Credit: Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports
By Chris Novak on

Jay Wright coached his way out of a rock and a hard place after the 2014-15 men’s college basketball season. After the second round of the NCAA Tournament constantly gave him and his Villanova Wildcats fits for several years, Wright coached them to the mountaintop. The Wildcats won two NCAA championships in 2016 and 2018. Four seasons later, Wright retired from coaching. From the sound of it, don’t expect him to be back on the sidelines anytime soon.

Jay now serves as a college basketball analyst for CBS Sports. In the upcoming NCAA Tournament, Wright will work as a studio analyst all the way through the Final Four.

He recently spoke candidly about his decision to move to broadcasting on The Steam Room podcast with Ernie Johnson and Charles Barkley. Via BarrettSportsMedia, Wright said:

“I really don’t miss it at all. I enjoyed every second of it. There was never a time when I thought ‘I don’t like this’. I feel like I got everything out of it and I’m enjoying this new life.”

He went on to discuss a specific moment that reached him. While Wright was on call for a Purdue Boilermakers men’s basketball game, he had a bit of an epiphany.

“I remember doing a game at Purdue. It was so loud we couldn’t hear in our headsets. There’s a little secondary ‘This is cool, this juice is cool’. As soon as the game starts, I look across and see the faces of the coaches, the agony. I’m so glad I’m out of this and on the other side.” 

Some coaches will leave broadcasting for coaching for the right price. We saw it recently with Bruce Arians returning to coaching after he, also, worked for CBS. But don’t put Jay Wright in that category. If you don’t believe us, ask the man himself.

[Barrett Sports Media]

About Chris Novak

Chris Novak has been talking and writing about sports ever since he can remember. Previously, Novak wrote for and managed sites in the SB Nation network for nearly a decade from 2013-2022

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