Jay Bilas calls out reaction of Villanova hiring Kevin Willard in defense of players, transfer portal

Kevin Willard‘s decision to leave Maryland early Sunday morning to become Villanova‘s new head men’s basketball coach was the worst-kept secret in college basketball this season. It also revived the ongoing debate about how college coaches are able to freely break signed contracts with one school to go to another, while players are vilified for entering the transfer portal to do the same thing.

During Sunday morning’s College GameDay on ESPN, longtime analyst Jay Bilas directly called out the inherent hypocrisy of those two arguments in light of Willard’s move. He cited many of the overused talking points usually directed at players that opt to transfer while the same criticisms aren’t broached when coaches like Willard do the same thing.

“I don’t have a problem with Kevin Willard making this move. That’s great. Any coach should look to better himself or herself based upon the circumstances and based upon business. These are business decisions,” Bilas said Sunday morning. “But one thing you don’t hear from the NCAA literati, from the administrators, from (NCAA president) Charlie Baker, you don’t hear: ‘tampering.’ Nobody’s saying there was tampering here. This is a coach under contract that a member institution tampered with without permission from the University of Maryland.

“You don’t hear about loyalty. Where was Kevin Willard’s loyalty here? He made a decision to go to Maryland and signed a long-term contract. Where’s the commitment we hear on the part of players? And what about going through adversity? (Willard) didn’t want to go through the adversity of oh, he couldn’t stay in New York for an extra day. Like, come on, man,” Bilas continued. “We say all this stuff about players, but we don’t apply that to coaches. That’s a contradiction to the point of hypocrisy. I’m not saying don’t go, go ahead. But let’s not apply these ridiculous rules to the players. It’s just not right. And Seth (Greenberg) is right, I’ve been saying this for over a decade now, sign players to contracts. Negotiate at arm’s length with the players or negotiate a collective bargaining agreement.”

Of course, negotiating contracts with players or a player’s union is currently a non-starter for the NCAA and the conference powers-that-be, which have regularly fought against qualifying college athletes as employees. Much the same way the NBA and other professional sports leagues have done for years.

Bilas also took aim at Willard for deflecting questions about his obvious interest in the Villanova (19-14) opening while guiding fourth-seeded Maryland (27-9) to the Sweet Sixteen. The Terrapins lost to No. 1-seed Florida, 87-71, on Thursday.

“It’s more of the same. What you heard from Kevin Willard from the podium at his press conference was, ‘I haven’t talked to my agent, I don’t know what’s going on, so I don’t know.’ He said the exact same thing when he was as Seton Hall and then went to Maryland. The exact same thing,” Bilas added. “This is the same playbook. And I hate to break this to coaches, but your agent is your representative. So, whatever your agent is doing you are doing, that’s the way agency works.”