Axing coaches midseason? Just part of the fire of big-time ball

UNC-Wilmington reassigned its coach last week, less than 24 hours after a lopsided loss to Hofstra, and apparently I was supposed to be bothered by it because, you know, this is college basketball and college basketball coaches shouldn't be moved in January.

Benny Moss was reassigned mostly because he wasn't winning. (US Presswire)

"We are not professional basketball, are we?" one respected member of the college basketball community asked via Twitter, at which point I just laughed. From $30 million coaches and private planes to five-star hotels and personal seat licenses, college basketball is way closer to professional basketball than those who use silly terms like "student-athlete" would like to acknowledge. That's why I didn't care that UNC-Wilmington's Benny Moss became the fifth college coach to be replaced midseason, and why I won't care if there's a sixth, seventh or 27th.

Why should I?

Midseason firings in college basketball should only bother you if you're a college coach or someone who still believes in a world that hasn't existed in a long time (and perhaps never existed at all). Many still like to think of college coaches as "educators" who help "mold young men" into "student-athletes" so that they can "graduate" and "contribute to society" via a "productive life after basketball." There are some coaches like that, I guess. God bless them. But all that stuff is secondary to recruiting high-level prospects and winning games with them, and if you don't do that you won't last long regardless of how many young men you graduate.

That's the truth.

It's a truth Royce Waltman touched on when Indiana State fired him in March 2007 after 10 years of graduating players and adhering to the NCAA rulebook. Problem was, he also posted a losing record in six straight seasons. Do that, and you have to go. And I'll never forget Waltman's response at his final Missouri Valley Conference tournament when he was asked if he planned to coach again.

"I can't get a head coaching job," he said. "If you get fired for cheating you can get rehired, but if you get fired for losing it's like you have leprosy. Young coaches need to bear that in mind. Cheating and not graduating players won't get you in trouble, but that damn losing will."

Was Waltman bitter?

Sure.

But that didn't make his central point any less true, that NCAA violations and low graduation rates can be tolerated -- as well as embarrassing off-the-court problems, arrests within programs, etc., -- but losing is unacceptable. Not to rehash an old controversy, but it is true that Kentucky couldn't stack cash high enough to hire the only man to have two Final Fours vacated, and that Memphis was begging (and trying to pay more) to keep him, which is often lost in the anti-John-Calipari sentiment around Memphis these days. Everybody on campus can talk about how filthy and slimy Calipari is, but the truth is that nearly everybody on that campus was praying that the school would somehow convince him to reject Kentucky's offer, and never mind that Memphis was already well into the process of losing its 2008 Final Four banner.

Nobody cared.

They just wanted John Wall, Xavier Henry and DeMarcus Cousins.

And guess what?

I don't blame Memphis.

I would've tried to keep Calipari, too.

And Kentucky was obviously smart to hire him.

Because John Calipari is more representative of big-time college basketball than Royce Waltman, and it has been that way for a while. You want to find real student-athletes and coaches whose primary job is to guide young men to a degree, I would advise you to look at the NAIA level. Here at the Division I level, the priorities are different. We play games at 10 a.m. and midnight during a week of classes because TV requests it, fly teams to Puerto Rico during a week of classes because somebody pays for it, run players off who don't perform well enough because there's always somebody better waiting to enroll, explore the possibility of expanding the NCAA tournament because a $10 billion contract is better than a $6 billion contract, and recruit prospects with questionable character and even more questionable academic backgrounds because, man, did you see that crossover dribble?

All of this stuff happens.

It happens all the time.

And I'm supposed to care when coaches get fired midseason?

Please.

Honestly, I can't think of a single way UNC-Wilmington will benefit from firing its coach in January. But if UNC-Wilmington felt it needed to do it, that's fine with me. Firing a coach midseason is just par for the course in this sport that is "amateur athletics" in name only. Royce Waltman was smart enough to figure this out years ago. It's about time the rest of us did the same and stopped pretending college basketball is anything but a big business where the things the NCAA tells us are important aren't really important at all.