Thereās a lot there, but one quick reaction: Iām not against Tony doubling down, but Iād like him to be a bit more oriented toward doubling down on his outcomes rather than his habits. For example, doubling down on retention: Great! Using the same habits toward that goal in a changing world: if your habits are whatās important to you, then go for it, but donāt expect to get retention using the same habits.
(Though the particular issues of last year donāt really even fit in well to any preexisting habits, tbh, right? The covid 5th year laid a trap for Tony and he dove right onto it. I kinda think Tony is as bad at self analysis as the rest of us.)
I think the whole point of the article is that Tony thinks he can be successful without compromising his principles (or āhabits,ā if you prefer). He doesnāt see them as mutually exclusive. I suspect that JPHAT is right ā that if it turns out he canāt do it his way, heāll leave coaching. Heās not interested in becoming Eric Musselman.
So far, I think heās been proven correct. The article says heās turned Virginia into an āeliteā program, and most people in college basketball would agree. Yes, you canāt ignore the three first-round NCAA losses ā but you also canāt blithely dismiss the natty that came in the middle of it. Or the regular season and ACC Tournament titles.
If someone said when Tony was hired that weād lose three first-round games but win a championship, I think most fans would respond: āReally? Weāre gonna make the tournament four years? That would be awesome!ā
Haney contrarian alert (just like Tony our contrarian coach) : Principles and habits are very different, and I think itās useful to distinguish them, but in practice they can be hard to separate, and I think thatās the difficulty that Tony is wrestling with, IMO, not as successfully as he did from 14-19. There was nothing about prioritizing the Covid 5th year that fits into any principle that I can discern from 14-19; and the only habit I can see that it fit for Tony is ā¦ tbh, I donāt really know. Because I donāt know his habits well enough, but I suspect it was a gut instinct of some sortā¦
At todayās @NILSummit, we released the first ever look into how much football and basketball student-athletes are making based on data from over 30 @AthleteNIL collectives and more than 1000 student-athletes weāve contracted with. pic.twitter.com/HwpNlaF9xc
I could be wrong but it seems to me the NCAA just wants protection from the fed govt. Itās not even about solving what we as fans think is the problem. They want to avoid any possibility of athletes becoming employees, and basically cover their asses as far as a uniform set of rules. But there will still be no enforcement. Nobodyās really talking about that.
Yep. In terms of their incentives as an organization, itās donāt get sued or jailed and keep existing. So what you outlined as their priorities with regard to NIL are exactly right. Of course, that leaves a huge vacuum with regulation. The NCAA can never be a real regulatory body.
This makes me so viscerally angry - this whole situation is of the NCAAās own creation by refusing to allow athletes to profit from their own efforts and despite the fact that those efforts were partially responsible for the generation of billions of dollars in revenue. Not only is the NIL predicament the NCAAās own fault, it was 100% foreseeable; they just chose to do nothing.
Now theyāre punting their existential problem to Congress, who definitely has better things to worry about and is not what many would consider an effective legislative body. The non-sports fan part of me wants to see the NCAA crash and burn as a consequence of itās own ineptitude and all of the NCAA administrators who made millions in salary sued into poverty. Rant complete - go Hoos.
I talked about it some months ago regarding federal legislation. The feds arenāt going to pass a law and outsource enforcement to the NCAA. Itāll be through the Education or Labor Department, most likely, but what kind of enforcement mechanism and what kind of penalties will there be?
Some of the states are really pushing this hard (itās a long tweet that you have to click through to fully read):
Iām generally NIL-neutral-to-supportive, but I dunno how I feel about state legislatures trying to use these laws to keep athletes in-state. Not sure how helpful this is for the athlete.
What annoys most about the NIL mess and just about everything else relating to the NCAA for that matter, is itās all about football. In this case, states trying to gain an advantage.
But football is such a different animal than basketball, different culture. Nobody really cares whoās bending the rules, they just want their teams to win. Itās a whole different story with basketball. Iāve said it before, the more the light shines on some of the shenanigans going on, the more fans will lose interest. And because the main concern is football, I donāt think the powers that be care all that much.
Itās just a really stupid model. Donations to support an entertainment product? Iām not the worldās biggest proponent of donations to support athletics (not that anyone asked), but when itās going to scholarships, then itās positive. And when itās going to support construction, that can be a positive, too.
But we should just be funding college athletes like we fund most other athletes and like we fund most entertainment products. I go to a Knicks game or two a year. I buy a ticket. I buy a beverage (or more) of my choice. Those $$ go to the team. I watch them play on cable and we have ways of measuring eyeballs so that the networks and broadcasters can negotiate carriage agreements with teams and leagues. Nobody is asking Howard Stern or Spike Lee or Matthew Modine or whoever to come up with some cock-a-mamie scheme to pay Big Ragu to endorse Ginger Bread cookies or whatever so he will come to NYC.
Honestly, leave it to college sports to really find new and innovative ways to cock things up. If I didnāt love college hoops so much, it would really infuriate me.
