Geez. Another “Price of Victory” Jay? Don’t you write anything novel, fresh, and exciting? No. Now that we have that out of the way, let’s get down to business with this whole concept of PoV; I’ve noticed that the nature of this insatiable desire to seek victory at any cost has come in many forms like wanting to have the most marketable college playoff or paying a full guaranteed contract to a player with a less than desirable social appeal and before he suffered a gruesome Achilles tendon injury, was one of the worst quarterbacks in the league. Actually, the Deshaun Watson deal will now be discussed as one of the worst signings in NFL history and that makes me so incredibly happy.
This version of the Price of Victory comes from a rather peculiar origin as the recent resignation of University of Virginia’s men’s basketball coach, Tony Bennett, follows a recent trend of college coaches bend the knee to the ever changing landscape that is college sports. It’s only been three short years since NIL (Name, Image, Likeness) flipped college sports on its head and gave athletes that were once grossly disenfranchised the privilege to seek compensation for their skills on the field. I initially weighed in on the decision as both a boon and bane for the NCAA as it finally gave college athletes a chance to receive money from a system that pocketed off of free labor for decades. I also acknowledged that the capitalist nature of athletes being granted financial freedom during a digital age would create a cyclone of currency as athletes could jump from cash pile to cash pile.
I chastised at the old-school coaches like Nick Saban, Dabo Swinney, Jim Boeheim, Mike Krzyzewski, and others when they lamented the approval of NIL and how the culture would “take away from the tradition of college sports.” Well, it’s fair to say with the recent reshuffling of conferences that have resulted in teams like Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas playing in the Southeastern Conference…college can’t even map correctly. Also, isn’t the Big 12 like the Big Two at this point? So, in a sense, these old-timers were technically right about NIL, but they didn’t expect the institutions to be the first groups to wave goodbye to tradition to pursue a deeper pocketbook.
But let’s bring it back to Bennett for a minute. All this upheaval in such a short span of time has proven to be too much for many coaches; recruitment during this period of the transfer portal and NIL has made these coaches transform their position into becoming a General Manager more than a coach. Dealing with agents instead of players and being at the whim of that player transferring if there isn’t enough playing time or the terms of their recruitment aren’t met make every interaction a transaction. In fact, some colleges have had to hire an actual General Manager to maintain these relationships. Think about that for a second. NIL has certainly revealed the underbelly of the college machine in that everyone has a price for the victory that they want. Hey, we finally reached the new twist for POV. Took some time, but we got there.
Bennett has had a decorated history coaching the Virginia Cavaliers as he guided his team to two ACC Tournament titles, 10 NCAA appearances, an NCAA championship, and one of the greatest turnaround stories in sports history. UVA became the first school in the NCAA tournament to lose as a #1 seed to a #16 seed but the team was able to bounce back the following season to win a championship. Virginia has been a team consistently mentioned as a potential candidate to win the tournament since Bennett’s tenure, so this resignation had little to do with performance. It was a difficult press conference as he shed tears over the decision and admitted he was “no longer the best coach to lead this program.”
Now, should Bennett have announced his resignation weeks before the start of the college basketball season? Probably not as the team will now have to work through a season filled with headlines and investigation on the impact NIL had on Bennett’s decision. What I can say is that I can understand Bennett’s rationale for stepping down because the college landscape has morphed itself into what it always has been–a cruel and unforgiving business. NIL simply allowed the athletes to give colleges a taste of their own medicine in a system that gives little penalty to transferring from school to school. It’s rare that the Price of Victory is on the other foot as now college athletes hold more leverage than some of the sport’s greatest coaches and institutions…and I’d expect more coaches to follow Bennett’s lead.