The U of L men’s hoops coaching search may offer a mirror into college sports’ future

Through painful experience, I have come to believe that evaluating new coaching hires is one of the most difficult facets of college sports punditry.

When Vanderbilt hired Bryce Drew to coach its men’s basketball team in 2016, I thought it was a match made in hoops heaven.

Instead, Drew was fired after going 0-18 in SEC games in his third season (2018-19). He exited Music City with a 40-59 overall record.

When Vandy brought on successful WNBA head coach Stephanie White to run its women’s hoops program in 2015, I thought big things were ahead.

Instead, White and Vanderbilt parted in 2021 with the coach having gone a pedestrian 64-97.

When Louisville hired U of L alumnus and former Kentucky Wildcats and New York Knicks assistant Kenny Payne as its men’s hoops head man two years ago, I believed it was an eminently logical step for a scandal-plagued Cardinals program in need of stability and healing.

Instead, Louisville athletics director Josh Heird announced Wednesday that Payne was being pink slipped after going a woeful 12-52, 5-35 in Atlantic Coast Conference games, over his two seasons.

So, now, a U of L program that had two head coaches from 1971 through 2017 is in the market for what will be its sixth different men’s hoops head man since 2016-17.

Beyond the obvious question of whether Heird, school president Kim Schatzel and the U of L administration can at last find a men’s hoops coach capable of reinvigorating a fallen Cardinals men’s hoops program, the Louisville coaching search shapes up as a fascinating window into just how much the college sports landscape has recently changed.

We are about to discover whether the rapid alterations that have transformed big-time college athletics — especially conference realignment and the potential consolidation of power and wealth in two “mega-conferences” — have changed the fundamentals of what constitutes a “good coaching job.”

Understandably, a frustrated and angry U of L fan base is fixated on “big name hunting” in the Cardinals current coaching search. As a rule, “taking a big swing” in coaching searches is the place to start. You never know what the answer will be if you don’t ask.

What is fascinating about the timing of Louisville’s search is that many of the prominent names one hears U of L backers yearning for — Alabama’s Nate Oats, Arkansas’ Eric Musselman, Auburn’s Bruce Pearl and Baylor’s Scott Drew, to name four — hold jobs that, not so long ago, would have been considered as clearly inferior men’s hoops positions to being the head coach at Louisville.

Not one of Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn or Baylor is anywhere close to Louisville’s historical hoops achievements. The Cardinals have won three NCAA titles on the court (and subsequently vacated one due to NCAA rules violations) and gone to 10 Final Fours (and subsequently vacated two due to the same NCAA rules violations).

In a world where college sports power and revenue is concentrating in the Big Ten and the Southeastern Conference, we are going to see if U of L’s superior hoops tradition and historically robust fan following make the same impact in attracting a coach that it might have done in the past.

Of course, Louisville was able to hire a sitting Big Ten head man to become its football coach before last season. But in leaving Purdue for U of L, Jeff Brohm was returning to his college alma mater and to his hometown.

Even setting aside the buyouts it would take to get Oats ($10 million as of March 15), Pearl ($8.5 million) or even UCLA’s Mick Cronin ($16 million after April 1) out of their current deals, if you are an SEC head men’s hoops coach (Oats or Pearl) or a soon-to-be Big Ten head man (Cronin), do the factors that have traditionally made Louisville an attractive basketball situation trump having a coaching position in a “Mega 2” league?

(Interestingly, Musselman’s contract buyout at Arkansas is a “paltry” $750,000).

One also has to factor in the uncertain future of Louisville’s league, the Atlantic Coast Conference. Florida State is seemingly headed toward the ACC exit. Once that happens, the futures of the other most-desirable ACC brands — North Carolina, Clemson and Virginia — would seem to be very much in play.

In the U of L coaching search, we may learn how much separation there now is between the SEC and Big Ten and the other two remaining power leagues, the ACC and Big 12, in terms of how coaches and their agents view the attractiveness of jobs.

(If Kentucky athletics director Mitch Barnhart were to pull a sitting head coach from an ACC or a Big 12 school for UK’s vacant women’s basketball head coaching position, it would provide another answer to the same question, albeit from the opposite direction).

Whether Baylor’s Drew is a realistic option for Louisville is unclear, but it seems rational that U of L might have a better shot with a coach from the Big 12 than one from the SEC or Big Ten.

However the Louisville men’s basketball coaching search plays out, it will offer an intriguing view into the emerging landscape of big-time college sports.

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