Why Cliff Ellis, at age 78, finally retired from college basketball

Ellis is not, by any stretch, the first man driven away by the new world in which college coaches now live. He joins contemporaries like Mike Krzyzewski, Jim Boeheim, Roy Williams, John Beilein and Jay Wright in voluntarily stepping away. Mike Brey, who left Notre Dame last season, may have spoken for all of them when he said, “The only way to describe what’s going on is exhausting.”

Ellis’s numbers are borderline elite. He coached four schools — South Alabama, Clemson, Auburn and Coastal Carolina — to the NCAA tournament. He won 831 games, and that doesn’t include the 78 he won as a junior college coach. Add those, and he won 909 games — seven more than Bob Knight.

No one — including Ellis — would claim that he was a better coach than Knight. But while many people had mixed emotions about Knight the human being, you would be hard-pressed to find someone with anything bad to say about Ellis.

“Cliff isn’t a good person; he’s a great person,” said Krzyzewski, who competed against Ellis for 10 seasons while he was at Clemson. “He’s a throwback. He loved the sport and he loved the kids he coached, regardless of what level he was coaching. The sport will be less without him.”

Ellis didn’t start out to be a coach. He started out to be a musician — and was a successful one after graduating from Florida State. He was part of the Villagers, a rock/country group that recorded several successful albums. But he loved basketball and became a high school coach even while the Villagers were still recording.

“Once I got started in coaching, I couldn’t give it up,” he said several years ago. “I loved being in the gym and I loved competing.” He smiled. “Of course I always loved winning too.”

He kept winning his way up the ladder. Clemson won the ACC regular season title for the first — and only — time in 1990. During that season, Ellis was asked if he thought the ACC was having a down year. “The only reason anyone thinks the ACC is having a down season is because Clemson’s in first place,” he said. “I guarantee you if Duke or North Carolina were in first place the question would never come up. The ACC’s not down at all.”

As it turned out, four ACC teams — including Clemson — reached the Sweet 16 that year and two (Duke and Georgia Tech) reached the Final Four. Clemson lost to top-seeded Connecticut in the round of 16 on a last-second shot by Tate George after he caught a length-of-the court pass.

“I…