UVA Coach Bennett abruptly retires

[ohs73]

Per the 4-letter word. Shot out of the Wahoo blue.

[ohs73]

The gist of this I believe is that, much like Jay Wright, he did not care for the direction college athletics has gone recently (portal, NIL) and felt this the time to step aside.

UVA will make a formal announcement Friday and appoint an interim successor.

We'll long remember that thrilling NIT quarter at Charlottesville and Shoon's block that punched Bona's Garden ticket.

[kccgold]

Seems like a good guy, obviously successful, and when we beat them he was very complimentary. So all good with him personally but man was his style and system borrrrring

[ThomasMerton]

Class act. I meet him several times on the summer circuit. His father, Dick, really good coach too.

[ceharv]

I don’t know, I think if I was a Virginia fan I’d be upset with his timing. A little more than two weeks from the start of the season you make this decision? Unless he’s trying to give the school no choice but to name one of his assistants as his successor, why wouldn’t you have made this announcement months ago so the school would have the chance to conduct a proper search for someone to fill what I am certain is a highly sough-after position? If indeed it was because of the direction of college sport, what changed between mid-summer and yesterday? The timing seems odd to me and I wonder of something else might come out soon. But ultimately I really don’t care what was behind it.

[bonnieswin]

Tony Bennett's exit from Virginia should wake up lot of people about the state of college sports. The following quote below should alarm everyone when a quality guy like Bennet wants nothing to do with the current environment. Sad!

“I realized I’m no longer the best coach to lead this program in the current environment. The game in college athletics is not in a healthy spot. It’s not. And there needs to be change, 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 and that’s how it was — and my staff has buoyed me along to get to this point but there needs to be change, it’s going to be a closer to a professional model.”

[BONA82.5]

Bennett is a class act. If he felt it was his time to go - then it was time for him to move on. No need to question the "timing" of the decision - It's never a good time. College Basketball has lost yet another great leader of young men.

[ceharv]

I hope you guys are correct and that maybe Bennett will take the lead in convincing the NCAA that some reasonable rules need to be in place, which can speed up the process of normalizing college sports. I have suggested that normalizing NIL, transfer rules and such will occur as more kids discover that transferring for every last dollar doesn’t produce the easy road to success so many seem to expect, but that will be a slow process and reimposing some reasonable rules might speed that process. Of course, the NCAA can’t go back to being the autocratic monster it was for so long and maybe might consider including the input of a representative group of athletes as part of its rule making, along with coaches, administrators, etc. Just a thought, but probably will never happen. I think that something like that would help them defend the inevitable lawsuit, which the NCAA is apparently very concerned with, to the point of essentially running away and becoming almost non-existent. One thing I do know about is how to defend lawsuits - 35+ years of doing that.