change some things, we’re going to lose coaches,” Baylor’s Scott Drew said. “If I was 25 and doing this job now and working in operations, I would say I can’t make my way in this business. I’m doing something else, unless the rules change.”
The retirement of Hall of Famers is taking notice and leaving a void. Much less visible are the young people who are trying to progress in their 20s and 30s and who have stopped in the last year or more due to the tension associated with this schedule.
Chris LePore might have been the most valuable person in the Cincinnati men’s basketball program. LePore was UC men’s basketball chief of staff and a former assistant to Wes Miller at UNC Greensboro. He officially left the company this month.
“For me, it was about having more time for my kids, more time for my family,” LePore told CBS Sports. “It’s become very 24/7/365. You can’t really turn it off.”
LePore, 31 and the father of three children under the age of 6, had been considering the decision for more than a year. He has the intelligence and potential to become a good head coach, but he said it’s not worth the wait in the current climate.
“One of the biggest changes was the transfer portal,” LePore said. “Now the day your season ends, the day you play your last game, you don’t really know who’s with you at that point. You hope you know the guys who are going to stay with you, but truth be told, you don’t really know. With the portal, April and May, we put in almost more hours than we do during the season.
LePore said his coworkers at his new job “think I’m an alien” because he was so used to working late weeknights and virtually every weekend. Now the calls and texts are no longer coming and he is experiencing anxiety attacks because he always feels like he should be working more. Leaving at 5:01 p.m. to play Wiffle Ball with his boys is an exhilarating but strange feeling, LePore said. The concept of PTO blew him away.
USATSI
Recruiting is more intense and around the clock than everand that comes from roster uncertainty due to players seeking as much playing time and NIL money as possible.
“We’ve always had to recruit our own players, but not to this magnitude. We’ve always had to recruit transfers, but not to this extent,” Drew said.
“As a guy who lost 31 games my freshman year, I feel like I accomplished more this offseason than before,” Skerry said.
The price (apart from NIL agreements) is a mental and physical tax, not to mention the guilt of assistants who may linger in an extremely competitive profession. Recruiting isn’t just the lifeblood of college basketball. To hear some coaches, it can also sound like a hamster wheel. In the old days, a team’s season ended and the players had a few weeks to decompress before meeting with the staff to look toward the future. It’s been two days now – if that. The portal is calling you.
“My good players are getting phone calls asking them to enter the portal. If you come here, you will get this much money,” Kampe said. “‘I’m a representative of (the Big 12 school) and our average NIL contract is $140,000. I’m telling you, you have to get into the portal, and as soon as you get into the portal, you’ll hear from them.’ This happens in the middle of our season. »
Over the past year, the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) Division I convention (32 coaches from 32 leagues) has built momentum and support to do something – and ideally as soon as possible.
“Scott Drew has been a rock star running this thing,” said Skerry (who, like many coaches I’ve interviewed, serves in Congress).
Drew has been a head coach for two decades. He wants to leave college basketball better than he found it, and if he were to leave now, he said that wouldn’t be the case.
“Right now, it’s difficult for coaches to recommend the profession to former players and friends until we can get things changed and adjusted,” he told CBS Sports. “It’s disappointing because it’s a great profession and a chance to influence people in the next generation. It’s rewarding in many ways, but at the same time, I’ve gotten to a point where I’ve never told people NOT to go into the profession, and most people say we’re at that point until these things are rectified.”
From a recruiting standpoint, the workload has tripled in recent years, according to coaches I’ve spoken with. There must be an exchange, because otherwise the circumstances and environment of the sport risk deteriorating.
“We are tired at the end of the year. We worked seven days a week and the last day off was New Year’s Eve,” Pearl said. “Now, with the exception of a few days at the Final Four, we’re working every day in April, every weekend, every day in a very stressful time where an average of 3.5 players per team per year are leaving. It’s heartbreaking. Families are breaking up. Historically, I haven’t had a lot of guy transfers, this was the most we’ve ever had. We had three and it broke my heart.”
The good news is that this isn’t a story about a problem with no resolution. Change is coming to the recruiting calendar thanks to unprecedented unity among coaches.
“Normally you get 60%, 70% buy-in with anything, but this was something that everyone was on the same page,” Drew said. “COVID taught us different things, and one of them was: When we weren’t going on the road and we were with our players and our families more and everyone was at full staff, we were still able to do our job.”
What will these changes be? A complete overhaul of the spring recruiting period, more free time around each major holiday, a big change in July and extended dark periods that should better serve coaches, college players and recruits. This is one of the biggest changes to the calendar in ages.
Click here for a full look at the proposed changes obtained by CBS Sports
