How Have Older Coaches Adapted to Modern Coaching and Recruiting?

Recruiting has become a sport unto itself.

Recruiting without a cell phone would be like asking Bob Cousy of the 1950s era Boston Celtics to guard LeBron James one-on-one. There was a time when Bob Cousy was all anybody knew. Now, he'd just be a six-foot, 170 pound white guy. Well when Ole Miss head coach Kermit Davis first got into the recruiting game, he was Bob Cousy.

The game was simply different back then. If Davis wanted to contact a recruit on the way home from a road game in the 1980s, he would stop at a pay phone and call the recruit's house on the way home.

“Our players, it just blows their mind. ‘But coach, what if he isn’t there? What do you do?’" Davis said. "Well you drive 20 more minutes and find another gas station. He can’t call you back. Or you leave him your pay phone number. If the mom said, he’s right down the street and she’ll go get him, then you wait there.”

Davis started coaching right after college in 1983. Back then he was a young assistant at Mississippi State. Nine moves later, Davis will turn 61 mid-way through the 2020-21 Ole Miss campaign.

At first, fresh out of college, connecting with players was easy. He thinks players communicated better back then, but means of communication were considerably harder. Now players may communicate worse, but it's considerable easier to get in contact with them.

He preaches adaptability. Without it, he probably still wouldn't be in the industry.

“If you don’t adapt to this new phase of basketball, with what’s coming up. If you try and fight it, you’re not going to last long in our business," Davis says. "I hate it, but that’s just part of it. You have to get used to being very flexible in every phase of athletics over the next five or ten years.”

Those adaptations are even more important now.

Davis and his staff have been Zooming recruits and giving them virtual tours of campus. Some of the big-name transfers they've signed did so without ever visiting Oxford.

“Everyone says these athletes and basketball players have changed and are harder to coach these days. I don’t think that," Davis said. "I think they’re more talented than young people have ever been. They’re smarter than young people have ever been. They have so much more experience and have been exposed to so many different things as freshman than we all were ever… but they were raised different because of what we’re all doing now.”

Between cell phones, zoom meetings and the general existence of the internet, who wouldn't be different compared to four decades ago?

These kids coming to school now have been on the AAU circuit for years. Top recruits are in the national spotlight pretty much from the day they start high school. Many of them transfer schools a few times just to increase that exposure. The Peach Jam and other high school tournaments appear on ESPN.

So yes, maybe these players are pampered and have high expectations. Maybe that is why so many of them transfer if they're not seeing immediate playing time. Something coaching staffs have to do on a year-to-year basis is re-recruit the players they already have on their roster, just to keep them at home.

“It’s unbelievable how much it’s changed. I couldn’t imagine navigating now in 1985. You just couldn’t hardly do it," Davis said.

Now in his 60s, Davis has had to adapt more than most. The game has changed with the rise of three point value. Players come and go like it's just a one-year vacation. Not only do you have to recruit high school kids, you may have to recruit you own kids to come back.

It's a coach's version of Darwinian evolution – adapt or die. And, entering his 37th year of coaching, Kermit Davis has adapted as good as anyone.

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