Bob Huggins and loyalty in college basketball

For my money Jay Bilas is the best college basketball analyst in the business. Jay writes a terrific college basketball blog on ESPN.com. Unfortunately it's only available to ESPN "insiders." (Hint: You have to pay $20 to subscribe to ESPN--The Magazine.)

Jay's latest post covers a lot of ground, but I was interested in his comments on Bob Huggins and loyalty (or lack of) in college basketball. I essentially agree with what Jay wrote, but I thought I would add a few more points, done "Marc (MSI) said, Jay said" style.

Bilas: I have grown a bit weary of one-way loyalty expectations. Now that Bob Huggins has left Kansas State for his alma mater, West Virginia, some people are losing their minds over his lack of "loyalty."
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MSI: I think loyalty is an artificial, overdone concept. Big time college basketball and football is a business, despite the lofty pretenses. Business is often a ruthless enterprise, particularly when companies, or in this case college basketball programs, are fighting for its portion of a fixed pie. The NABC and the NCAA may promote the concept that schools cooperate, but that is largely the job of NCAA officials and conference commissioners who market the television rights. In reality, college basketball depends on the concept that it is not enough for a particular program to succeed; others must fail.
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Bilas: With the way that coaches get fired these days, usually without being allowed to finish their contracts, it is not at all unusual or unreasonable for a coach to leave for a better opportunity. In fact, it is almost necessary.

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MSI: I agree with Jay's premise, although that is an acknowledgment that all those lofty ideals that the NCAA and its members fill the public's mind with mean nothing.
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Bilas: Coaches are always going to leave players who have relied upon them in recruiting, no matter how many years they have been at a school. That is just the way it is.

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MSI: Have we reached the point that words, even promises, carry no weight among college basketball coaches? I understand the business, which I've been writing and talking about it for the last ten years. But when a college basketball coach enters a recruit's home, looks him and his parents in the eyes and makes promises that more than suggest he is staying for the next four number of years, the recruit and his family have every right to believe they are being told the truth.

From the player's perspective, the notion that coaches have complete freedom of movement, but athletes must provide an ironclad commitment through the National Letter of Intent is grossly unfair, especially since they must rely on coaches who profess their "word is as strong as oak." I guess I would not react so strongly if the National Letter of Intent reflected reality and fairness. (Later in Jay's post, he rightly suggests the NLI should provide athletes more flexibility to rescind.)
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Bilas: Everyone expects loyalty when their own interests are at stake, but not when another party's are. When a program wants a coach, its fans and administrators show loyalty. When they grow tired of a coach, they do not show any such loyalty, they just want change.

No one at Kansas State complained when Huggins hired Dalonte Hill away from Charlotte, and took with him a committed recruit in Michael Beasley. That was just recruiting. Now that Beasley may want to follow Huggins to West Virginia, Kansas State is having an attack of morality and saying that it will hold Beasley to his national letter of intent until a new coach is in place and he can make the decision.

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MSI: This is an excellent summation of the state of college athletics, even if it's not a pretty picture. Commitments from coaches mean nothing. Caveat emptor. I get it. I just don't think that recruits and parents understand the ruthless business of recruiting, even if it seems so obvious. The National Letter of Intent has a couple lines supporting the notion that a player is signing with the school, not the coach, but that hardly trumps all the hours invested by the coach visiting, chatting, and text messaging.
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Bilas: What did Kansas State expect when it hired Huggins? Did it expect him to end his career there? If the school did, why didn't Kansas State insist upon language guaranteeing that in the contract or insist upon a restrictive buyout? The free market works pretty well with regard to contracts, and the two sides are perfectly able to fully and fairly bargain an appropriate agreement. The truth is, if Kansas State were to insist upon locking up Huggins, he probably would not have agreed to it.

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MSI: Probably bad lawyering on the K-State's part. The reported $100,000 buyout is hardly an obstacle to a school looking to hire a "hot" coach. (Interestingly, John Beilein reportedly owes West Virginia $2.5 million to buy out of his contract.) Huggins probably doesn't deserve all the criticism, but I don't think the coaching profession and college athletics is well served by a "one and done" coach.

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Bilas: Remember, when the West Virginia job came around the first time, before John Beilein took it, Huggins turned it down to stay at Cincinnati. Huggins was loyal to Cincinnati then, and the school fired him a couple of years later. Nice reward for Huggins' loyalty, huh?

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MSI: From my reading up until this point I thought Bilas more than inferred loyalty means little, which I agree. But then he suggests that Huggins was being loyal to Cincinnati when he stayed two years ago. I would say Huggins was acting in his own self-interest then, even if his stated reason for staying might have been loyalty. Without revisiting all the reasons surrounding his firing, I do think that circumstances change. Huggins stature as the long-standing coach may have created the illusion of loyalty, which probably helped him weather some public missteps, but ultimately the university felt it was better served without him. In the end, loyalty literally means nothing, even if it gets bandied around.

Comments

[andy fine]

The national letter of intent creates an unfair playing field. Any coach can back out of contract; any professor can move to another school; any citizen can back out of a mortgage or switch jobs at will--none of these people have to sit out a year unproductively like athletes. The intent was to not have players pick schools by who coaches the team, but because they like the school--but this is fantasyland for big time college sports, and even baseball, track, soccer, lacrosse, etc. where the athletes choose a school for the coach not the school itself.

The NLI could not hold up in court if the NCAA were not a "voluntary" organization. But if you can't go pro out of high school legally, as in hoops/football, you have no other choice but to go to a college thru the NCAA--the NCAA should not be able to set up rules in public government funded institutions that would not hold up to constitutionality in the public realm.

[Sam]

Coaches know the game...win or be fired. Why should there be any loyalty or reward for molding fine young men or high graduation rates? It's all about the money.