Do blue-blood coaching jobs mean what they once did?

Kentucky and Louisville's humbling experiences shopping for a new coach showed how college basketball's playing field has leveled

Perhaps the most sage and insightful words of the 2024 men’s college basketball coaching carousel came not from a staffer, agent, media member, player or actual coach, but from the co-star of the HGTV program “Fixer Upper.”

During a frenetic 48 hours in which Baylor coach Scott Drew was the target of Kentucky’s ongoing coaching search, Chip Gaines, a Waco, Texas resident and devout Baylor fan, got into a series of amusing back-and-forths on Twitter with several terminally online and relentlessly passionate members of Big Blue Nation.

In one such instance, a Wildcats fan told Gaines he didn’t “wanna go band for band with us,” to which Gaines offered the following response:

Money is boring…everybody’s got money

We’ve got God on our side

(Baylor, if you don’t know, is a Baptist school)

His sentiment was wildly insensitive and out-of-touch. There were countless people who read that tweet – and who buy or consume the Gaines’ myriad products – who worry about money every day of their lives because they only have so much of it.

In the specific context of college athletics, though, he got to the heart of what’s becoming an increasingly apparent reality.

Things done changed

What could reasonably (and probably correctly) be argued as three of the 15 best, most prestigious head-coaching positions in the sport – Kentucky, Louisville and Ohio State – were open this offseason.

The Wildcats are college basketball royalty, the winningest program in the history of the sport and the No. 2 placeholder in national championships, behind only UCLA. The Cardinals, an hour and change to the west depending on how fast you drive, are one of nine programs with at least three national titles. Though known primarily as a football school, the Buckeyes are actually tied for sixth all-time with 10 Final Fours.

All three spend significantly on men’s basketball, with Kentucky at $24.15 million, Louisville at $19.08 million and Ohio State at $13.06 million, the last of which is a substantially smaller figure than the other two, but comes with less pressure.

For all the prestige and desirability these coaching positions carry, the end result was one that might be surprising to some. The coaches hired at each program have combined over the course of their careers for zero NCAA Tournament wins.