To Tucker: \u201cThere is no time. There’s just not\u2014if you want to be good next year. If you’re okay just taking a big step back, then you can go on the circuit and the tour and the golf outings and the speaking engagements. But if you want to win again now, it’s a very important time.”<\/p>\n
Public post-achievement malaise is nothing new in sports, but it\u2019s rare to see the emotion aired out quite like this (It\u2019s worth noting that May told Norlander he enjoyed his team\u2019s victory parade in Ann Arbor). On the surface, the source of May\u2019s misery looks simple: the Wolverines\u2019 69\u201363 win over UConn tipped off at 8:50 p.m. ET on April 6, and the transfer portal opened a little over three hours later. May, the national champion, had to become May, the recruiter in record time.<\/p>\n
Nothing happens in a vacuum, however. The transfer portal exists because, before the 2010s, the NCAA placed stifling restrictions on player movement. That, and the fact that college athletes could not earn compensation for their play, only became cultural issues of note because a great deal of people care about college basketball.<\/p>\n
![\"Dusty](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/01kpcqk9fkn8g1qv2mrx.jpg\" "\\"Dusty")
<\/p>\n
Despite his friendly public persona, Dusty May arrived at the perfect point in college basketball history for a championship letdown. | Robert Deutsch-Imagn Images<\/p>\n
In this way, college basketball\u2014like May\u2014is a victim of its own success. In 1966, UTEP (then Texas Western) played Kentucky in the national championship in College Park, Md. The night before the famous title game\u2014then played on a Saturday\u2014Miners coach Don Haskins<\/a> drank beer in his room with University of Maryland students, who he hoped to keep from waking up his team. Can you imagine a coach employing that strategy today? In `66, coverage of college basketball was scant, Haskins was making little money, and his barrier-breaking players were making none.<\/p>\n Is that era a time to be romanticized? Absolutely not\u2014that `66 game is so famous because Texas Western\u2019s all-Black starting lineup was unheard of at the time. What\u2019s important for our purposes, however, is that Haskins and his contemporaries could be coaches first and foremost. \u201cCollege basketball coach\u201d was a job where the reality of the gig matched up with the description. Sure, May is a college basketball coach\u2026 but he\u2019s also a television actor\u2026 and a CEO\u2026 and all manner of other occupations.<\/p>\n This is the creep of affluence. The more the money rolls in, the more complex the system becomes, the more divorced it becomes from the joy of play, the more miserable it becomes for its participants. It begins to resemble very lucrative and not-at-all fun American enterprises like Silicon Valley and Wall Street. And that\u2019s how May ends up peddling quotes that could pass for Morrissey lyrics.<\/p>\n What\u2019s the solution? Norlander suggested moving the opening of the portal back 24 hours such that the national champions can actually celebrate, which seems like a solid band-aid fix.<\/p>\n From a wider view, though, something must change about college basketball\u2019s endless perfectionism, which means something must change about society\u2019s endless perfectionism. It\u2019s the kind of ethical shift that will take decades, but may give the 2076 version of May reason to look back fondly on his achievement for at least a few days before his next recruiting trip to the Moon.<\/p>\n
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