Mark Wiedmer
Bruce Pearl is retiring?
Coming off his second Final Four in seven seasons?
With an Auburn team that many believe could at least reach an Elite Eight this year?
Call me cynical, but something stinks in the Loveliest Village on the Plains. Don’t want to speculate as to what. Pray it’s not his health. Hope it’s not his occasional aversion to the NCAA rule book, if such a thing still exists. But college basketball in general and Auburn hoops in particular just doesn’t seem right without Bruce Almighty stalking the sideline with his shirttail out, his face red with passion as he profusely sweats out victory after victory in the deafening dome that is Neville Arena.
You can’t say this about many places, but Bruce Pearl IS Auburn basketball.
Much as Dean Smith was North Carolina basketball. Or Mike Krzyzewski was Duke basketball. With apologies to the vastly underrated Sonny Smith, who reached the Elite Eight in 1986, what Pearl did in 11 years at Auburn – those two Final Fours, the first one reached against a murderer’s row of Kansas, North Carolina and Kentucky, the bluest trio of the bluebloods – may never be duplicated anywhere else at any time.
It was coaching magic. And but for a missed free throw or two by his Tennessee Vols in 2010 in a regional final against Michigan State in St. Louis, Pearl would have reached three Final Fours with two different teams, Hall of Fame credentials for sure, NCAA sanctions be darned.
And if there’s justice, Pearl will still get to the Hall of Fame. He should get there for winning a Division II national championship at Southern Indiana. He should get there for taking Wisconsin-Milwaukee to the Sweet 16 and pushing UT to a No. 1 national ranking, just as he later did Auburn. And for doing all of it without anyone who became a household name in the NBA.
Heck, when Pat Summitt was routinely regarded as the greatest women’s basketball coach ever, she would walk down the hall in Thompson-Boling Arena to ask Pearl to give her some inbounds plays. That’s how respected his Xs and Os were, especially coming out of timeouts.
But now all that seems to be in the past with Monday’s announcement that Pearl is retiring at 65 years young to turn his clipboard over to son Steven Pearl, who’ll reportedly receive a five-year contract to carry on his dad’s grand work.
This is not to say that such a transition can’t or won’t work. It’s tough to think of an instant where it has, where a son has followed a father to great success. For that matter, there aren’t many examples of a sitting assistant following a famous head coach to great results. Joe B. Hall following Adolph Rupp at Kentucky and winning an NCAA title six years later might be the outlier when it comes to college basketball. In college football, John Robinson won a title at Southern Cal four years after following John McKay. The break-the-mold football school is the University of Miami, which won five national championships in 18 years with four different coaches.
But Auburn is unlikely to achieve anything close to what it did with Papa Pearl. With NIL money, the transfer portal, chances that the NBA Draft soon allows high school seniors to enter the draft rather than be forced to attend college for a year, the odds of building anything close to a dynasty – if you can call two Final Fours in seven years with NO nattys a dynasty – are slim indeed. Even if Steven is his dad’s clone.
And you hope that the reasons for this are fatigue with the new landscape of college athletics. Call it the Saban Syndrome. The pain that college athletics has become these days isn’t worth the payday. Life’s too short. As Pearl said in his retirement video, he wants time to be a husband, father and grandfather. If that’s really all this retirement is about, then bully for him. He got out while the getting was good, when War Eagle Nation’ admiration for him and appreciation of him will never be higher.
But as Pearl repeated over and over again in the video, sometimes through watery eyes, “It’s time,” it just doesn’t feel like that’s the whole story, though I sincerely hope I’m wrong.
(Mark Wiedmer can be reached at mwiedmer@mccallie.org )