As college coaches turn into CEOs, X’s and O’s are replaced by dollar signs and

Virginia coach Tony Bennett has been around college basketball for most of his life.

His father, Dick Bennett, was a Division III coach during his formative years in the 1960s and ’70s, and later coached at Green Bay, Wisconsin and Washington State. Tony played for his dad in college before a brief career in the NBA and overseas, and then got his own coaching start on his bench with the Badgers, the father-son duo ultimately taking them to the Final Four.

The game changed over Dick’s four decades in coaching — the shot clock and 3-point line were introduced, TV brought the game to the masses — but nothing like it has since the younger Bennett took over for pops at Washington State in 2006.

The transfer portal along with name, image and likeness legislation have turned Bennett and his brethren into defacto CEOs, businessmen as much as coaches. Not only must they continue to recruit high school players, but they must also mine the transfer market while ceaselessly recruiting the players already on their roster, lest they slip away to a program offering more playing time or, yes, more NIL money than they are able to scrounge up themselves.

“You can’t stick your head in the sand and say, ‘This is exactly how it was,’” Tony Bennett said. “You adjust. You make changes. But you still hold dear and hold true to what matters to you and your program, and you find the guys that will buy into it.”

That is harder than ever, though. And the margins between success and failure are shrinking.

College football coaches bring in upwards of 25 new players each recruiting cycle, and that makes it easier to absorb the loss of a player who decides to transfer. Their basketball equivalents might land four or five each year, and they must not only be good but also loyal, or their coaches could find themselves with a barren roster in the time it takes to blow a whistle.

Those coaches capable of best managing that minefield are the most likely to find themselves playing for a championship.

“I will tell you that there’s more to it,” Duke coach Jon Scheyer said. “It’s not just talking basketball. You’re talking about brand. You think about the new CBA (in the NBA) with the guys we’re recruiting — they’re at such a high level, you’re not talking making a few million bucks. If they knock it out of the park, you’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars that are at stake. So our thing is, our track record with guys, the job we’ve done, but also the brand that Duke has.

“There’s a true dollar amount behind that,” Scheyer continued, “but it’s still going to be a bigger decision than just money. It’s still a bigger decision than even just basketball. That’s ultimately why we want our guys to choose Duke. But the CEO role is fair. I spend way more time doing other things besides basketball, because you have to. It’s just, you have to.”

After the Huskies won…