theathleticuk
A two-minute clip from a recent meeting of Michigans board of regents was a Rosetta Stone for understanding why college sports leaders cant seem to fix the problems that everyone sees so clearly.
Domenico Grasso, Michigans president, addressed the departure of mens basketball coach Dusty May, whose decision to coach the Dallas Mavericks blindsided a lot of people in Ann Arbor.
At Michigan and elsewhere, losing one of college basketballs brightest minds was viewed as another canary in the increasingly toxic coal mine of college sports.
Advertisement Coach May told me that among his reasons for leaving were uncertainties and pressures involving the transfer portal and NIL support for student-athletes, Grasso said.
He and I agreed that the future of college sports is headed in the wrong direction.
In the next breath, Grasso voiced Michigans objections to the Protect College Sports Act, a bill that is intended to address those very problems.
While acknowledging that college sports are in dire need of clarity and equitable reform, Grasso echoed the stance of the Big Ten and the SEC, which do not support the legislation.
We want whats best for the Big Ten and for Michigan, Grasso said.
We are not going to sacrifice the competitive advantage that we have built for more than a century.
By now, it should be obvious that equitable reform and competitive advantage dont fit neatly in the same box.
In trying to have it both ways, leaders in college sports sound a lot like St.
Augustine: God, grant me chastity, but just not yet.
In college sports, the optimal amount of money to spend on a roster is whatever your school and its donors can afford.
Any school that pays less lacks the want-to and resources to fully support student-athletes; any school that pays more is contributing to out-of-control spending.
Schools with competitive advantages want to preserve those advantages, while the schools at a disadvantage want to rein in the big spenders.
None of this is meant as an endorsement of the Protect College Sports Act, a bipartisan bill that recently advanced out of the Senate Commerce Committee.
The Big Ten and SEC arent wrong to feel targeted by provisions that could curb future conference realignment and open the door for the pooling of media rights.
And any attempt to cap what college athletes can be paid, absent a collective bargaining agreement, is fair game for criticism.
Advertisement The point is that everyones definition of equitable reform is a solution that enshrines all of the privileges schools believe they are entitled to.
If Michigan is doing whats best for Michigan, Texas Tech is doing whats best for Texas Tech and LSU is doing whats best for LSU, no one is actually fixing anything.
Under May, Michigans mens basketball program was a paradigm for success in the modern era.
May built one of the most dominant teams in Big Ten history by outmaneuvering his peers in the transfer portal.
Three of Michigans transfers Morez Johnson Jr., Yaxel Lendeborg and Aday Mara were selected in the first 12 picks of last weeks NBA Draft.
A fourth, point guard Elliot Cadeau, was the Final Fours most outstanding player.
May did what all good coaches do: He maximized Michigans competitive advantages within the system thats in place.
Its a gross oversimplification to say the Wolverines won because they spent money in the transfer portal.
Lots of other programs spent money, too.
It was the combination of everything the coaching, the chemistry, the players buy-in and the financial resources that carried Michigan to the top.
May said repeatedly that he wouldnt stop to savor Michigans accomplishments until the season ended.
It never seemed like he got the chance.
He was already scanning his phone for messages from recruits on the walk back to the team hotel after the national championship game.
Three weeks later, he was so deep in roster-building mode that he said the accomplishment of winning a national championship hadnt sunk in.
Your roster is the priority, May said.
If we dont do the work necessary now, then you dont have a chance to compete again.
Its been difficult ..
for me, no, it doesnt feel any different at all.
In one sense, May is a bellwether.
If the most successful portal-builder in the sport thinks college basketball is headed to a bad place, what hope does anyone else have? In another sense, hes an outlier.
Its not as if he left Michigan to coach in the G League.
He won a national championship and left for the NBA, which is not a new development in college sports.
If Michigan had been pretty good instead of historically good, we might not be having this conversation.
The Mavericks can offer more money and a better quality of life, but they cant offer the same competitive advantages May had at Michigan.
Theres a good chance hell succeed anyway because hes an excellent basketball coach, though his success will depend in large part on the people around him.
For better or worse, hell be operating in a much more structured environment than the one he had at Michigan.
Advertisement College sports could replicate parts of that structure, but it would require people in charge to do whats best for college sports as a whole, not just their own conference or institution.
Most people dont want to do that.
Unless that changes, coaches will keep leaving, fans will keep grumbling, and college sports will remain stuck in the status quo.
Its no wonder nothing gets fixed.