Most days when I write I present answers—which readers are free to agree or disagree with. Today, I present questions, which readers are free to answer or not answer.
Question 1: Do you care about The NBA playoffs? The ratings would seem to indicate that a lot of you do. Certainly having The Miami Heat playing the role of villains is helping a good deal along with the emergence of genuine young superstars like Derrick Rose and Kevin Durant. The saga of Dirk Nowitzki and Jason Kidd and The Mavericks is also worthy of attention. And, when I have watched on occasion, the quality of the games has been better than in recent memory.
That said, I still have trouble really caring. I certainly don’t care about The Heat—although like a lot of people LeBron James can’t lose enough to make me happy. I recognize his brilliance, he’s an absolute physical freak, but I simply can’t put The Decision behind me even though I don’t live in Cleveland. I think he took the easy way out and I have trouble respecting that.
There’s also the issue of when the games are played. Afternoon games have basically ceased to exist and the way these series are being dragged out makes me crazy. The way the first three games of Bulls-Heat was scheduled I was beginning to wonder if David Stern had a secret plan to replace the NFL by playing once a week. Three games in eight days? Someone said that James might be a free agent again before this spring’s playoffs are over.
The late night thing, I realize, is just my problem. On school mornings I have to be up at 6 to get my son out of bed and on the road. There’s just no way I can stay up until the end of a 9 o’clock game. Plus, they’re often not 9 o’clock games. The other night I checked in on Bulls-Heat before I went to bed and the first QUARTER was just ending at 10 o’clock. Who is in charge here, Bud Selig?
Question 2: Are you like me in that you don’t care that much about horse racing but you’d love to see a Triple Crown winner?
My knowledge of horse-racing is slightly better than my knowledge of fashion. I can name most Kentucky Derby winners of the last 40 years and a lot of Preakness and Belmont winners too. I almost always watch The Triple Crown races although I skip the two hours of pre-race features. Put ‘em in the gate and run.
I know there have been star horses in recent years and that a lot of people take The Breeders Stakes very seriously. But like the golf fan who only watches Tiger Woods—and thus isn’t really a golf fan—I am more a Triple Crown fan and I’d like to see a horse accomplish it again sometime soon. I DO remember The Affirmed-Alydar classics of 33 years ago. Who thought then that no one would win another Triple Crown for 33 years? Heck, weren’t there three in six years (Secretariat ’73; Seattle Slew ’77) at that point? Yes. But if you go back and check—which I did—it had been 25 years since Citation accomplished the feat when Secretariat did it in 1973.
Think how iconic those horses all became. Horse-racing needs an icon.
Question 3: Did anyone notice that Connecticut was just stripped of two basketball scholarships for failing to meet NCAA minimum academic standards?
Who would have thought that U-Conn would end up as the symbol of all that is wrong with the NCAA? As I’ve said before I like Jim Calhoun a lot personally. I think he’s a great coach and the rebuilding job he did when he took over U-Conn in the 1980s is one of the greatest of all time. But where is the line drawn? U-Conn admitted to major recruiting violations and the NCAA slapped their wrist so damn hard that they were still wincing collectively while collecting the national championship trophy. Now the school has failed to meet academic minimums set so low by the NCAA it is almost impossible not to meet them. Any Connecticut fans out there wondering what is going on? Of course not—they just had a parade.
That’s the rule in college athletics: win a national title and you can do anything you want to. Go 5-22 the way Brad Greenberg did at Radford this past season and get nailed by the NCAA for about as minor a violation as you can imagine (taking an ineligible player on the road to WATCH games during Thanksgiving and Christmas rather than leave him home alone on campus) and you get fired.
Question 4: If The French Open is being played in Paris and no one outside the Bois de Bologne really cares, is it really being played?
Seriously folks, I know tennis junkies are agog about Novak Djokovic’s winning streak and certainly if he ends up playing Rafael Nadal there will be interest but beyond that does anyone care? There’s not a single woman in the draw anyone outside of family, agent and friends really wants to watch play and no American man has been a contender in Paris since Andre Agassi and Jim Courier moved on to the hit-and-giggle world. Does anyone remember the days of Evert-Navratilova; Graf-Seles; McEnroe-Lendl or Agassi-Courier? For that matter where have you gone Michael Chang, our nation turns its lonely clay-filled eyes to you.
The only reason to watch The French Open this week and next is if you have Tennis Channel and you can watch Mary Carillo—who told ESPN to take a hike last fall—explain the game as only she can.
