I focus on football, I’m an expert on football. But as a sports fan, I have opinions on many different sports. In this edition of Mike On Sports, I have to opine on Danny Hurley to the Lakers.
Full disclosure, I used to hate UConn basketball. As a brainwashed Boston College fan from youth, I had to live in Connecticut for most of my life and watch UConn throttle the Eagles. Not in the early days where we had John Bagley and they sucked in the Field House, but then Jim Calhoun arrived and beat even good BC teams (Billy Curley, Scoonie Penn) every time. It sucked.
I rooted against UConn when they won their first few titles. And when Calhoun left I thought the hoops program would die under Kevin Ollie. But nope, they won it all under Ollie as well.
Once Dan Hurley arrived I had given up and decided if you can’t beat them, join them. For two straight NCAA tournaments, I drove 25 minutes north to the border of Massachusetts and won money on betting UConn, something you can’t do in Connecticut for some dumb reason. UConn covered every tournament game the last two seasons, won it all twice and I’ve come to respect Hurley after my initial hatred based on that last name and my old feelings about UConn.
So what the heck do I know about hoops? Not much but I know this — NIL and the portal have made college coaching much harder and a lot less fun for some big-time coaches. Nick Saban retires, Jim Harbaugh heads off to the NFL and even Jeff Hafley leaves my favorite program Boston College for a coordinator job in the NFL. Being a college head coach in football is hard and I’m sure it’s hard in basketball as well. But on the flip side, great college coaches going off to the pros is often a disaster. Saban is an example as is Steve Spurrier and Billy Donovan who won back-to-back national titles with Florida and has been average at best in the NBA.
Hurley should stay. He’s an east coast guy, he can make good enough money at UConn and he won’t have to deal with spoiled superstars like LeBron James and won’t have to draft his below-average son.
Money is important. I love money. And people who think there is no difference between $80 million and $100 million are stupid, simply stupid. But there are also more important things in life than money. Hurley can leave UConn on top and be a Calhoun-like legend there forever or he can stay and regress which is simply a fact based on the heights he’s reached. But to me, a legacy as perhaps the greatest coach in UConn history and a long, storied coaching career is better than selling out to the NBA and a franchise that has been unserious for years.
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Stay in Connecticut Danny Hurley. As a non-UConn fan who respects you as a Connecticut resident, make kids better and push for more titles rather than be a coach run out of town by star players like coaches at Phoenix, Cleveland, and LA this season alone.
