UConn head coach Geno Auriemma has admitted that he will retire when the job becomes too much for him, saying that ‘there is going to come a time’.
The 71-year-old has been part of the Connecticut Huskies for 40 years and he became the oldest coach in men’s or women’s college basketball history to win a national championship on Sunday.
His Huskies cruised past South Carolina 82-59 and that is Auriemma‘s 12th championship since becoming head coach in 1985.
A long answer from Auriemma
In the post-game press conference on Sunday, Auriemma dropped some big hints about his professional future.
“Well, all those other coaches had the good sense to not stick around until they were 71,” Auriemma joked.
“Again, we maybe talked about this recently. Yes, we all feel our age at some point. We don’t like to admit that we’re older because we still act younger because of the people that we’re dealing with.
“I know a lot of my friends that are my age that haven’t done what I’ve done with who I’ve done it with, and they look way older, act way older because they’ve lost the ability to be a kid because they’re not around kids. So, yeah, I may be 71 number-wise, but I think otherwise I’m more able to do stuff with those young people because I’m around them every day, and they rub off on me.
“Does that mean I can do this for another X number of years? No, because, you know, wine is good for you, too, and if you’re around it all the time, after a while, you wake up and you go, ‘That was really bad, I had too much fun.’
“So these kids are fun. But there is going to come a time when the fun doesn’t eliminate how hard it is to do this job. This job is really hard to do. I almost equated this one with coaching the Olympic team. Okay? If you know anything about coaching the Olympic team, it’s a four-year cycle.
“You’ve got to win a world championship first. And then you’ve got to win a gold medal. And it takes four years for that whole thing to evolve. And if I were to tell you the number of people who work every day, not just in Colorado Springs, to win a gold medal, that you feel like if you don’t win it they have to wait four more years to have that opportunity.
“The incredible amount of pressure and obligation that you have — and my job has become that at UConn, that it’s more of an obligation to do what they expect me to do as opposed to any fame and fortune that’s going to come my way. Although my AD doesn’t know that yet.”