Question 5: Why oh why do I torture myself, even for 10 minutes, listening to the morning pitchmen? One reason is that The Sports Junkies seem to always be in commercial when I’m in the car, and I mean for the entire 10 minutes.
This morning my friend Jayson Stark was on. His is usually one of the few listenable bits on the show if the two pitchmen will SHUT UP with their fake bickering long enough to let him talk. This morning though, Jayson was talking about Mets owner Fred Wilpon’s comments about some of his players in this week’s New Yorker.
Wilpon was—at most—mildly critical of some of his stars. He said he made a mistake signing Carlos Beltran (for the record, Beltran, when healthy has been one of the Mets BETTER signings: Can you say Oliver Perez? Jason Bay? Pedro—one good year on a five-year deal—Martinez?) and that he wasn’t going to give Jose Reyes a “Carl Crawford contract.” David Wright—according to WIlpon—is a very good player but not a franchise player.
First of all, everything Wilpon said is true. The mistakes he’s made go well beyond those three players and are too numerous to list here. (Yes, I’m a frustrated Mets fan). But Jayson, who is one of the few real reporters ESPN has, felt the need to imply that Jeffrey Toobin, who wrote The New Yorker piece, got these comments from Wilpon because WIlpon didn’t realize he was being quoted when he said what he said. One of the pitchmen chimed in to say Wilpon just thought he was, ‘schmoozing,’ when he made the comments.
Oh come on fellas. This reminds me of the time when I was sent to John Riggins’ house in Lawrence, Kansas in 1980 to ask him why he wasn’t at Redskins training camp. He had refused to talk to anyone so my boss sent me out there to try to talk to him. After saying repeatedly he had nothing to say, Riggins finally started talking and answered several questions. Later, when several regular Redskins reporters asked him why he had talked to me—a complete stranger—he said he thought we were talking off the record.
Really? Did he think I flew to Lawrence, Kansas because I was personally curious about his holdout? Did Wilpon think that Toobin came out and spent hours and hours with him because he really wanted to know what he thought about Carlos Beltran. It is worth noting that WILPON has not used this excuse.
So, I ask one more time: Why or why do I do this to myself?
Showing posts with label UCONN. Show all posts
Showing posts with label UCONN. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
VCU proves experts wrong; Final Four: underdog/good guy divisions vs. not-so-good-guy/overdog division
I know it has been a while and I apologize to those who look for this blog on a regular basis. I went underground last week, retreating at the suggestion of my remarkably patient wife to Shelter Island to dig in and try to finish a book. The good news is I got a remarkable amount of work done in six days. The bad news is I still haven’t quite reached the finish line.
Choosing not to go to a regional site was a mixed blessing. Not having to try to file at ridiculous hours of the night thanks to the NCAA’s selling of its soul to TV was something I didn’t miss. Not dealing with the constant feeling that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that you are in a police state when you are in the arena also wasn’t missed. And not having to deal with more internet problems—the NCAA is the only major organization that CHARGES for internet and then most of the time it doesn’t work—was also a very good thing.
So, I stretched out in front of the TV in the evenings and watched the games. Let me begin by patting myself on the back (something I’m pretty good at as most people know) for saying—and writing—on Selection Sunday that VCU belonged in the field. I advocated all season for the CAA getting three bids because I believed the quality of play in the league merited three bids. I can’t tell you how many stories I’ve read in recent days that include the phrase, “all the experts said VCU didn’t merit a bid.”
Okay, I’m happy not to be lumped in with the talking heads, especially those on ESPN. My friend Jay Bilas needs to swallow hard, drop the lawyer-line about, “just because they got a chance and played well doesn’t mean they deserved the chance.”
YES THEY DID. They have proven more than definitively that they deserved the chance and you Jay—and others—just had it wrong. How about saying this: “You know I probably didn’t see VCU play enough to fairly judge them. They’re better than I thought they were.”
Heck, they’re certainly better than I thought they were. Did I believe they should be in the field? Absolutely. Did I think they’d be in The Final Four? Of course not. Beating USC didn’t surprise me nor did beating Georgetown—because the Hoyas did their collapse act again. I’ve said before and I will say again, I think John Thompson III is a good coach and a good guy. But in the last four years—or since Jeff Green and Roy Hibbert, both recruited by Craig Esherick—left the program (actually Hibbert was still there in ’08) Georgetown has won ONE NCAA Tournament game, against a No. 15 seed UMBC back in ’08. Since then: NIT; first round blowout loss to Ohio University; first round blowout loss to VCU. (The round of 64 is still the first round no matter what the NCAA euphemists call it).
