Column: Scott Drew should take Kentucky...or stay at Baylor forever

MBB: Former Valparaiso coach has an interesting decision to make

My phone gets a workout on a daily basis.

Aside from the normal screen time that happens for the majority of us - Twitter, Facebook and YouTube loops of Aaron Sorkin’s genius - I get text messages. Lots of text messages.

If I’m away from my phone for an extended amount of time, say 20 minutes, it’s nothing to come back to 100+ unread messages, and they all come from the same place.

I’m honored - and some days cursed - to be part of a passionate text group of sports fans that originated in Northwest Indiana. This group includes Valparaiso natives, their adult children, the occasional friend that passes through the group (they don’t last long as the aforementioned hundreds of daily messages quickly thin the herd) and a few other diehard sports fans such as myself.

We call this group “Sports Only,” but it’s hardly just that. If a member is going on vacation, someone is quick to provide food recommendations. Political conversations come and go. Movie reviews and local construction critiques fill the light days. We rib each other. We provide advice to each other. We genuinely enjoy the interactions that technology affords us.

We also share a connection to Scott Drew, although Scott is most definitely not a member of the group. Some went to high school or college with Scott. Others worked alongside him in some capacity at Valparaiso. My connection stems from being a student journalist when Scott was a rising assistant coach. My last journalism act as a student was covering the press conference when he was announced as Valparaiso’s basketball coach. The most money I’ve ever spent as a fan for a sporting event came the night I joined many of the “Sports Only” members in traveling to Indianapolis for the 2021 national title game.

Job rumors surrounding Scott Drew have become something of an annual event. His name has been linked to jobs ever since it became clear that he engineered the greatest rebuild in college basketball history. He took a program that was destroyed by scandal and took it to the pinnacle of the sport.

Some of the recent rumors were Memphis in 2009, Illinois in 2017, Indiana in 2021 and Louisville this year. I’m sure I’m missing a few. Whenever there is a sexy job opening, the “Sports Only” thread erupts. Hundreds and hundreds of messages being fired back and forth. Discussions of housing markets in Champaign, Bloomington and Louisville have flooded my inbox. The rumors persist for a week or two, sometimes for an entire season, and I’ve loathed all of the interactions.

If you’re going to take a job, then take a job. If you’re going to act like you’re taking a job just to get a raise, you can play that card once, maybe twice. (To be fair, if played correctly, a good number of coaches have gotten or are going to get raises this cycle because of the search debacle at Louisville, the SMU/USC/Arkansas shift as well as Coach Cal’s late-night Mayfloweresque move to Fayetteville)

I want to be clear, my above paragraph isn’t me taking a shot at Scott Drew. I know how this game is played. I watched it with Bryce Drew when he was at Valparaiso. Mississippi State. Tulsa. DePaul. By the time he left for Vanderbilt I was so sick of covering coaching rumors that I almost just stayed in New York City following the 2016 NIT title game.

Going back to my friendly text group. In each of the rumors surrounding Scott, I was adamant that he stay at Baylor. People I respect would constantly tell me that he needed to get this job or that job. That he needed this raise or that raise. I pushed back at every turn. Baylor was home. Baylor was where Scott Drew built his legacy. Baylor was where Scott Drew was, and please excuse the idolatry here, a god.

Certainly with Memphis and Illinois, I always felt like if Scott went there and it didn’t immediately work out, he would be just another coach, caught up in the spin cycle of bouncing from one program to another once the boosters grew tired of his folksy humor that is part of his indelible charm.

I could give a damn about Indiana. It’s a program that is long past its relevance on the national stage. (Hey, you can take the kid out of Wisconsin, but you can’t take Wisconsin out of the kid!) The timing also didn’t work in 2021. You just don’t win a national title at Baylor and then leave.

Then there was Louisville. If you only knew the thousands of text messages I had to sift through telling me that a dumpster fire of a program was worthy of Scott. There’s a reason 1,524 coaches turned that job down. I yelled from the mountaintops that Scott should pass on Louisville and stay at Baylor.

Now I’m yelling from the mountaintops again.

Scott Drew should become the next men’s basketball coach at the University of Kentucky.

It’s time. He has done all he’s needed to do at Baylor. He took a broken program, infused a lot of JOY, sprinkled in some highlighter uniforms and made it a national brand. Along the way he went from the down home coach to a killer. He toppled the kings of college basketball and he did it with a smile on his face. Old adversaries have become close friends and if there’s a list of the most respected/feared coaches in the country, Scott Drew is on it.

Scott has become an alpha in his profession and alpha coaches need alpha programs. Kentucky is one of those programs. There aren’t many like it. Duke. North Carolina. Maybe Kansas, although the Baylor rivalry takes the Jayhawks off the table. Then there is Kentucky. How a school in the middle of horseland became the dominant men’s basketball program is still fascinating to me, but it is. They call it ‘Big Blue Nation’ and that’s not an exaggeration. Kentucky is everywhere.

This isn’t a Memphis program that had a cup of coffee of national relevance with Penny Hardaway and Derrick Rose.

This isn’t an Illinois program that had a dominant run with Roger Powell on the roster, only to see its coach leave for a blue blood.

This isn’t an Indiana program that yearns for the days when Bobby Knight was stalking the sidelines. Indiana’s lone claim to fame in the last 20 years? Beating Kentucky on a buzzer-beater.

This isn’t a Louisville program that won a title with Kentucky’s sloppy seconds and then had to vacate it. And that’s probably the least embarrassing thing that has happened to Louisville this century.

This is Kentucky. It’s Rupp and Hall. Pitino and Cal. It’s Delk and Sheppard. AD and KAT. It’s One-and-Done’s and it’s a century of sustained excellence. It’s the biggest brand name in this sport. Leaving Baylor for Kentucky is an absolute no-brainer and Scott should do it.

Or he shouldn’t.

If Scott Drew makes the decision to stay at Baylor this year, he should stay there until he retires. There will never be another opening like this. The time of flirting with other schools to get a raise or get an arena or get NIL or get whatever else is done. If he stays at Baylor this year, he’s there for life. And that’s fine. He’s built an amazing program in Waco and they’ll build statues in his honor whether he stays or goes.

It’s a big decision to make. I’d love to see him tackle the challenge of Kentucky. For the same reason I want Billy Beane to take the Boston job at the end of Moneyball every time I watch it. Seeing the best partnered with the best is a rarity in life. Scott Drew is one of the best coaches and Kentucky is one of the best programs. It just makes sense.

On that note, I gotta go. My phone is buzzing.

(Photos courtesy of Valpo Athletics)