When North Texas hired Seth Littrell as its head football coach in 2015, I wrote a column about the debate it sparked inside my family. Some wanted a candidate with ties to the program who would stay for the proverbial long haul, while I argued that mid-major programs were best off looking for the "best coach available" and worrying about the rest later.
Nearly a decade later, Littrell did not leave for a bigger school but is now on his second post-North Texas job, and the same age-old debate rages on within other families.
Today, it's happening in and around the Maryland basketball program following Kevin Willard's departure for Villanova. Willard, as you'll recall, was as open as any college football or basketball coach has ever been about his willingness to leave his current position if the administration did not meet his demands. "I need to make fundamental changes to the program. That's what I'm focused on right now. That's why probably a deal hasn't got done because I want to see -- I need to see fundamental changes done," Willard said on March 20, the day before the Terrapins' NCAA tournament opener. "I need to make sure that we are where we are with NIL and rev share is not where we've been with NIL over the past two years. We've been one of the worst, if not lowest, in NIL in the last two years."
The Terps were bounced by Florida in the Sweet 16 on Thursday, and Villanova announced Willard as its next head coach on Sunday. (The thinking is that Big East schools will be uniquely positioned to thrive in the post-House world, since they can afford to approach the $20-ish million cap and not have to share the bulk of it with football.)
"He played us like a drum," Maryland super-booster Barry Gossett told CBS Sports.
Gossett's name adorns Maryland's new 44,000-square foot basketball facility, and he's far from the only prominent member of the Maryland basketball community pissed about how this month played out.
In an open letter posted to his Twitter account on Monday, Len Elmore wrote, "The quest by fans, media types, and donor influencers to merely win the press conference by taking a 'big swing' and hiring an outsider who leaves one program to coach the Terps only to leave after a few years is maddening."
Elmore was a 5-star recruit before the invention of the term when he chose Maryland out of famed Power Memorial High School in New York in 1970. He more than lived up to his billing in his time in College Park, making three All-ACC teams and an All-American team in 1974. In 2002, Elmore was named among the 50 best basketball players in ACC history. His accomplishments don't stop there. After an 11-year NBA career, Elmore earned his J.D. from Harvard Law School and rose to become an Assistant District Attorney in Brooklyn before entering private practice. As if that wasn't enough, Elmore also called NBA games and college basketball for CBS and ESPN.
So, Elmore has an influential voice within the Maryland basketball community, and he's using it to argue Willard's replacement should be a coach with previous ties to the program. "When these hires leave their former program for us, they are telling you who they are, and we need to believe them," he wrote. "Since our full blooded Terp in Coach Gary Williams retired, it's been inconsistency after inconsistency after inconsistency. The common thread: outsiders."
Williams played point guard at Maryland from 1964-67, then returned as head coach from 1989-2011. He led the Terps to 461 wins, four ACC championships, and the program's only national championship in 2002. Williams was replaced by Mark Turgeon, who left Texas A&M for the job and remained a Terp until the school fired him mid-season in 2022. Turgeon was replaced by Willard who, according to my research, is actually the first Maryland basketball coach to leave for another job in program history. (Elmore conveniently ignores that the great Gary Williams was the head coach at three different universities before Maryland. Did he shoe American, Boston College and Ohio State his true colors, too?)
"Programs like Duke and North Carolina, to name a few, hire their own and promote their own, and are models of consistency," Elmore continued. "Their Athletic Department leaders are from within the 'family,' if not outright alumni."
The Terp basketball family has endured a lot these past days. For the sake of our program, I speak for so many of my brothers who have reached out to me in anguish over what has become of our program.
— Len Elmore (@LenElmore) March 31, 2025
It is time to speak… pic.twitter.com/h4Bye8rVxZ
Both of Maryland's former rivals are indeed led by former players, but they're having opposite experiences at the moment. Duke is the favorite to win the national championship under third-year coach Jon Scheyer, who spent eight years on Coach K's bench before succeeding him. The Blue Devils are indeed one big happy family right now. North Carolina... not so much. All four Head Heels employed since Dean Smith's 1997 retirement either played or coached for Smith; Roy Williams won three national championships, but Bill Guthridge and Matt Doherty were run off after three seasons, and Hubert Davis is on thin ice after missing the NCAA tournament in 2023 and barely making the field in '25. The Guthridge, Doherty and Davis experiences make it likely that North Carolina will explicitly look outside the "family" if Davis doesn't turn things around in 2026.
It's perfectly understandable for a proud Terp like Elmore to be hurt, embarrassed and enraged at the way the Willard fiasco played out. Either the program was so underfunded relative to its aspirations as a top-10 college basketball program that it drove its coach away to a Big East program, or it was unfairly hung out to dry by its own head coach during the two weeks in which college basketball takes center stage on the sporting calendar. Either way, Maryland should do an autopsy into the who, what, how and why to prevent this from happening again. And with AD Damon Evans now at SMU, the coaching search comes at a time when prominent alums like Elmore and donors like Gossett are likely to have an even bigger voice than usual.
If there's a Jon Scheyer, a Roy Williams, or a Gary Williams out there with Terp ties who's willing to come home, by all means Maryland should hire him. (On that front, former Terp Steve Blake is available.) Short of finding a championship-level alum, though, chances are the next Maryland coach will win enough to one day hold the school for ransom, or he won't win enough and Maryland will eventually fire him.