Something’s wrong inside that locker room. Georgetown is the most secret society this side of The CIA so we may never know exactly what went wrong but if you read body language you know those kids weren’t very excited about being together on the court against VCU.
I thought the Rams run would probably end against Purdue. They crushed the Boilermakers too. I thought the Florida State game was a tossup and it was: teams of destiny win those games. And Kansas? No way was Kansas going to lose to another mid-major after the Northern Iowa debacle a year ago, right? Wrong. The Jayhawks played as if they thought this was a pre-season game. Then when they realized how good VCU was they panicked and started firing bricks that could have rebuilt The Berlin Wall.
Wow. Good for Shaka Smart and good for those kids and for that school and, by the way, for the CAA. I might have been wrong: maybe the league deserved four bids: Hofstra was pretty damn good too.
The committee got it right with VCU. For the most part it got just about everything else wrong. I’m not going to go the Charles Barkley route and declare The Big East overrated. It wasn’t—it was very good with a lot of good to very good teams. But Villanova should have played its way out of the field with its monumental February-March collapse. The committee—as always—just looked at numbers. Hey, anyone WATCH the South Florida game? Talk about a team in disarray. Did we need seven Big Ten teams? No. UAB got in for one reason: Steve Orsini, committee member from SMU, got his conference an extra bid. The tournament would have been fine without USC. Oh, and one more nitpick: Clearly if you were seeding the last four No. 16 seeds based on records and RPI and perhaps even—God Forbid—watching them play, UNC-Asheville and Arkansas-Little Rock would have been 1-2 and clearly ahead of UT-San Antonio and Alabama State, by far the lowest ranked team in the field. And yet, the first two played one another while UT-San Antonio got to play Alabama State. Hmmm, how could that have happened? Does the name Lynn Hickey ring a bell? Committee member; AD at….you guessed it…UT-San Antonio.
You know what? I may be wrong when I say the committee isn’t transparent. In truth, it is VERY transparent. If you’re paying attention.
But, fine, whatever. As I’ve said before it doesn’t bother me that much that the committee gets it wrong because it is made up of people who don’t know much about basketball. (okay, it bothers me). But what REALLY bothers me is the sanctimony and the self-righteousness. They get everything wrong and sit there and claim they got everything right. My cats could seed the tournament better than these guys and do it for a lot less and with a lot less self-congratulations or discussions of ‘student-athletes.’
Anyway, The Final Four has two clear divisions: There is the underdog/good guy division: Butler-VCU. What Butler has done is completely amazing. Honestly, if I was starting a college basketball program tomorrow and could hire one coach it would be Brad Stevens. He is very much the real deal. He’s smart, he understands the game and he understands life. His kids trust him implicitly and he NEVER panics. So, they never panic. That’s why they keep winning close games. Back-to-back Final Fours at Butler? My God. Put that guy in the Hall of Fame NOW.
Then there is the not-so-good-guy/overdog division: U-Conn and Kentucky. As it happens, I like both Jim Calhoun and John Calipari. I think they’re both superb coaches. They get kids who have one eye on the doorway to the NBA—if not two—to play hard all the time. But the fact is Calhoun and Connecticut have just been convicted by the NCAA of major recruiting violations and got off with a wrist-slap because they’re a big-time TV program. That’s how it works and we all know it.
The other fact is this—although you will never hear it mentioned on CBS or ESPN— Calipari has overseen two programs that have had Final Four appearances vacated.
PLEASE don’t give me the morning pitchmen line from today: “Well, um, Calipari had two programs that, um, had some problems, HE didn’t have problems, the programs did…” Right, he was an innocent bystander. COME ON! And we all know Kentucky’s history. (Go ahead Kentucky fans, explain how your program has NEVER done anything wrong and this is all about me not liking Kentucky.).
So, the final will match a true Cinderella—and Butler is STILL Cinderella no matter how good it has become—against one school on probation and one that’s been there before coached by a guy who has twice been vacated. Talk about good vs. evil.
Anyway, regardless of the outcome you can be sure of two things: the game won’t be over until close to midnight and the committee blowhards will be patting themselves on the back for great job the minute that buzzer finally goes off.
Yeah, great job. Sort of like the Mets owners have done the past few years.
