The end of Tennessee Vols head coach Rick Barnes’ coaching career is coming sooner rather than later.
It might be this year, or it might be five years from now — I don’t think Barnes even knows at this point when he will retire — but there’s no doubt that we’re in the final act of Barnes’ illustrious coaching career.
There’s long been speculation that Barnes will take the Dean Smith path to retirement when that decision is ultimately made.
Smith decided to retire on October 3, 1997 — just one week before North Carolina was set to begin practices before the 1997-98 season.
The seemingly odd timing of Smith’s decision was because the legendary head coach, near the end of his career, always waited until later in the summer/early in the fall to make any final decisions on his coaching career. Smith knew that immediately after the end of the season, while still exhausted from the previous year, wasn’t the right time to make such a big decision. Essentially, Smith wanted to make sure he didn’t still feel the itch to coach when it was go-time for the upcoming season.
In today’s world of college basketball, retiring just a week before practices start would be tough for a program to deal with. It’s not an ideal time to hire a coach, and who knows how the players on the roster would react. Would players leave the program if their coach retires just before the start of the season?
But despite the challenges that the timing of such a decision would create for Tennessee, I think fans, and the leadership at UT, have to let Barnes make this decision on his timing.
If Barnes makes it to late September or early October and decides it’s time to call it a career, then I think everyone will have to accept that and give the Hall of Fame coach some grace. Barnes has been part of college basketball for over 50 years. He deserves to walk away from the game on his terms, regardless of what kind of impact the timing of his decision will have on Tennessee’s basketball program.
