Dusty May walked into Big Ten spring meetings after a national title thinking the grown-ups might finally fix college basketball. He walked out knowing the sport is cooked on purpose.
“I was so excited for Big Ten meetings, like ‘we’re going to find some solutions,'” May told The Athletic. “I go there and I was just like, ‘Oh my God, nothing’s getting fixed. Ever.'”
I believe every syllable. And I think that is the most damning thing a championship coach has said out loud about this sport in years. He didn’t leak it through a booster. He didn’t hide behind “the landscape.” He said the quiet part with the trophy still warm.
May went 64-13 in two seasons at Michigan. He took an 8-24 mess and turned it into a 37-3 title team that beat UConn 69-63. Three of his guys went in the top 12 of the draft. The house renovations in Ann Arbor were already underway. He left those meetings fully intending to coach the Wolverines in 2026-27.
Then Mike Schmitz called on the morning of May 24 about Michigan’s draft prospects and slipped in the real question: interest in the Mavericks job? Timing was everything. May had just watched a room full of peers recycle the same portal complaints they have been recycling since the thing opened.
“We’ve got to stop talking about the stuff that we can’t change,” he said.
I know what you’re about to type. Loyalty. One foot out the door. Larry Brown cosplay. May already answered the foot-out-the-door crowd: he had no plan to leave when he showed up to those meetings. “For all the people that said that I had one foot out the door.” He just also had eyes.
The Binding Problem Nobody Will Touch
May’s real charge is not the transfer portal itself. It is the permanent theater of outrage with zero enforceable rules underneath it. He put the absurdity in plain English.
“Even when you sign, you’re not really signed; to me is the biggest issue,” May said. “Collective bargaining in some way, shape or form needs to happen. And number two, figure out a way to make contracts binding. Like, you can’t have a kid sign at this Big Ten school on a Friday and then go on an official visit the next day and sign at another Big Ten school for twice the money on Tuesday. It just can’t be like that.”
That is not a coach whining about free agency. That is a coach describing a labor market that refuses to act like one. Rev-share contracts that float. NIL deals that behave like suggestions. Every spring the same people gather, perform concern, and leave with the exact same broken incentives intact.
Traditional media will dress this up as “the changing landscape” and book three former coaches to sigh about player empowerment. Skip energy. Stat-sheet throat-clearing. May skipped the panel. He named the actual failure: nothing binding ever arrives, so the complaining becomes the product.
The other half of his exit was pure job design. “I just spent so much more of my time doing everything but coaching,” he said. Fundraising. Admin. The grind that pulls you off the floor and into donor dinners. The parts he loved (actual basketball, relationships with players) got squeezed by the parts that keep the lights on. The NBA offered Cooper Flagg, Masai Ujiri, and a GM in Schmitz he already trusted.
“You have to really believe and trust in who’s deciding the team for you.”
College used to let you be your own GM. Now you are a part-time GM, full-time content machine, and unpaid lobbyist for rules that never leave the meeting room.
The Title Made Leaving Cleaner, Not Harder
Michigan asked what they could do. May told them there was nothing. That answer should terrify every Power conference athletic director still pretending a bigger buyout fixes structural rot.
He admitted the pull was real. “The other side was I was excited (for next season at Michigan),” he said. “You talk about, ‘You’re not defending anything’ or ‘Each season’s its own,’ but it would have been fun trying to do it again.” He also said the program was starting to sell itself. “Each year, I feel like it gets easier.”
Then he still left. First coach since Larry Brown in 1988 to win a national title and coach somewhere else the next season. May left a sport that keeps scheduling the same funeral and calling it problem-solving.
The Mavericks get a coach who just proved he can build and win at scale. Michigan gets Mike Boynton and a roster that mostly stayed put. College basketball keeps the circular argument and loses another guy who actually wanted to coach.
May did not invent the broken parts. He stopped pretending another spring session would repair them. Your favorite conference coach already knows the line is true. He is just still cashing the fundraising checks and waiting for the next meeting that fixes nothing. Ever.
