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Coastal Carolina head baseball coach Gary Gilmore was heard ripping the NCAA to shreds in his final postgame press conference on Sunday. The Chanticleers fell to Clemson in the Regional Final, effectively ending the team’s season.
Gilmore announced prior to the start of the year that this would be his final campaign donning the teal, meaning his career officially came to an end following that defeat. After the game, he didn’t hold back his feelings about where college baseball is heading.
Having coached for nearly four decades at the collegiate level, Gilmore’s experienced major shifts in the sport’s landscape over the years. Maybe the most drastic came near the end of his tenure in Conway, SC.
The introduction of NIL, combined with a lax transfer policy, has caused chaos in the eyes of many – across all sports, for that matter.
It’s led college football coaches to bolt for the NFL. It’s created seven-figure bidding wars for top college basketball prospects. It’s created roster management issues and depth concerns with even reserve players holding universities hostage with NIL demands.
Essentially, college athletics have fallen into a world of annual free agency with players able to swap affiliations yearly for the highest bidder.
Gary Gilmore, while sad about his retirement, won’t miss that aspect of his job in the least.
Shortly after a farewell of sorts, Gilmore was asked to give his thoughts on the changes taking place in college baseball at the moment. He did not hold back.
“[If pro sports] had a system where everyone was a free agency every year, do you realize what chaos it would be? It would go away; you wouldn’t have those three sports. If you did, in baseball it would be the Yankees, the Red Sox, the Dodgers, Texas, and the rest of the teams couldn’t compete because they’d spend whatever money they needed to spend to do it. That’s what’s going on right now [in college baseball]. There’s not a level playing field.”
Gilmore’s statements obviously come from a mid-major perspective where it’s gotten even tougher to win big. In many cases, developing a top player now means watching them move onto a bigger program rather than reap the benefits of your labor as a coach.
“It’s ridiculous. As much as I’m going to miss the kids, and I’ll miss the heck out of them, dealing with that mess… The fact that there are college baseball teams right now giving $2M+ of NIL money away. I mean, come on.”
Gilmore did offer a solution, believing it best to place funds in a trust to be accessed after graduation rather than fundraising to buy talent.
It’s an opinion that many agree with, including the likes of Dabo Swinney, Lane Kiffin, and Deion Sanders. Right now, there are no rules, putting these smaller schools in particular at an even further competitive disadvantage.
Luckily for Gary Gilmore, he was able reach the pinnacle of his sport just before the introduction of NIL and the transfer portal. The head coach helped Coastal Carolina win the 2016 College World Series, the first and only in program history.
He’ll now call it quits on a national championship career.