🏀 Tony Bennett Retires
Virginia head coach, Tony Bennett, announced his retirement Thursday and while I'm surprised by the timing, I'm not surprised by his reasoning given his approach to team and program building:
"I always have said, when you're doing this ... you have to be true to yourself and really look at it and say, who am I? Can I operate how I want and can it be successful enough? And you get to choose if you want to be a part of it or not," he told ESPN. "And when you feel it's time, like Jay did, like Coach K, maybe Saban, it's their choice. And you can sit here and complain and gripe. Or you have a decision to make. Either you try to do it in your way or you get to make that decision."
"I think it's right for student-athletes to receive revenue. Please don't mistake me," Bennett said Friday. "The game and college athletics is not in a healthy spot. It's not. And there needs to be change and it's not going to go back. I think I was equipped to do the job here the old way. That's who I am."
The Transfer Portal and NIL1 compensation have completely upended college athletics and made building and keeping a team together incredibly challenging. Athletic power schools are free to poach talent from less established programs. The Virginia program under Bennett was built on a foundation of loyalty and player development that is no longer possible.
As a Gonzaga fan I'm struck by the fact that a very similar approach to Bennett's started our run of success 25 years ago, but would not work in today's athletic climate. A key difference with Virginia under Bennett is that Gonzaga has always relied on transfers and player development as a strategy and selling point. And Mark Few and his staff have constantly evolved their approach to player acquisition to take advantage of all the available options. When graduate transfers became a thing Gonzaga immediately started adding high-quality 1-year players from the pool of college graduates with eligibility remaining. But perhaps most impressively during the last decade, they've managed to retain their important players and Mark Few.
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