Jay Bilas criticized Mick Cronin for blaming players and staff, calling it a deflection of accountability and counterproductive to coaching. Credit: ESPN’s “College GameDay’ on YouTube

Mick Cronin ruffled a few feathers when he threw everybody — except himself and the athletic training staff — under the bus amid UCLA’s struggles.

Following a 94-75 loss to the Michigan Wolverines, the Bruins head coach called his players “soft” and ” delusional.” And in doing so, he practically named the entire roster as he ripped them one by one for their shortcomings in back-to-back Big Ten losses.

And a third consecutive loss came at the hands of Maryland, in which Cronin got himself ejected. He might’ve been defending his players then, but his public comments prior to a 79-61 loss to the Terrapins did not sit well with ESPN’s Jay Bilas.

Like, at all.

After playing two minutes of Cronin placing the onus on anyone but himself, Bilas, on Saturday’s College GameDay, bluntly said that he didn’t care for what the UCLA head man had to say after his team’s loss to Michigan.

“Coaches like to talk about accountability a lot — and rightfully so,” began Bilas. “Accountability’s important in everything, but I don’t think that’s what accountability looks like. That, to me, simply looked like blame. And I heard a lot of ‘I.’ You know, ‘I’m doing this.’ ‘I’m doing that.’ ‘And nobody else is doing.’ And, one, I don’t think that’s true, but that’s for him to decide, not me. But I didn’t care for it.

“And oftentimes when I hear something like that — and it’s not often — I think about what Mike Tomlin of the Pittsburgh Steelers says. And he says, ‘He loves coaches that resist the responsibility of coaching because they’re easy to beat.’ And when you talk negatively about your players, what you’re really doing is seeking comfort because your teaching is struggling.”

All of those players Cronin trashed? He brought them in.

All the staff members he hung out to dry? He hired them.

“I get it. Coaches like to think they’re more passionate and they’re tougher than their players, but I happen to think this is true: Mick Cronin is not tougher than his players,” Bilas explained. “When he was playing, he would not have gotten one loose ball, one rebound against the guys he’s got now; that would not happen. I don’t believe any of that, and I don’t think it’s productive.

“But, if he said the same thing in the confines of the locker room to his players — that’s fine. When you do that publicly, I don’t care for it. Maybe his players do. Maybe they’ll respond positively to it. I just don’t think it’s the right thing to do, but that’s his decision, not mine. I’m just saying what I think of that.”

And Bilas doesn’t think much.

But he does clearly think that if Cronin wants to fix what’s broken at UCLA, he might start by looking in the mirror — because accountability starts at the top.

About Sam Neumann

Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.