As college sports model changes, so do enduring coaching icons

With the Super Bowl concluded, college basketball takes center stage with a new emerging storyline: After 39 seasons, will this be UConn women’s basketball coach Geno Auriemma’s last dance?

Auriemma sparked retirement speculation last week after becoming just the third coach in Division I basketball history to reach 1,200 wins – joining former Duke men’s coach Mike Krzyzewski and Stanford women’s coach Tara VanDerveer – when he addressed whether he’d be on the sideline long enough to be No. 1 in victories.

He said to “think more along the lines of single digits” in more wins, adding, “I could probably say with a great deal of certainty that I’ll never be No. 1 in wins.”

That the 69-year-old Auriemma, winner of 11 national titles with the Huskies, has not said this will be his final season has not tamped down speculation that his remarkable career could be nearing a close. If it is, expect more of a Nick Saban-like abrupt announcement rather than a Krzyzewski-like farewell tour.

As unprecedented disruption triggers seismic change throughout college sports, several enduring coaching faces in college football and men’s basketball have already exited stage left. Those decisions could have been due primarily to age, the advent of the NIL Era and the constant churn of the dizzying transfer portal, or none of the above.

College sports faces exodus of coaching icons

Regardless of the reason, the void is striking, a momentous loss of name recognition and excellence for college sports – an emerging mass exodus of coaching icons.

Saban last month retired with his seven national championships, widely viewed as the greatest college football coach in history. After winning his first title at Michigan, Jim Harbaugh made the long-speculated jump back to the NFL, taking the Los Angeles Chargers head coaching job.

In men’s college basketball, whose national resonance has eroded over the last several years, the departures have been considerable: Krzyzewski, Roy Williams, Jim Boeheim and Jay Wright all left in recent years, taking a combined 11 national titles with them.

Additionally, in recent weeks Oregon’s 65-year-old Dana Altman – one of the best active coaches yet to win a national championship – has shown signs of fatigue with the industry’s state of affairs. Altman has always been a well-respected coach no one wants to face in March.

The question is how long he will continue in light of comments like this to Pac-12 insider John Canzano: “For 40 years that I was doing this, the worst thing that could be said about you is that you bought players. Now, that’s part of the equation.”

Altman said the quiet part out loud. No way to know definitively how much the changing face of college sports is weighing in the retirement calculus of many of the most recognizable faces.

But it’s the elephant in the room.

And now Auriemma, whose Huskies lost to No. 1 South Carolina on Sunday, warrants watching to see if he too is drawing ever closer to closing the book on a career whose accomplishments may never be equaled.