After Jim Phillips completed his time addressing all the changes in the college sports world and its relevance to the ACC, there were still several coaches to address the day’s news and events. The one clear theme throughout was that it is time to go with the changes or suffer the consequences.
ACC Media Days; Day One
Important Matters First
We are in year two of Miami head coach Mario Cristobal having a real-life crisis at ACC media days. He says he can’t get his Cuban coffee in Charlotte, NC. “You know, that’s been a battle here. I think it would be good if I could get some help from the locals,” Cristobal said when asked about his morning on Tuesday. “It would be greatly appreciated, and I promise to return the favor at a fine dining establishment down in Miami when you guys are down there.”
Speaking of Speaking Up
SMU coach Rhett Lashlee made news last week when he suggested that schools are already circumventing the new financial rules that are part of the House v. NCAA settlement. He took some questions from Last Word addressing whether he was accusing schools of cheating or implying that he thought it might happen.
He laughed and said, “Not that they are, but that they will.” Then he paused and added, “But I’m sure they are.” Lashlee pointed out that circumventing the rules has been going on for many decades. “Whatever the rules are, there’s always going to be cases of someone trying to get around them. So I am 100% confident someone is going to try to do those things,” he said.
He compared it to disciplining kids. If you tell them not to do something, but they know there are no consequences, they are going to do it. He said the most critical part of revenue sharing, NIL, and the other financial elements is having an enforcement arm for the rules. Lashlee said that’s why he favors Congressional intervention into the process.
The Change is the Change
Cal head coach Justin Wilcox has been through multiple transformations. He has seen Cal move from being one of the founding members of the Pac-12 to playing a predominantly East Coast schedule as part of the ACC. And he has been around to experience the entire evolution of college sports in the last several years.
“But it’s really changed in the last four or five years. From 2001 to 2019, the names and faces change, but essentially, the rules of the game and how it was done were pretty similar. Then it’s changed a lot,” Wilcox said. He delved into the specifics, “The things that the players are subject to and kind of the changes in college football with the transfer portal, the conference realignment, NIL, and players making money now, that is significant. Any one of those things in a 10-year window would be a big deal, and when they all three kind of happened at the same time, boy, that’s a lot of change.”
Wilcox said coaching college football is more complicated now. But, he said, at the end of the day, the players are 18-23-year-olds whom he believes still need to be coached and mentored. “Yeah, I can understand there’s some frustration at times thinking, how is this going to go? But you either figure it out and find a way to embrace the change and continue to coach them and mentor them because that’s what they need, or you need to do something else.”
The Day 2 schedule in Charlotte has coaches and players from Florida State, Georgia Tech, Louisville, Pitt, Syracuse, and Wake Forest.
Main Image: Jim Dedmon-Imagn Images
