College coaches don’t pass up many opportunities to lament the current state of college athletics, especially when a great one in their profession gets out, and that’s certainly what Tony Bennett was — a champion and an individual as universally respected and liked as anyone in men’s basketball.
Bennett’s retirement Thursday from Virginia at age 55 was a shocker and a prompt for more grousing. So now let’s list the other coaching giants who recently retired and who, like Bennett, left little doubt that Etch A Sketch rosters were leaving them spent — Mike Krzyzewski, Jay Wright, Nick Saban and so on. Let’s say it together: Things can’t go on like this.
But can we also remember that things are like this because of decades of college athletes getting screwed over, to the point of actual bipartisan agreement on the NCAA’s malfeasance and courtroom carnage to back it up? Can we consider the current Virginia men’s basketball players for a moment, and the raw deal they seem to be getting?
They just found out their coach is jetting, 20 days before the start of the 2024-25 season. They are in the middle of an academic semester. Yes, the 30-day transfer portal window is open. But anyone on this Virginia roster who isn’t a graduate transfer who jumps in and enrolls elsewhere would be signing up to sit out for the entire season.
With Tony Bennett’s retirement, only six active men’s college basketball coaches have won a national title:
◽️️Dan Hurley (2)
◽️ Rick Pitino (2)
◽️ Bill Self (2)
◽️ Tom Izzo
◽️ Scott Drew
◽️ John Calipari pic.twitter.com/KVuHslDZes— The Athletic (@TheAthletic) October 17, 2024
They are stuck if they want to take a single dribble of consequence before November 2025. Which makes the circumstances of Bennett’s retirement more surprising than the retirement itself. The idea of a Bennett, Tony or his father and basketball mentor Dick, wronging or deceiving someone is about as farfetched as a Bennett coaching up-tempo basketball. It doesn’t compute.
Thoughtfulness is one of Tony Bennett’s many admirable traits, as seen in the way he handled his basketball low point — Virginia losing to UMBC in 2018, the first No. 1 seed to fall to a No. 16. That made it all the easier for the sports world to rejoice in his high point a year later, the lone national championship in Virginia men’s basketball history.
And it makes me wonder if part of Bennett’s farewell news conference Friday will be him explaining that he actually talked with all of these players in advance of the decision to make sure they’re happy playing for Ron Sanchez this season. That would be peculiar. Quite irregular. But, again, the alternative is Bennett leaving his players in a lurch.
This retirement, which several outlets reported is not related to health, which was speculated as a real possibility when last season ended, reads as Bennett doing Sanchez a tremendous solid. If Sanchez is named interim coach as expected, he’ll have a full roster and full season to demonstrate he should get the full-time gig.
That would be quite a validation of Sanchez’s decision to resign as Charlotte’s head coach in 2023 and return to UVA as associate head coach, wouldn’t it?
This brings Dean Smith to mind, setting things up for Bill Guthridge to have a chance. This brings Bo Ryan — who followed Dick Bennett at Wisconsin — to mind, doing the same for Greg Gard.
The difference is that the players of those eras had no immediate recourse, anyway. That’s been fixed, with unintended consequences that are unfortunately driving some of the best coaches out of the game early. But it has been fixed. So pulling a Guthridge/Ryan at this time of year infringes on the rights of players in a way that wasn’t possible back then.
Some will argue these players picked Virginia, they were already playing for Sanchez too and, by the way, Bennett has reluctantly embraced NIL. That’s all fine. But it would seem playing for a national championship-winning coach and a three-time national coach of the year would be a big part of a player choosing Virginia.
And would be a huge disappointment if it were ripped away right before the season started.
The university is an interesting question, too. I could see UVA not wanting to sign up, especially after having the rug pulled out, for more of a program that has zero NCAA Tournament wins since that 2019 championship game against Texas Tech. It’s been receding.
But it was special, Bennett’s 15 years at Virginia and his entire career. His coaching and his class, his contributions to the game, have been extraordinary. His ending needed to be a bit more ordinary.
(Photo: Brett Davis / Imagn Images)
