Dusty May is the first to bolt, but don't think for a second others won't follow soon

What happened Monday should be a wakeup call to the conference commissioners, school presidents, administrators and athletic directors in all of college sports, but particularly in Division I. Less than 90 days after winning the NCAA basketball championship at Michigan, Dusty May walked out on college sports, preferring instead the NBA where very few college coaches succeed.

Dusty May is only 49 years old. Just eight years ago he left Mike White’s staff at Florida to become the head coach at Florida Atlantic where several predecessors tried but none of them succeeded in making the basketball program relevant. In his fifth season at FAU in 2023, May took the Owls to the Final Four. He took the Michigan job in 2025 and in two years took the Wolverines to the national championship, securing the Big Ten’s first NCAA basketball title since 2000.

He’s young, good looking, great personality and he knows what it takes to build a powerhouse program. He was the head coach at Michigan, which with its large, prosperous alumni base and Big Ten dollars he had the Wolverines poised to be a national contender well into the future.

So why is this guy leaving? A better question might be is Dusty May leaving a shot across the bow of not just basketball but all of college sports?

The answer to both questions is the same: The uncertainty of the pros seems far less daunting than navigating the mess that is college sports today.

Not many coaches succeed in the NBA after leaving the college ranks. The pro game is different, not so much about the basketball but the money that transforms egos into something large enough to apply for statehood. During the summer of 2011 while attending an AAU tournament held at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, Rick Pitino, then of Louisville, and I hung on the rail overlooking the court where Alex Poythress was having a big game playing for the Georgia Stars. A few steps away were Billy Donovan and John Pelphrey from Florida. They were there to watch Poythress and Kasey Hill, who was playing for the Florida Rams.

The conversation with Pitino shifted from the game taking place on the basketball court to the NBA. Pitino was an NBA head coach twice – 1987-89 with the New York Knicks; 1997-2001 with the Boston Celtics – before returning to college basketball. He had success with the Knicks but never produced a winning season with the Celtics. Now this is a Hall of Fame basketball coach who heads into the 2026-27 season at St. John’s with 914 college wins on his belt. Few coaches have a track record of preparing their players for success in the NBA as Pitino. If anyone should have been easily successful making the transition from the college game to the pros it should have been Rick Pitino.

So why didn’t it work out?

To paraphrase our conversation, Pitino talked about the moment he knew he was out of place coaching in the NBA. “I had to make a sub,” he told me. “My guy on the floor is in a slump and he can’t find the ocean from the end of the pier. If I take him out, he’s going to think I lost confidence in him. I look at my bench and I’ve got two guys I’m thinking about. One is a veteran who’s had a good career. Put him in and my guy on the floor’s feelings are hurt, plus my veteran guy thinks he should be starting anyway. I don’t put him in and he pouts and maybe starts thinking about where he can go as a free agent. The other guy is a young kid who wants minutes to prove himself. He’s got star potential. He needs to be playing. I need to get him quality minutes, but at what price?”

Near the end of the conversation, Pitino said and I’m paraphrasing again, “Another big problem is the players are getting paid more than the coach so they’re thinking why are you telling me what to do? I make more money than you.”

The late, great Al McGuire once said the only way he would coach in the NBA would be if he was paid at least $1 more than the highest paid player.

You get the drift here, and yet Dusty May is jumping into that fire to coach the Dallas Mavericks. It’s not about the money so much because Michigan has the bucks to pay him just about any amount he wants. It has more to do with escaping the chaos that lies ahead for college sports and unless there are drastic reforms initiated rather soon, Dusty May won’t be the only college coach to bolt for the pros. Todd Golden’s name has already surfaced with the Golden State Warriors. Jon Scheyer of Duke was prominent in the Dallas discussions before May was lured from Michigan.

This won’t be confined to college basketball coaches. Jim Harbaugh made the jump from Michigan to the Los Angeles Chargers. Any time there is change in Atlanta, Kirby Smart’s name will be at the top of the list. Let Mario Cristobal win a national championship at Miami and you can bet the farm the Dolphins will think seriously about hiring a guy who grew up here, played college football here and who has resuscitated football at The U.

Do you think the Tampa Bay Bucs or the Jacksonville Jaguars might follow Jon Sumrall’s rebuild of the Florida program? Sumrall will be 44 in a couple of weeks. He relates to players and he wins.

The reason Todd Golden and Jon Sumrall might seriously think about leaving the college game for the pros at some point in the future is the same one that caused Dusty May to hitch a ride on the NBA wagon. Fewer hassles, no 24-hour, 365-day recruiting cycle, no dealing with parents who think their kid should be starting, no dealing with fat cat boosters who think that because they have more money than brains that they actually know a thing or two about sports. If there is a player you don’t like in the pros you can always cut him or tell your GM to trade him. In college sports, everybody is a free agent so a coach has to re-recruit his own players every year while filling gaps in his own roster by finding gems that fit his system in the portal. In the pros, there are strict guardrails that dictate player movement.

And on and on and on.

We have something called the Protect College Sports Act working its way through the Congress. Is it THE answer to all of college sports’ problems? The answer to that is a flat no. There is a reason that SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, the most powerful and smartest man in all of college sports, says no to this bill. There are holes big enough to drive a truck through that should be closed before making this the law of the land. At the heart of the bill is the 5-for-5 provision which sets age limits and starts the clock ticking on eligibility from the moment an athlete graduates from high school. The 5-for-5 grants five years to play, sets transfer guardrails and eliminates the selective partiality of the waiver process. Those are good ideas that should be implemented but there are other parts of the bill that require better solutions.

But, as bad as some parts of the bill may be, this is a start. It may not be the final product by the time lawmakers, the NCAA and college administrators get through with it, but it’s a place to begin and no time should be wasted putting it in place. An incomplete bill that needs tweaks is far better than what we have now.

The harsh reality of the current state of college sports is that if reform and changes aren’t put in place soon, the entire system is going to collapse under the weight of incompetence and chaos. The people in charge need to understand the urgency and do something before it’s too late, otherwise losing top quality coaches will be the least of their problems.