Here’s a thing I think:
I’m not sure Mike Woodson agreed to resign!
Not at first, anyway. Reporting indicates he’s agreed to it by now. The Indiana Daily Student says: “The Hoosiers’ coaching staff met with the team Thursday night and disclosed that Woodson will finish the rest of the season as head coach, starting with Indiana’s looming game against Michigan at 1 p.m. Saturday inside Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall. Once Indiana’s season ends, Woodson will depart the program.”
This, of course, raises the question of when Cynthia Skjodt stuck her family name on Assembly Hall, and whether she’s to blame for Indiana’s demise over the nine seasons since. But it also raises the question of why everything had to be leaked Thursday afternoon, and why all the leaks included “retire” as their verb of choice rather than “resign in disgrace.”
For our purposes, the nature of Indiana’s internal pressure campaign against Woodson is neither here nor there. All we care about is that we got our scalp. Of the nine programs who offensively declined 2024 NIT invitations, six have now either run out their coach or run out their athletic director. Three more coaches sure seem headed that direction. Of the eight who semi-offensively or inoffensively declined, three hired a new coach, one kept their coach but it’s Bobby Hurley, six saw their conference die, and two saw their city ravaged by historic wildfires. The message? Don’t fuck with the NIT.
The blow by blow of how our enemies have fared:
The Naughty Nine
Indiana
Indiana evidently convinced Mike Woodson to resign yesterday. It’s unclear if any firearms were used as a persuasive device. The team Woodson needed all that time in the portal to construct? It sucks. You can run from the NIT, but you can’t run from the dumb idiot you paid millions to coach your basketball team.
Florida State
Leonard Hamilton’s retirement news came earlier this week. The ACC’s eldest statesman, Hamilton stuck around just long enough to become embroiled in a lawsuit alleging he promised money to his players last year which he never delivered.
St. Bonaventure
St. Bonaventure’s our favorite on this list, because they acted swiftly, running out their athletic director in immediate response to the declined NIT bid. Was the declined bid solely the AD’s doing? Was this just a convenient excuse to get Joe Manhertz out and the Bob Beretta/Adrian Wojnarowski tag team in? I don’t know. But I appreciate that the Bonnies made a head roll. In most situations, I oppose beheadings. But metaphorically? In defense of the NIT’s dignity? Count me in.
Pitt
Heather Lyke is out as AD at Pitt while Jeff Capel remains the head coach, which is the opposite of what Pitt fans should want. Pitt took the competent figure in the room and fired her while allowing Coach K’s stooge to continue destroying everything Pitt basketball used to mean. Say what you will about Kevin Stallings, but at least his son hits bombs sometimes.
Memphis
I’ll admit it. Memphis’s decline hurt. We’d poured a lot of energy into trying to defend 2021 NIT champion Penny Hardaway, and much like the NBA in the mid-90’s, we found that assignment difficult. Hardaway’s still at Memphis, but his old athletic director—Laird Veatch—managed to escape, taking over the same job at Mizzou. Imagine getting that call if you’re Veatch. Here you are at Memphis, a college so disreputable that every power conference treats it like a used syringe, and your SEC-inhabiting alma mater asks if you want to come home? Relief like nothing else.
Oklahoma
Porter Moser’s still at Oklahoma, where he still looks like he lives in imminent fear of a booster kidnapping him and selling him to Qatar. Remember the Blake Griffin days, Sooner fans? Remember when your football team mattered nationally? Remember when you weren’t just a trust fund version of Florida State whose proudest accomplishment this basketball season is and will be the balloon snake?
Fuckin’ losers.
Syracuse
*laughs*
Mississippi
The bright side for Mississippi is that this year’s team is pretty good. The dark side is that “pretty good,” for Mississippi, means sixth place in the SEC, and that the head coach who got them there is about to show them how he (allegedy) treats his Ole Misses. Chris Beard allegedly declined the NIT so he could focus on networking for a different job. It did not work out for him. I wonder why. A few years ago it felt like he (allegedly) had college basketball by the throat.
Soon, somebody else will take on the headache of defending hiring Chris Beard, and Chris Beard will be gone, and Mississippi will be 1–4 in NCAA T*urnament games over the last zillion years. Maybe Mississippi will remember the losing effort fondly. After all, that’s kind of the Rebels’ whole thing.
St. John’s
Rick Pitino, previously best-known for impregnating a stranger with prodigious speed then paying for her to abort the child, now coaches at St. John’s, which is technically affiliated with the Catholic church. There, he openly pines for his old life at Kentucky. Mike Cragg, the athletic director last season, is gone.
To Pitino’s credit, he clearly watched last year’s NIT, building the best team in a bad Big East around Kadary Richmond, Deivon Smith, and Aaron Scott. No one ever said Slick Rick didn’t know what he was doing. In fact, that’s usually the problem!
The Eight We Don’t Care About
There was a good reason for each of the other eight schools to decline their bid. Seven were below .500 and couldn’t have reasonably expected to get invited in the first place, with at least five of those seven only invited because of the unique automatic bid setup which has now been resolved. The eighth—Washington—reportedly tried to accept, only to learn that all its players were quitting. What happened to those guys? I’m so glad you asked. Of those who transferred, none are getting significant playing time on an NCAA T*urnament contender. Those who went pro have posted a combined three NBA minutes.
Of the other seven…
- Two (Stanford, USC) changed coaches. (Washington also changed coaches.)
- Six (Arizona State, Cal, Oregon State, Stanford, UCLA, USC) saw their conference disintegrate. (Again, ditto Washington.)
- Only two (Maryland, UCLA) are on track to make this year’s NCAA T*urnament.
- One (Arizona State) continues to rely solely on its head coach’s little brother for any program prestige it enjoys.
The Message, Again
In 2023, when UNC declined the NIT, we pointed out what always happens to programs who disrespect college basketball’s greatest tournament:
They stay bad.
They might bounce back a little, like UNC did last year, but the rot remains. The Tar Heels are on the bubble again. Indiana, who declined a home game in 2017, is a mess. Georgetown, who declined in 2002 under Craig Esherick, should probably be in the Patriot League. Fox Sports, who created a competitor? They’re on pace for 24 lawsuits this year over sexual misconduct. The NCAA? They who tried to usurp the NIT in the first place? They’re losing court cases left and right and everybody hates them.
You can try to take the NIT down. You can toss it into the muddiest of sinkholes. But when you do that, you’re playing on our terrain. The NIT is a muddy sinkhole, motherfucker. And you know what? Some of us love that. Sure, it hurts the NIT when programs opt out. But it really hurts those programs, who inevitably wind up in the sinkhole themselves.
The message, again:
Don’t fuck with the NIT.