Choosing not to go to a regional site was a mixed blessing. Not having to try to file at ridiculous hours of the night thanks to the NCAA’s selling of its soul to TV was something I didn’t miss. Not dealing with the constant feeling that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that you are in a police state when you are in the arena also wasn’t missed. And not having to deal with more internet problems—the NCAA is the only major organization that CHARGES for internet and then most of the time it doesn’t work—was also a very good thing.
So, I stretched out in front of the TV in the evenings and watched the games. Let me begin by patting myself on the back (something I’m pretty good at as most people know) for saying—and writing—on Selection Sunday that VCU belonged in the field. I advocated all season for the CAA getting three bids because I believed the quality of play in the league merited three bids. I can’t tell you how many stories I’ve read in recent days that include the phrase, “all the experts said VCU didn’t merit a bid.”
Okay, I’m happy not to be lumped in with the talking heads, especially those on ESPN. My friend Jay Bilas needs to swallow hard, drop the lawyer-line about, “just because they got a chance and played well doesn’t mean they deserved the chance.”
YES THEY DID. They have proven more than definitively that they deserved the chance and you Jay—and others—just had it wrong. How about saying this: “You know I probably didn’t see VCU play enough to fairly judge them. They’re better than I thought they were.”
Heck, they’re certainly better than I thought they were. Did I believe they should be in the field? Absolutely. Did I think they’d be in The Final Four? Of course not. Beating USC didn’t surprise me nor did beating Georgetown—because the Hoyas did their collapse act again. I’ve said before and I will say again, I think John Thompson III is a good coach and a good guy. But in the last four years—or since Jeff Green and Roy Hibbert, both recruited by Craig Esherick—left the program (actually Hibbert was still there in ’08) Georgetown has won ONE NCAA Tournament game, against a No. 15 seed UMBC back in ’08. Since then: NIT; first round blowout loss to Ohio University; first round blowout loss to VCU. (The round of 64 is still the first round no matter what the NCAA euphemists call it).
Something’s wrong inside that locker room. Georgetown is the most secret society this side of The CIA so we may never know exactly what went wrong but if you read body language you know those kids weren’t very excited about being together on the court against VCU.
I thought the Rams run would probably end against Purdue. They crushed the Boilermakers too. I thought the Florida State game was a tossup and it was: teams of destiny win those games. And Kansas? No way was Kansas going to lose to another mid-major after the Northern Iowa debacle a year ago, right? Wrong. The Jayhawks played as if they thought this was a pre-season game. Then when they realized how good VCU was they panicked and started firing bricks that could have rebuilt The Berlin Wall.
Wow. Good for Shaka Smart and good for those kids and for that school and, by the way, for the CAA. I might have been wrong: maybe the league deserved four bids: Hofstra was pretty damn good too.
The committee got it right with VCU. For the most part it got just about everything else wrong. I’m not going to go the Charles Barkley route and declare The Big East overrated. It wasn’t—it was very good with a lot of good to very good teams. But Villanova should have played its way out of the field with its monumental February-March collapse. The committee—as always—just looked at numbers. Hey, anyone WATCH the South Florida game? Talk about a team in disarray. Did we need seven Big Ten teams? No. UAB got in for one reason: Steve Orsini, committee member from SMU, got his conference an extra bid. The tournament would have been fine without USC. Oh, and one more nitpick: Clearly if you were seeding the last four No. 16 seeds based on records and RPI and perhaps even—God Forbid—watching them play, UNC-Asheville and Arkansas-Little Rock would have been 1-2 and clearly ahead of UT-San Antonio and Alabama State, by far the lowest ranked team in the field. And yet, the first two played one another while UT-San Antonio got to play Alabama State. Hmmm, how could that have happened? Does the name Lynn Hickey ring a bell? Committee member; AD at….you guessed it…UT-San Antonio.
You know what? I may be wrong when I say the committee isn’t transparent. In truth, it is VERY transparent. If you’re paying attention.
But, fine, whatever. As I’ve said before it doesn’t bother me that much that the committee gets it wrong because it is made up of people who don’t know much about basketball. (okay, it bothers me). But what REALLY bothers me is the sanctimony and the self-righteousness. They get everything wrong and sit there and claim they got everything right. My cats could seed the tournament better than these guys and do it for a lot less and with a lot less self-congratulations or discussions of ‘student-athletes.’
