It’s the time of the year when there’s a crisp in the air in the northern half of the US, the leaves are falling, and winter sports are coming. College basketball programs all over the country are getting ready for a long season, grinding out practices, and building chemistry that hopefully leads to a successful season. Usually, at this point, you’re not looking for a head coach, unless you’re the University of Virginia.
The college basketball world was sent into shock yesterday when the University of Virginia announced that their head coach Tony Bennett was stepping down. Bennett, who took the job as the head man for the Cavaliers in 2009, led the school to a national championship in 2019.
Bennett, 55, is a two-time national coach of the year winner, and led the school to two ACC Tournament Championship. He also signed a two-year contract extension this past season to keep him in Charlottesville until the 2029-30 season. The team was set to have their first game on November 6th.
Bennett was known as a tremendous coach who consistently had by far the best defense in college basketball. His retirement comes as a shock especially because of the recent contract extension and the announcement from UVA saying that his retirement is NOT related to his health.
This situation is very similar to that of Jay Wright, the former Villanova University head men’s basketball coach who shockingly retired two seasons ago in the midst of what seemed to be the peak of his coaching career. Wright was openly opposed to the way college athletics were heading, specifically the transfer portal and NIL. Could Bennett be in a similar spot?
Bennett has been open about his distaste for the current model of college athletics, but he knew all of this before he signed his contract extension in the summer. So, it’s hard for me to believe that it’s related to that. Bennett knew what he was getting himself into. If not that, what could it be?
A couple of weeks ago Bennett talked about his coaching future at the ACC Media Day. There, he discussed his disinterest in continuing his coaching career if he was not operating in the way he wanted, hinting at NIL and the portal not allowing him to coach the way he truly wanted to. He discussed how Jay Wright retired because he saw where this was all going in the modern NCAA, and wanted out. Here’s a piece of the quote from Bennett:
“So I think Jay Wright probably foresaw where this is going. ... It'll be better whenever there's regulations. Is that three to five years away? Who knows? But if it's not -- those are decisions that every man has to make when it's his time."
For Bennett, I just don’t really see where this all adds up. Hopefully, a statement from Bennett or the University in the coming days will clear things up. But for now, we’ll wait and see where UVA goes for head-ball coach.
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