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As the NCAA men’s basketball tournament continues to dominate the headlines, have you noticed how many college basketball coaches are being made richer after leading their teams into the Big Dance last weekend?
It’s a great time to be the agent for a college basketball coach!
This week, 70-year old basketball coach Rick Pitino left #13 seed Iona College and took a 6-year deal to become the new head coach at St. John’s University. Earlier in his coaching career, Pitino helped both Kentucky and Louisville win a national championship. Questions about his recruiting methods (including “Pay for Play” allegations) have dogged him during his college coaching tenure.
The NCAA transfer portal is now in place to facilitate players moving to another school. Plus, there is cash to be secured utilizing the now-approved Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) process for today’s college athletes.
I’m curious. Have there been any college recruiting violations so far in 2023?
Rick Pitino’s departure from Iona College in New Rochelle, New York this week has provided another NCAA tournament coach a chance to cash-in on his former job at Iona.
Less than a week after leading 16th seeded Fairleigh Dickinson to an upset win over #1 seed Purdue, coach Tobin Anderson pounced on the job opening at Iona. Anderson had been at FDU for just one season after a long career of coaching at Division II and III schools.
The dominoes are falling quickly in college basketball. One job is filled to leave another vacated. Expect more of the same for the next few weeks.
Yesterday, Paul Mills, the basketball coach for NCAA men’s #12 seed Oral Roberts University, answered a lucrative call from Wichita State University. Mills agreed to become the Shockers next head coach in a multi-year deal.
The next coach at Oral Roberts in Tulsa will have a hard time beating Coach Mills’ record this year. The Golden Eagles won every single conference game including the conference tournament!
Arizona State head basketball coach (and former Duke point guard) Bobby Hurley led the Sun Devils into this year’s NCAA tournament as a #12 seed. Though ASU lost to TCU on a last second shot in the tournament’s first round, the university announced a nifty two-year contract extension for Coach Hurley.
Rodney Terry is currently the interim head coach for the University of Texas.
After winning his first two NCAA tournament games last weekend, RT (as the players call him) is likely to cash-in soon as the team’s permanent head coach or will accept a top job with another university. Coach Terry has done a fantastic job with the Longhorns after Chris Beard was fired early in the season. The longer Texas continues in the NCAA tournament, the more money Rodney Terry will be commanding soon.
The coaching carousel and associated boom in the moving van business continues at other schools this week, too.
In Natchitoches, Louisiana, the Northwestern State University Demons hired a new basketball coach one year ago this week. The school’s long-time basketball coach Mike McConathy retired in March, 2022, and Corey Gipson was hired. The new coach had been a long-time assistant at Missouri State.
The Demons went 22-11 this season. The team finished in second place in the Southland Conference during Coach Gipson’s first year at Northwestern State. Last weekend, the coach accepted an offer to take the top basketball job at his alma mater – Austin Peay in Kentucky.
Within a matter of days, Northwestern State announced the hiring of their new basketball coach. On Tuesday, Rick Cabrera from Tallahassee Community College was made the Demons’ new head basketball coach. The former junior college coach won 77% of his games during his six seasons in Tallahassee, Florida.
Though I changed jobs several times in my work career, have you ever seen anything as fast as this college coaching carousel? Perhaps it might be a good time to consider buying some stock in U-Haul (UHAL).
This story isn’t just about coaches who are able to capitalize financially on some success this season on the basketball hardwood.
After the coach leaves, several of the basketball players who played for that coach this season are now putting their names into the NCAA transfer portal. They want to follow their coaches to the new school.
If those players are successful in moving to the school with the new coach, what do you think will happen to the student-athletes who played basketball this past season for the school?
Yep. They’re mostly toast.
Most of the incumbent players will be pushed aside once the new coach settles in. The incoming transfer players are quite familiar with the coach and the playbook. The new coach is comfortable with them, too. Plus, the new coach will bring a new group of freshman recruits to the university, too.
The college head basketball coach is quickly becoming a current day version of the Pied Piper.
In the past, the cost of a college player moving to the coach’s new address was a bit daunting. Players were only allowed to receive the scholarship value of tuition, room, and board at a university. A transfer to another school involved paying for your own move.
Not anymore. In 2023, the NIL cash machine allows boosters to crank out unlimited promotional compensation to athletes with little or no scrutiny by the NCAA.
With more and more television money coming into college sports, the pressure to produce winning teams has increased dramatically. Coaches are very well compensated but are generally expected to show positive results within the first two years.
In college football, Deion Sanders is doing exactly the same thing as the new head football coach for the Colorado Buffaloes. Incoming transfers from his former school at Jackson State are heading west to Boulder. Athletes coming in via the NCAA transfer portal plus Coach Prime’s incoming freshman class will drastically reduce the number of holdovers from last year’s CU football team.
College basketball only requires five starting players. Fans at schools which are seeing a head coaching change right now will notice an entirely different group of players on the court for their favorite team beginning next fall.
As stated in previous posts about the NCAA transfer portal process, I expect that many of these transfer players are being paid (via the NIL and its loose “Wild West” set of rules) to cover any costs associated with moving to their new school.
On the other hand, college coaches are allowed to leaving schools with literally no notice whatsoever. In many cases, the coach will receive a multi-million dollar contract at the new school.
Let’s say that a college freshman basketball player initially chooses attend a school which will allow the pursuit of a particular academic goal. (Don’t laugh. There may still be a few.)
Once a flood of transfers starts to occur following the hiring of a new basketball or football coach, it is likely that a few of the holdover student-athletes at the school will no longer have a scholarship.
Whether we like it or not, such is the way in today’s NCAA.