More than the depths March madnessthe 660 victories over 37 years or the twenty players he trained and who ended up winning millions NBALeonard Hamilton is proud of a number he can count on one hand.
That, he says, is the number of players he coached at Miami and then over the past 23 seasons at Florida State who failed to graduate.
Hamilton, now 76 and moving away from an industry he barely recognizes, says he is at peace about giving up coaching. More than a dozen other coaches were interviewed by The Associated Press ahead of this year’s edition. NCAA Tournaments have expressed concern about the future of their industry. Most said they still loved their jobs, but some adjustments were necessary.
“What I’ve learned is that the skills that were required to be a good coach 10 years ago have very little application today,” said Buzz Williams, who spent six years at Texas A&M and was named the new coach of Maryland.
Coach after coach, from Miami’s Jim Larrañaga to Virginia’s Tony Bennett to Villanova’s Jay Wright and others have all left the game, saying it no longer had the appeal it once had. Some have specifically blamed the transfer portal for the added stress — Michigan State coach Tom Izzo last week called the portal a “urinal” — and of course the pressure of competing for players with sponsorship money, a topic that extends beyond basketball.
Most of these coaches have had comfortable careers in college, some of them earn big salaries, and some of their replacements are doing very well. But it is undeniable that many feel that their profession is becoming difficult to manage in its current state and that it certainly no longer has the same well-being goals as it once did.
Answers? Williams doesn’t have them, other than “this upcoming season will be different from last season.” Hamilton insists he also has no answers to a college sports landscape that looks more like a talent auction every day. Just questions.
One of them: “Is this what we want in college sports, people going to the highest bidder?” he asks. Hamilton said he would not answer that question for fear of being portrayed as a coach who left because he is against paying players.
However, freed from the prospect of having to lure these players to a program, he can ask the questions in a way that many other coaches can’t — or won’t: “Have you heard anyone talk about academics lately?” he said.
From APR to NIL
The final four weeks used to be a week that caused concern over one of college basketball’s most defining metrics: Academic Progress Rate (APR) scores would be seen as a North Star for programs that did things the “right way” or a cudgel for those that didn’t, with the NCAA able to impose sanctions.
Debates over the road to the title would revolve around whether those still playing were the best examples of schools producing “student-athletes,” to use the NCAA’s increasingly anachronistic term, or whether they were simply producing individuals capable of coming on board to contribute to a title run and then heading to big money in the pros.
Nowadays, you can make a lot of money in college. The APR still appears every June, but its relevance has been replaced by a new entry in the NCAA’s cauldron of alphabet soup: NIL.
The numbers attached to name, image and likeness offers are now the ones that get the most attention. They’re the most telling indicator of a program’s health and the primary consideration — perhaps the only one — when it comes to adding players from an increasingly crowded transfer portal or simply keeping them on your own roster.
UCLA Coach Cori Close, who is leading the program to its first women’s Final Four, says the Bruins have all the advantages they need to stay competitive.
“That being said, on a global scale, I wonder if we are eroding the real lessons that stay with young people for the rest of their lives,” Close said. “My biggest commitment as a coach is to prepare young people for life after basketball and I worry sometimes…we are eroding some of the character building that I think is truly the most special thing about college athletics.”
Judge’s ruling paves the way for a new era
Next Monday, a federal judge will hear final arguments before deciding whether to approve the House settlement, a $2.8 billion plan that will add another layer of change to an already volatile landscape.
If Judge Claudia Wilken approves the settlement as expected, then, for the first time, schools will be allowed to share television, ticket and other revenue to the tune of approximately $20.5 million per year per facility with their athletes. This will be in addition to already authorized payments from third parties that turn college players into millionaires.
Duke’s Cooper Flagg, the biggest star in men’s college football and the favorite to cut down the nets in San Antonio hours after this hearing, makes about $4.8 million via NIL deals. Next year, five-star recruit AJ Dybantsa is expected to play at BYU on a contract worth $7 million.
If the regulation is approved, the new rules will come into force on July 1. Schools – even the largest and most organized – are scrambling to put the pieces together.
“We’re not ready to go, and I think if anyone says they are, they’re not telling the truth,” Michigan athletic director Warde Manuel said. “We’re getting closer to being ready to go.”
The life of a coach is synonymous with change
As the leader of one of the richest athletic departments in the country, with a donor base that matches its long tradition, Manuel has things relatively good.
Last year, when the Wolverines were shopping, they made a run at Florida Atlantic coach Dusty May — he was fresh off his team’s magical run to the Final Four — and had the resources to land him. Accompanying him was one of FAU’s best players of the month for May, Vlad Goldin, and one of his top recruits, LJ Cason.
This kind of churn, from the smallest school to the largest, is now commonplace in college basketball.
In Northern Colorado, Steve Smiley was so close to the program’s second March Madness appearance last month. The Bears, who compete in the Big Sky Conference, are a solid program that occasionally attracts a big player.
Two seasons ago, that player was Dalton Knecht, who flourished and averaged 20 points and seven rebounds. A year later, he was making more money at Tennessee on his way to the NBA. Last year, the diamond in the rough was St. Thomas, arriving in Northern Colorado from Loyola-Chicago. This season he played for Southern California.
“I still love coaching as much as ever,” Smiley said. “But I came from small colleges, I played Division II basketball, I coached in college and at a lot of different levels before I got to this one. You wear a million different hats and you grow up with that idea, and it’s helped us adapt to all the moves and changes.”
Show me the money
In 2010, Tad Boyle left Northern Colorado to attend the University of Colorado. He spent those years building the Buffaloes into a semi-regular contender. But not this year.
In a season that went far under the radar at a school where Deion Sanders“The reinvigoration of the football program monopolizes the attention, Boyle went 14-20 after losing six players to the NBA and the transfer portal.
Boyle, as always, received a ballot to elect his conference’s coach of the year at the end of the season. This year he refused to fill it out. He said there’s no way to gauge who’s doing a good job unless they know how much money their programs have to pay players.
“We know the payroll of the Kansas City Royals. We know what the payroll of the New York Yankees is, and then we can judge whether the Royals are having a better year than the Yankees based on that,” Boyle said, drawing an analogy to a relatively transparent system that doesn’t exist in college sports.
What are the rules and who enforces them?
Even though schools are allowed to spend $20.5 million on players under the terms of the settlement, that money will be distributed in different ways to players in different sports — primarily football and men’s and women’s basketball.
Although there are plans to create a body responsible for ensuring that everyone follows the same rules, even its role remains unclear with the launch only three months away.
The payments will come from the schools — above the table — but the general lack of transparency in college sports has put a puzzling spin on Hamilton’s departure from Florida State. Late last year, six players took the coach to court, claiming he had failed to keep promises to pay them NIL in a dispute seen elsewhere last season.
The school has denied any wrongdoing. Hamilton doesn’t talk about the trial. He is more comfortable asking questions about the world that created him.
“You can’t be president of Chrysler today and president of Ford tomorrow. You can’t play for the Lakers on Monday and then go play for the Clippers on Friday,” Hamilton said. “And someone has to be responsible for the chaos and explain what the thought process is for how we’re supposed to handle all of this. There has to be structure. That’s how you maintain order in society.”
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AP Sports Writers Pat Graham, Michael Marot, Teresa Walker, Eric Olson, Larry Lage and Steve Megargee contributed to this report.
