Tony Bennett's retirement is the latest condemnation of the Wild, Wild West state of college basketball

The college basketball world was shaken upon the news that long-time Virginia head coach Tony Bennett would be announcing his retirement on Friday.

The 2019 national champion seemed to still be in his prime at 55-years old, posting four 20+ win seasons in four of the last five seasons since cutting down the nets.

But upon taking the proverbial podium at his retirement news conference Friday, his reasoning for stepping away from the sport revealed a lot more about the state of college basketball than anything Bennett may have been failing to provide in his 15 years at the helm in Charlottesville.

Tony Bennett said the quiet part out loud about NIL and paying athletes

"The game and college athletics are not in a healthy spot," Bennett said melancholically. "I think I was equipped to do the job the old way."

The old way, when teams recruited the best athletes based on their abilities and their desires to get an education at the program's university. The way when college sports was still an amateur's game and the best of the best were qualified to go pro and make the mega bucks they so richly deserved.

But it was also the system in which universities preyed off "amateurs'" abilities by regimenting their daily lives around the sport and performing well so it would make lots of money from ticket sales and merchandise.

The Name, Image and Likeness era of college sports has flipped that dynamic on its head entirely. Athletes (whether they're actually any good or not on the college level) now demand exorbitant amounts of money for their supposed talents during the recruitment process. They walk away and transfer at the drop of a hat if they face any kind of adversity and have been twisted by predatory agents into thinking they're the next big thing.

"There needs to be change," Bennett implored. "It's going to be closer to a professional model ... there's got to be collective bargaining, a restriction on the salary pool that teams can spend, transfer regulation restrictions, there has to be limits on the agent involvement to these young guys."

He has a good point. The NCAA opened the flood gates to an even bigger problem without any sort of consideration for what comes next.

If he's got any sort of desire to remain involved in college athletics, he should be heading the committee addressing these issues along with Nick Saban. The athletes deserve protection but not at the expense of common sense.