Virginia basketball coach Tony Bennett explains shocking retirement decision

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The college basketball world was left stunned yesterday when news broke that Virginia basketball head coach Tony Bennett would be retiring effective immediately. After worries that the sudden retirement, which comes just weeks before the season opener, could be health-related or a result of a scandal, Bennett set the record straight during a press conference today.

Bennett revealed today that he had considered resigning after the season before ultimately signing an extension in June that would have kept him under contract until at least 2030. The coach said that he felt “excited” about the future with UVA when he signed the deal, but after taking a vacation with his wife Laurel recently, he “came to the realization that [he] can’t do this.”

“If you’re going to do it, you got to be all in,” Bennett said. “You got to have everything. And if you do it half-hearted, it’s not fair to the university and those young men. So when looking at it, that’s what made me step down.”

Tony Bennett retires as Virginia basketball coach, calls for ‘change’ in college sports

Bennett, who spent 15 seasons at Virginia and won the 2019 national championship, said today that his job has “been on loan” and it “wasn’t [his] to keep.” The longtime coach immediately became emotional while speaking at the press conference but indicated that he believed he was “no longer the best coach to lead this program in this current environment.”

Bennett, whose father Dick Bennett coached high school and college basketball for more than 40 years, advocated for revenue sharing, collective bargaining, a salary cap, transfer restrictions, and a limit on “agent involvement” in college athletics.

“The game and college athletics is not in a healthy spot. It’s not. And there needs to be change,” Bennett said. “It’s not going to back — I think I was equipped to do the job here the old way. That’s who I am and that’s how it was. And my staff has buoyed me along to get to this point. But there needs to be change. It’s going to be closer to a professional model…”

Tony Bennett says it's the right time for college athletes to receive revenue.

But the Virginia basketball coach says the game and college athletics are not in a healthy spot—and he's retiring just weeks before the season.

"There needs to be change."pic.twitter.com/TULXudeFt2

— Front Office Sports (@FOS) October 18, 2024

During his time as a coach, Bennett was known for his defensive-first mindset, which helped him win more than 300 games between three seasons at Washington State, where his father coached, and the last 15 years at Virginia.

Under Bennett, the Cavaliers became the first No. 1 seed in NCAA basketball tournament history to lose to the 16th seed when UVA lost to the University of Maryland, Baltimore County in 2018. A year later, Bennet and Virginia completed a redemption arc by defeating Texas Tech to earn the program’s first national championship.

In 18 seasons as a head coach, Bennett’s teams won more than 70% of their games and qualified for the NCAA tournament 12 times.

UVA associate head coach Ron Sanchez, a longtime assistant of Bennett’s who left a head coaching job with Charlotte last year, has been named Virginia’s interim head coach following Bennett’s retirement.

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