Should Players be Loyal to Their Coach or School?

What makes a top flight program in college athletics? Is it a rabid fanbase, an endless budget, a gaudy stadium, or a winning culture? For any aspiring college athlete, all of these aspects seem extremely attractive, and a result, the best young players choose to play at Bama, Georgia or Ohio State in football, and Duke, North Carolina, and UCLA in basketball. However, what if there was a common denominator that trumps all four of the previous attractants? There is, and it is the head coach. Sure, playing under the bright lights of Bryant-Denny Stadium on a cool fall night is a dream come true for any college athlete, but what truly gets all those five star recruits to Tuscaloosa is Alabama head coach Nick Saban. This creates a civic issue, because it creates a culture where the schools the players are recruited to are secondary in importance to them, and a coach departing a program can have disastrous, long lasting consequences.

It has been proven time and time again that when a head coach leaves, his current players and commits also leave that program in droves. There have been many recent examples of this. In 2022, The USC football program hired Oklahoma head coach Lincoln Riley, one of the best head coaches in all of college football. The consequences for Oklahoma were disastrous. Not only did they lose their onfield leader, they also lost a ginormous chunk of their talent pool. Much of it, most notably superstar quarterback Caleb Williams, followed Riley to USC. While USC enjoyed a very successful season with a Cotton Bowl appearance to boot, Oklahoma finished unranked and had to settle for the much less prestigious Cheez-It Bowl. Another example that hits extremely close to home is Penn State Basketball losing head coach Micah Shrewsberry. Shrewsberry led the Nittany Lions to a Big 10 Tournament Final and a Round of 32 appearance in March Madness, where we nearly upset 2 seeded Texas. The team was rather talented this year, with many promising players on the squad. However, as soon as Shrewsberry announced his departure, so many players left the basketball team that it was left for a period of time with four players on scholarship. That is not even enough to field a D-1 program. Although we have hired a promising coach in Mike Rhoades, Micah Shrewsberry’s departure from Penn State will be felt for seasons to come.

So, it is obvious that many college athletes’ loyalties lie with whoever is running the show. Personally, I think this issue is troubling but understandable. After all, athletes go to college to audition for professional leagues, so it is very understandable that they want to be coached by the best. However, it is a massive issue that a program can be set back years by the simple act of the head coach getting hired somewhere else. Because of this, schools have begun to sweeten the pot even more for their athletes, which opens up yet another civic issue. How much preferential treatment is too much for the players? In this case, I think that schools should be allowed to do whatever they can to ensure their stars stay with them, as it helps them generate the most income possible.

Above: Former Penn State Basketball and current Notre Dame Basketball head coach, Micah Shrewsberry

Below: USC head coach Lincoln Riley