Give Holly Warlick an Extension Already!

Nobody has earned it more than the head coach of the Tennessee Lady Vols’ women’s basketball team.

Marky Billson

It is simply ridiculous to compare Holly Warlick’s record as head women’s basketball coach of the Tennessee Lady Vols to that of Pat Summitt’s in the eighties and nineties.

The game has changed so much. Consider more than half of Summitt’s coaching career was spent before Connecticut won their first national championship. When the Lady Vols reached their first national championship final, they beat Cheney State to get there.

Here’s what is fair to compare Warlick by. Her record in five years at the helm as compared to Summitt’s final four seasons as head coach.

The biggest discrepancy there is Tennessee lost in the first round of the NCAA Tournament in 2009. They have never suffered that indignity with Warlick in command.

After becoming perhaps Tennessee’s first female basketball star, Warlick joined Summitt’s staff in 1985. The Lady Vols won their first national championship two years later.

Warlick told the Knoxville News-Sentinel yesterday she will probably be given an extension in the next two weeks. That some legal issues have been the hold up.

That’s understandable. Coaching contracts today are worded so schools like Tennessee won’t be burdened with massive buyouts, such as the eight million dollars the Vols still owe Butch Jones.

Warlick, 60, knows the criticisms she has faced, as unfair as many have been. Clearly she wants to have a financial payout when her coaching career ends, be it by dismissal or retirement.

She’s earned it.

John Adams of the News-Sentinel raised some serious questions if Tennessee is truly committed to winning in women’s basketball. As I’ve stated repeatedly on TCSN, it is insulting that a coach of Warlick’s caliber and success has been asked to coach with just one year left on her contract.

For recruiting purposes, a coach the Lady Vols’ program’s prestige should have four years, just as Jones and any major college football coach will have. Dawn Staley at South Carolina has a contract that runs through 2025.

Yet somehow, seemingly with the Sword of Damocles over her head, Warlick brought in prospectsnation.com’s top recruiting class in all of women’s college basketball to Knoxville last year. She’s always won 20 games a season and capped it off with at least one NCAA Tournament victory.

Playing against much easier competition, Summitt’s winning percentage as Tennessee’s head coach without Warlick assisting her as a player or coach was .702 in the 1980s.

Against much more difficult competition, Warlick’s winning percentage as Tennessee’s head coach without Summitt is .739.

Yet Warlick makes almost a million and a half dollars less annually than Geno Auriemma.

Is Tennessee really giving Warlick equal resources?

This demeanor would be appropriate in contract negotiations.

Pat Summitt won six national championships before starting Lady Vols guard Evina Westbrook was born. Auriemma has won 10 in Westbrook’s lifetime.

If you’re so high and mighty about Summitt’s legacy, what would it mean for her legacy if Warlick’s eventual successor was given more resources to succeed than Summitt’s longtime loyal assistant? What does it mean for Summitt’s legacy that her loyal assistant hasn’t been given the contemporary resources to succeed yet puts up extraordinary results considering the hand she is dealt by her own administration?

Frankly, Warlick has made the Summitt legacy into the Lady Vols legacy. Players who stay for four years all graduate. They carry themselves with class on and off the court.

“Vol For Life” is a truly phony piece of propaganda. Is Lane Kiffin a “Vol For Life?” How about Jones? What about Bruce Pearl on the Auburn bench?

But if anyone embodies “Vol For Life” it is Warlick, who has been associated with the program since 1974. Summit never won a national championship without her as an assistant, and Summitt’s record in the five years in the early ’80s as compared to when Warlick was on the bench with her shows improvement to true elite status the Lady Vols did not have before.

She deserves an extension. Even if the Lady Vols lose every game next year and she is fired she deserves whatever severance package the contract provides. She’s unquestionably earned it.

The only thing Warlick suffers from is the fact she has replaced a legend. What some Lady Vols fans fail to see is with her playing and coaching career she is just as big of one in Tennessee lore.

Warlick actually had her number retired by Tennessee BEFORE her playing career ended.

Marky Billson can be followed on Twitter, You Tube, and here on medium!