Rick Pitino is proof that coaches — by any other name — still matter

Every day, it seems, the mystique of the all-powerful coach takes a fresh hit. We live in an age of player empowerment, and more and more that phrase has come to be quite literal. Chuck Daly was the one who said it over 30 years ago: “They allow us to coach them,” and in the moment that was meant to be funny, with a kernel of truth attached.

The kernel is the whole nut now. The players hold the cards. Coaches? Coaches are “excellent communicators” now. Coaches are “expert collaborators” now. And to make a hard job impossible, coaches are designated fall guys when communication gaps widen and collaborative efforts fail.

Which is why it was so interesting when the AP’s first poll of the college basketball season was released Monday. College coaches, we have come to believe, have taken the biggest hits in this new era of pay-for-play, of name-and-image, of limitless player movement.

After all, on Monday there was poor Greg Schiano, the Rutgers football coach who lately specializes in losing to anyone else who fields a full Division I roster, complaining that his school — set to launch a new NIL push —— has never really set its mind to trying to win.