In his last public appearance as Louisville’s men’s basketball coach, Kenny Payne compared his program to the Titanic. Unlike the unfortunate Captain Smith, however, he was disinclined to go down with the ship.
He blamed the community for not climbing aboard and staying there as chronic defeat bred despair and then disinterest. He said the scrutiny and criticism of his players had made his job “impossible.” He assumed no personal responsibility for a two-year tally of 12 wins and 52 losses. Instead of sending out an SOS, he chose to go all CYA.
This was unfortunate, and somewhat sad. For as likable as he is, and as much as he has meant to the university and its fan base, Payne’s pre-exit interview exhausted much of his dwindling political capital. He leaves the scene not as a well-meaning experiment that failed but as proof of the Peter Principle and evidence of the folly of hiring feel-good candidates despite missing credentials.
Louisville is not an entry-level job in college basketball. Its history, traditions and financial resources demand and deserve both excellence and experience. Payne was a career assistant known for his prowess in recruiting and for helping big men stand taller when he returned to his alma mater as the man in charge. His ability to run a practice, to design and implement strategy, to make in-game adjustments, to manage his staff and public expectations and to successfully parry with the press were unknown at the start of his tenure and remain unproven upon his termination.
He was sold as a Louisville alum who played on Denny Crum’s 1986 NCAA champions and, sotto voce, as a black man whose hiring resonated beyond basketball in a city still largely segregated and still suffering from the fallout from the shooting of Breonna Taylor. That he was “one of our own” helps explain why he was hired virtually by acclimation and surely contributed to his being allowed a second season following a 4-28 faceplant in Year One.
Lesson learned.
In explaining Payne’s firing and outlining his plans to find a replacement, U of L athletic director Josh Heird made clear the mistakes made two years ago will not be repeated. The next Louisville coach will almost certainly have head coaching experience and will not need to be persuaded of the position’s appeal, as Payne said he was.
Heird said he wants someone “dying to coach this basketball program. . .who would crawl to get here;” someone who can navigate the NIL landscape, the transfer portal and appreciates “the enormity of the position.” Heird knows Louisville fans are weary of waiting for their team to reclaim its accustomed place among college basketball’s elite, and that their impatience has been made manifest in millions of dollars in lost revenue. He knows, or at least should suspect, that he needs to get this one right “and leave no stone unturned” or risk putting his own job in jeopardy.
Unlike the process that preceded Payne’s hiring, Heird said he would not rely on a search firm to screen candidates. Some candidates will likely be eliminated by their age – Heird said he hopes to hire a coach who will be in place for 20 years or more – others by the size of their contractual buyouts.
“If you look at some buyouts out there, they’re north of $10 million dollars,” Heird said. “And when you start to do the analysis relative to the return of fans to this arena and some different things like that — I kind of call it the value equation – what makes sense here?
“So do I think we’re going to have the opportunity to hire an extremely good, successful coach? Absolutely. But I’m not going to do it to the detriment of the entire department.”
Payne’s buyout is $8 million. Freeing former U of L assistant Mick Cronin from his UCLA contract could cost $16 million or more. Though there are obviously limits to how much Heird can afford to spend, he understands the urgency of the hour.
“I would tell you there (are) a handful of programs around this country that you don’t truly have the luxury of time,” he said. “There’s a lot of programs that you can say, ‘Hey, you know, we’re going to be okay, we’ve made some progress so let’s give this thing another go next year.’ The impact on the revenue to the athletic department, from an upside/downside standpoint isn’t as significant as it is here.
“These are seven and eight-figure calculations when it comes to the success of this program. The head coach coming in here needs to understand, that for this athletic department to be healthy, this basketball program must be successful.”
Kenny Payne’s public posture was that it would take three or four years to bring Louisville basketball back after all of its scandals and NCAA investigations. But if his timetable was realistic, his progress was imperceptible. Like Captain Smith, he steered a ship that swiftly sank.
This article appears in Mar 13-27, 2024.
