Roy Williams is retired but worries about ‘sad, sad state’ of college sports
Having retired from coaching basketball at North Carolina, Roy Williams has had a lot more time to devote to another love: his golf game.
And when not playing golf, he’s doing such things as serving as honorary chairman in the 2024 UNC Health Championship, the Korn Ferry Tour golf event set May 30-June 2 at Raleigh Country Club.
Williams, on a Zoom media call Tuesday, said he had not played the Raleigh CC track in “about a hundred years,” laughing and saying he does remember beating former basketball referee John Cloughtery by “a lot.” He said he’s honored to be chosen as the tournament’s honorary chairman, saying, “The good thing is they don’t ask me to do very many things except talk.”
Williams will be pulling for a couple of young golfers in the field with UNC connections – former Tar Heels standout and Korn Ferry pro Ryan Gerard, and David Ford, an All-America on the UNC team who is the No. 8-ranked amateur in the world and has received a sponsor’s exemption into the tournament.
Williams was asked about leaving college basketball, about the increasing demands posed by the NCAA transfer portal and the allure of name, image and likeness (NIL) packages for athletes. He again said he did not retire in 2021 because of those changes, but agreed the landscape of the sport has been irretrievably altered because of them, using the “toothpaste out of the tube” analogy.
“I knew NIL and the transfer portal were going to change college basketball,” Williams said. “There’s no way in the world I thought it was going to change as dramatically and as quickly. And some of it good, and a lot of it not good right now.
“When you’re teaching your child to ride a bike, you walk beside them and hold the bike, and then you get training wheels and then you tell them to stay in the driveway and then you release them. We went from zero to one million, and there are no incremental steps. And I always think that is bad, I really do, because you can’t change any mistakes.
“I’m all for doing more things for the student-athletes and I think we had gotten tremendously more student-athlete friendly over the last 10 to 15 years. But these two changes here, back to back, changed it dramatically and I’m old-school, and commitment and loyalty and those things always meant a great deal to me.”
Williams added despite the changes, it’s still basketball, that the best team that plays the best will likely win that night. With all the transfer and shuffling rosters and NIL deals, that won’t change.
“I still love it but it is different and I’m not sure it’s for the better, either,” he said.
As for the ACC remaining together and not splintering in any future conference realignment, Williams said: “So much has happened with college basketball and the conferences and no one saw this coming 10 years ago. … Things have happened in college basketball have done it so quickly, and we’re all chasing the dollar. And that’s the sad thing about it, that we’re losing some value.
“We still have a great deal of things going on that are really fun, but the conference alignment, realignment, it’s a sad, sad world because all those things will be decided in the courts. And that, to me, is the sad, sad state of college athletics.”
The UNC Health Championship, sponsored by Apex-based STITCH golf, moved from the Country Club at Wakefield Plantation to Raleigh CC last year, and the Korn Ferry tour have been something of a springboard for some of golf’s biggest names.
Scottie Scheffler, the Masters champion and No. 1 ranked player in the world, played in Raleigh on his way to the PGA Tour. So did Wyndham Clark, the 2023 U.S. Open champion currently No. 3 in the world.
A year ago, Raleigh’s Grayson Murray was a disappointed runner-up in the UNC Health Championship after a large lead dissipated on the back nine in the final round. But Murray, playing a more mature game, ended the year by earning his PGA Tour playing card and was a winner this year at the Sony Open in Hawaii.
Gerard, another Raleigh native, had two top-10 finishes on the PGA Tour last year, winning more than $900,000 despite missing the cut in five of his last six starts. Finishing 121st on the FedEx points list, he now wants to use the Korn Ferry tour to get back to the big tour.
“Things can come at you real quick and you’ve got to be ready for whenever you get those opportunities and pounce on them,” Gerard said. “A lot of it is sticking to what you know works and trusting yourself. You do that and you’ll get as far as you’re supposed to get.”
UNC Health Championship
What: Korn Ferry Tour golf tournament.
When: May 30-June 2.
Where: Raleigh Country Club, Raleigh.
Information: unchealthchampionship.com
