Geno Auriemma didn’t mince words when he looked at the state of college athletics.
The UConn women’s basketball coach said the modern NCAA model is in bad shape, and he painted it in blunt terms. “College sports is dying,” Auriemma said, per Yahoo Sports.
He then compared the situation to something hidden beneath the surface: “I've had parents pass away, and when they were dying on the inside, they didn't always show it on the outside. So on the outside, I think, sometimes it looks like 'Wow, everything's great.' ...
On the inside it's dying. Because every single day, something comes up to show you a symptom of the disease that we're suffering.”
Auriemma tied that warning to the way NIL rules and transfer portal chaos have changed the sport’s day-to-day reality. He said the system has become so loose that it’s hard to see how it can hold together.
“Imagine you have an 18-year-old kid that you're raising, and there's no rules, there's no structure, anything goes. And if they don't like your decision, they go get a judge, and they sue you.
So tell me how in God's name something like that can survive. It can't.”
The recent wave of legal and roster-related disputes has only fueled the noise. LSU’s football program, for example, is dealing with criticism after a Louisiana judge issued a preliminary injunction allowing former NFL players on its roster.
From Auriemma’s view, that steady drip of controversy is changing how fans see the sport. He said the headlines are pushing people farther away from NCAA athletics.
“They read about another lawsuit, another coach trying to get away with anything they can, another school doing whatever they have to do to win,” he said. "...
The more this happens, and the more these keep being the central focus of the news, the more we're dying one day at a time."
Auriemma has been at UConn since 1985, and during that run he has won 12 national titles.
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