WHY TONY BENNETT LEFT HIS HEART IN CHARLOTTESVILLE: THE GAME RUINED HIM

College basketball went wayward and works so well for Dan Hurley — a transfer portal, paying players — but Bennett retired with distress, realizing he can’t function at Virginia in reckless times

     Don’t mention his between-the-legs slam. Cooper Flagg threw down an alley-oop jam as his coach, Jon Scheyer, cherished the theatrics on the Duke sideline. In Connecticut, Dan Hurley is eyeing a third straight national championship, the first since UCLA more than a half-century ago. He spent the offseason rejecting a chance to coach the Los Angeles Lakers for $70 million.

     He returned to college basketball.

     “It’s the Wild, Wild West,” he said Friday night.

     Could it be the complex future of this sport involves uber-passionate men who love the wildness? Folks are saddened about the retirement of Tony Bennett, a defensive magnet who brought old-school methods and won a 2019 title by conjuring the utmost from lesser recruited players. It’s hard to believe a man is finished at age 55, especially when another Tony Bennett performed as a singer until he died at 96.

     But he chose not to continue at Virginia in the grubby world of transfer portals and names, images and likenesses. He will make the Hall of Fame as the first coach to say good riddance when he had at least 15 years to give. To his credit, he’s walking away instead of taking the millions he was owed for seven more years. He won it all when he had a shot. He decided he can’t win it all any longer and contacted the school’s athletic director, Carla Williams, after vacationing with his wife, Laurel, at the Tides Inn on the Rappahannock River. Where else to make epic news than from a hotel in Irvington, Va.?

     “Just sat and talked,” Bennett said. “Just kind of processed about what the future would be. And that's where I kind of came to the realization that I can't do this. It's not fair to these guys and to this institution that I love so much to continue on when you know you're not the right guy for the job.”

     His final takeaway? “Probably the thing that’s choked me up most and the hardest to say is when I looked at myself,” he said, catching his breath, “and realized I’m no longer the best coach to lead this program in this current environment. And if you’re going to do it, you’ve got to be all-in. You have to give everything. If you do it half-hearted, then it’s not fair to the university and the young men. There’s still a way in this environment. There’s a way with Carla and president (Jim) Ryan and the board to do it and to hold to our values but it’s complicated. And to admit honestly that I’m not equipped to do this is humbling. I’m a square peg in a round hole.”

     A square peg can’t swallow the sizable amounts given to certain stars who want no part of a Virginia education, as much as Thomas Jefferson would complain. They head elsewhere for a season before an NBA career, unless they transfer to monster programs that pay and win. UConn and Hurley. Duke and Scheyer. Kansas and Bill Self. Alabama and Nate Oats. Houston and Kelvin Sampson. Gonzaga and Mark Few. North Carolina and Hubert Davis. Baylor and Scott Drew. Auburn and Bruce Pearl. Even Rick Pitino, at 72, is near the top 25 at St. John’s. Some coaches are ageless. Some are young.

     Or one is Hurley, whose fervor is unmatchable. He accepted $50 million in Storrs after blowing off the Lakers and LeBron James. He heard what Bennett said about paying athletes, how he agrees with the intent but not a flawed system. “I think it's right for student-athletes to receive revenue. Please don't mistake me. The game and college athletics is not in a healthy spot. It's not,” Bennett said. “And there needs to be change, and it's not going to go back. I was equipped to do the job here the old way. That's who I am. It’s going to be closer to a professional model. There must be collective bargaining. There has to be a restriction on the salary pool. There has to be transfer regulation restrictions. There has to be some limits on the agent involvement to these young guys. And I worry a lot about the mental health of the student-athletes as all this stuff comes down. There has to be some limits on the agent involvement to these young guys. There are good agents, and there are bad agents, and they’re driving some of this stuff that we’re in.”

     And Hurley agrees. “There's some serious need. Everything Tony said is a thousand percent accurate in terms of it being a little bit of an untenable situation in a lot of ways with there being just no structure and a sport that's a little bit out of control right now,” he said. “I appreciate all those things. Those things are accurate.”

     But his life timetable is different. “My background,” Hurley said. “I was a high school coach, a fired assistant college coach, a high school coach for nine years. I haven't coached at this level for as long a period. It took me a lot longer to get here.”

     He is 51. If you spend time around him, as he jokes with Larry David during the NCAA tournament and spews pandemonium about his team, Hurley seems 30. His style works when it couldn’t any longer for Mike Krzyzewski, Roy Williams, Jim Boeheim and even Jay Wright, who isn’t budging from the TV studio at 62.

     The game is a massive puzzle with no conclusion. No longer is college hoops worth watching until March Madness, built on gambling. “I adjusted some. But you can't fight against yourself,” Bennett said. His boss, Williams, sobbed during the news conference.

     “When people like Tony Bennett exit men’s basketball, exit our industry for something that has nothing to do with coaching or teaching or being a role model, then shame on all of us,” she said. “I remain hopeful that we will have congressional intervention. I remain hopeful that we will find a way to preserve college athletics, which there’s nothing else like it in the world. And it has earned the right to continue. There will have to be change and we are a part of that change. But as it stands at the moment, there are no real rules or guidelines that create structure and so the people that follow the rules are the ones that are hurt the most.”

     He will miss basketball. Or the game he coached. “I am at peace. And when you know in your heart it’s time, it’s time,” he said. “Do I love the game? Absolutely. But I don’t think I’m equipped in this new way and it’s a disservice if you keep doing that. I’m very sure that this is the right step. I wish I could have gone longer. I really do. But it’s time.”

     The regular season starts Nov. 4. Exhibitions have started already. After making a 10-foot jumper Saturday, Flagg nodded his head and crossed his arms — on the court. “He’s a natural, and he has great instincts, obviously,” Scheyer said. “But with how hard he plays and then you add in his feel, he’s going to make some special plays.”

     “It felt great, an incredible atmosphere,” Flagg said of Cameron Indoor Stadium. “It's something I've dreamed about since I was young, and I dreamed about playing at Duke as well. It was kind of surreal.

     “Wouldn’t want to be anywhere else, to be honest.”

     Until next June, when he’s the No. 1 overall pick in a system that drove Tony Bennett away. He left his heart in Charlottesville.

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     Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.