CRAWFORD | For Louisville's Payne, Milt Wagner hire is about more than 'family' | Sports

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- This may well be the column that officially ushers me into old manhood. I can feel it. Yes, I still have a bit of COVID brain-cloud lingering from a bout last week. Yes, I understand what year it is, and how news and college basketball fans and recruiting all work.

But let’s just tackle this up front.

Yes, Milt Wagner is the grandfather of the No. 1-ranked recruit in the 2023 class, D.J. Wagner.

But no, I don’t think that’s the headline of the hire that Kenny Payne made on Tuesday, adding Wagner in a player development/alumni relations position previously occupied by Reece Gaines, who will move to a video position.

It's part of the story, of course. It would be silly to say otherwise. And, if your only concern with U of L is winning basketball games, then the hire is likely a bold (but convenient) play to get a legacy recruit who also happens to have NBA talent and, as an added bonus, has a long relationship with the coach of your biggest rival. And that’s it. I know there’s a good bit of that, and it’s the kind of thing that makes the world go ‘round and the pageviews churn.

But if this hire was just about recruiting, then it wasn’t a good hire. From all that has been said – and a great deal of it by D.J. Wagner’s father, Dajuan, to WDRB’s Rick Bozich – this hire guarantees nothing. And Louisville fans ought to know this. Remember when Rick Pitino hired an assistant high school coach who was close with a big-time recruit out of Indianapolis? Marquis Teague went to Kentucky anyway. I know, different situation, but the principle is unchanged.

You never know how these things are going to go. At the moment, there’s not even any real certainty over whether Louisville can recruit Wagner after making this hire, given NCAA rules governing “individuals associated with a prospect.” It’s likely the school will have to get guidance from the NCAA on that, and it will involve a lot more than you see in the bylaws in black and white. NCAA rules often do.

But in introducing Wagner, Payne wanted to make perfectly clear that his friendship with Wagner far predated the basketball abilities his son and grandson would later show, and that his hire goes far beyond those, as well. To write Milt Wagner off as just some pawn in a higher-stakes recruiting battle over his grandson is to do a great disservice to a player who is one of the most beloved figures in the program’s proud history.

“First day I ever hit this campus, my first meal that I ate on this campus was with Milt and his family,” Payne said. “For all of us that were freshmen in that class, this is the person that we looked up to. So I'm excited. I'm happy that I get to bring him back. It's an unbelievable story. But this is one of the unique situations when I talk about having one of the best staffs in the country and having a championship culture.”

These hires by Payne are more than just reunions of old friends and teammates. They are more than just tugging at the heartstrings of older fans, or rekindling memories of glory days.

To me, this basketball program is closing a circle. Kenny Payne eight days ago in his office, told a group of us from WDRB that he didn’t take his studies seriously during his playing days. He had to come back to finish his degree after playing professionally. Wagner had to finish his degree at Memphis, where he became an assistant to John Calipari.

Yes, those guys will tell you they wish they’d worked harder in class and taken more advantage of the opportunities they had during their playing days. But it is just as true that the university failed them, too. U of L should’ve done better by them and others. Its academic shortcomings were on display for all to see, going as far as a “60 Minutes” piece.

For Payne to be back as head coach, for Wagner to be back in his role, for Darrell Griffith to be working for the university -- these guys represent stories that young players need to hear and see. They represent a chance for the program and university to do better. And they represent a platform for a lot of guys with a lot of life experience to share messages that not just the university but that the city needs to hear.

Several times Payne used the words “unique situation.” Don’t forget those.

This is a lot bigger than any one recruit, grandson or not. And for Wagner, that was the message on Tuesday.

“This is just about me,” Wagner said. “Getting on the staff this year, this is about Milt Wagner being player development/alumni relations. You know, we'll get into that (recruiting) part later on down the line. But right now this is about me being part of the University of Louisville.”

As a liaison between former players and the program, Wagner said he wants former players to know they have a home and a voice within the program.

“Coach Payne has said, we want to let players know this is their team,” Wagner said. “We want them to feel connected to this team and let them know they are family. We're all family. We want our current players that know that they have family outside of us here on the staff, that they’ve got former players who have been there, that we're all brothers. We all are family and we want to make this a family situation here. So, I think that's my job just to bring our former players back and I know they've been wanting to come back for the longest, so I don't think that'll be a problem. We’ve got open hands to these guys that, you know, this is their program.”

For U of L , this hire was about setting some things right. And that’s worth doing, no matter what the family ties.

Tomorrow, that speculation can burn as brightly as anything. Today, the spotlight begins on Milt, who lifted the program and university to new heights, went on his own basketball odyssey, and comes back hoping to make another kind of difference, and reach another dazzling height.