Tony Bennett, age 55, retires as Virginia Mens Basketball Coach effective immediately. I didn't see that coming. I wonder what brought that about.

BREAKING: Tony Bennett to announce his immediate retirement in a press conference on Friday at 11 a.m. pic.twitter.com/jw9HYtyYaq

— Virginia Men's Basketball (@UVAMensHoops) October 17, 2024

The real shame is that probably a majority of NCAA coaches feel the same way Bennett does and should be speaking publicly about it, but they are silenced by all the usual negative incentives: freeze-out by NCAA, negative recruiting impacts, whisper campaigns against them the next time they interview. If you're not retiring there's no freedom to have an honest and transparent debate about what's best for college sports and players. We need an exit ramp before this really is just pro minor league sports with a school brand wrapper.

I hope that he actually does get involved with trying to think through what a reformed system would look like. I fear that what we are going to end up with in a few years is a LOT of young men with:

1) No college degree and a bunch of ****ty articulated credit hours that make degree completion a nightmare for them

2) IRS tax liabilities

3) Related - a lot of frustration that their payments are actually going to the IRS since the educational benefit of their scholarship FAR exceeds the IRS ed benefit cap and thus all those free rides are taxable at a pretty high tax bracket.


PS (on the above - conferences and the NCAA should ABSOLUTELY demand that as part of any salary cap and structured arrangement some of the player money go directly into an IRA at the full max rates possible. It is both good stewardship AND would reduce the bite at the end.)

Didn't Saban leave Alabama for essentially the same reason?