Tubby Smith wrong and right about transfers
The NCAA basketball tournament begins a week from today with the First Four games in Dayton, Ohio. Throw in all those conference tournaments that will conclude between tonight and Sunday afternoon and we should be on the threshold of the best four weeks of a toolong collegeseason.
But even as all this positive drama begins, college hoops headlines from Monday signaled that the month ahead could wind up being about anything but on-court shining moments only.
And those headlines didn’t even touch on that nettlesome ongoing FBI investigation into secret payments to college players from agents and shoe companies to choose either the school they’ll attend, the agent they’ll sign with or both.
That storyline is a given for such schools as Auburn, Arizona, Duke, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisville Michigan State, North Carolina and anyone else who reaches the 68-team tourney after having been linked to the investigation.
It will sour newss conferences and player experiences, and as bad as it figures to be this spring, if the scandal grows — and most believe there’s no way it can’t (or at least shouldn’t) — it might become an even bigger story this time next year.
But for Monday’s headlines only, let us return to an ill-conceived rant by Memphis coach Tubby Smith regarding the perceived loosening of transfer rules as well as a potential bombshell out of NBA headquarters that could have the league getting involved with high school stars before they exit that stage of their development.
Let us start with Smith, who isn’t necessarily wrong to bemoan the growing number of transfers on the collegiate football and basketball scenes.
To quote the 66-yearold veteran of more than 25 years of head coaching experience: “Kids have a lot of options nowadays with the new NCAA regulations, and guys can transfer when they want. I’ve been in this business a long time. Never seen anything like it. We had over 800 Division I transfers last year. Over 800. Come on. We’re teaching them how to quit. That’s what we’re doing. Things not going well, let’s quit.”
But here’s where his message rings hollow: Smith is working for his sixth different employer since 1991. And four of those jobs — Tulsa, Georgia, Kentucky and Texas Tech — he left voluntarily to pursue other head coaching opportunities.
So on at least four occasions he quit the job he had to pursue one that was either more lucrative financially (Tulsa to Georgia in 1995, Georgia to Kentucky in 1997, Texas Tech to Memphis in 2016), or one that felt more comfortable (Kentucky to Minnesota in 2007).
That’s certainly Tubby’s right. That’s the free enterprise system at work. And to allow athletes to transfer every time a coach yells at them isn’t teaching them anything that will help them later in life. He’s right in a way that a system of transfer without sitting out a year for no reason other than you think you made a mistake would not only cause problems throughout the sport, but would send the wrong message to the player about the consequences of one’s choices.
But coaches breaking contracts and abandoning kids they’d recruited to a particular school also sends a bad message that it really is just a job, and that money rules and that while Coach A was happy to lure you to School B, it was basically so he could move along to School C while leaving you to play for Coach D, who might or might not leave before you graduated or ran out of eligibility.
You certainly can’t blame any young man who signed with Smith at Tulsa, Georgia, Kentucky or Texas Tech (Minnesota parted ways with Smith rather than Smith leaving on his own) for viewing Tubby as something of a hypocrite.
Yet Smith’s rant — and he did have six players transfer after his first season on the job there, including his top three scorers — was nothing compared to the NBA’s news that it is considering both lowering the draft age to 18 and taking a more active role in advising the players before they’ve graduated from high school as well as before they enter the NBA.
If this eliminates the unscrupulous agents and slimy coaches and lifelong leeches who view these hoop talents only as money machines, let it happen yesterday. Beyond that, if every young man who has no real interest in college can now skip the pretense of getting an education for earning a paycheck, all the better.
But perhaps it could also serve a more noble purpose, however indirectly, by encouraging kids who shouldn’t harbor false dreams of NBA riches not to ignore their academics, because for 99.9 percent of us — even those with above-average athletic talent — we’re much more likely to earn a decent living in anything other than professional sports.
If we really want to change a lot of lives for the better, urging them to quit blowing off their academics, advising them that there’s lifelong worth in higher education, would be a good place to start.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.