Anyway, The Final Four has two clear divisions: There is the underdog/good guy division: Butler-VCU. What Butler has done is completely amazing. Honestly, if I was starting a college basketball program tomorrow and could hire one coach it would be Brad Stevens. He is very much the real deal. He’s smart, he understands the game and he understands life. His kids trust him implicitly and he NEVER panics. So, they never panic. That’s why they keep winning close games. Back-to-back Final Fours at Butler? My God. Put that guy in the Hall of Fame NOW.
Then there is the not-so-good-guy/overdog division: U-Conn and Kentucky. As it happens, I like both Jim Calhoun and John Calipari. I think they’re both superb coaches. They get kids who have one eye on the doorway to the NBA—if not two—to play hard all the time. But the fact is Calhoun and Connecticut have just been convicted by the NCAA of major recruiting violations and got off with a wrist-slap because they’re a big-time TV program. That’s how it works and we all know it.
The other fact is this—although you will never hear it mentioned on CBS or ESPN— Calipari has overseen two programs that have had Final Four appearances vacated.
PLEASE don’t give me the morning pitchmen line from today: “Well, um, Calipari had two programs that, um, had some problems, HE didn’t have problems, the programs did…” Right, he was an innocent bystander. COME ON! And we all know Kentucky’s history. (Go ahead Kentucky fans, explain how your program has NEVER done anything wrong and this is all about me not liking Kentucky.).
So, the final will match a true Cinderella—and Butler is STILL Cinderella no matter how good it has become—against one school on probation and one that’s been there before coached by a guy who has twice been vacated. Talk about good vs. evil.
Anyway, regardless of the outcome you can be sure of two things: the game won’t be over until close to midnight and the committee blowhards will be patting themselves on the back for great job the minute that buzzer finally goes off.
Yeah, great job. Sort of like the Mets owners have done the past few years.
Monday, January 11, 2010
This week in The Washington Post
Here are this week's articles The Washington Post, both focused on college basketball. Today's column was on George Washington, and over the weekend I wrote about Connecticut's Jim Calhoun.
The following is today's article --------
With 8 minutes 24 seconds left in the game Sunday at Smith Center, George Washington's Hermann Opoku had just made two free throws to give the Colonials a 60-50 lead over Xavier. GW had finished the first half strong to take a 41-30 lead and the margin had stayed between seven and 11 points throughout the second half.
That's not enough, Colonials Coach Karl Hobbs thought as he glanced at the scoreboard.
"I knew at some point in the second half we had to get the lead to 14," he said after the game. "I knew Xavier was too good and too experienced a team for us to keep stopping their offense the whole day. After we got to 60, I kept looking up and we were still on 60. It felt like we were there a long time."
They were there for more than five minutes. By the time Aaron Ware made a free throw with 3:04 left, Xavier had the lead and the Musketeers never looked back, cruising to a 76-69 win. In all, Xavier outscored GW 20-1 over a stretch that last nearly eight minutes.
Click here for the rest of the column: GW has spice, needs seasoning
-----------------------
Some losses are tougher to take than others. As the celebration began Saturday afternoon at Verizon Center in the seconds after Georgetown's stunning 72-69 victory over Connecticut, Jim Calhoun walked through the handshake line, a blank look on his face, probably not even seeing any of the players or coaches he was congratulating.
"I've just never gotten to the point where a loss doesn't tear me up," he said. "I still feel as if I've failed whenever we lose. My friends will say to me, 'Don't you know how much you've done?' My answer is, no I don't. Not when I've got Georgetown to play at noon today. I stay in the present."
Calhoun actually said those words about three hours before Saturday's tip-off. As he spoke, he easily might have passed for just another visitor to the nation's capital, someone looking to stay inside on a frigid morning. He already had worked out and was sipping a cup of coffee while his players sat quietly around him eating their pregame meal.
Click here for the rest of the column: Connecticut's Jim Calhoun still loves coaching
The following is today's article --------
With 8 minutes 24 seconds left in the game Sunday at Smith Center, George Washington's Hermann Opoku had just made two free throws to give the Colonials a 60-50 lead over Xavier. GW had finished the first half strong to take a 41-30 lead and the margin had stayed between seven and 11 points throughout the second half.
That's not enough, Colonials Coach Karl Hobbs thought as he glanced at the scoreboard.
"I knew at some point in the second half we had to get the lead to 14," he said after the game. "I knew Xavier was too good and too experienced a team for us to keep stopping their offense the whole day. After we got to 60, I kept looking up and we were still on 60. It felt like we were there a long time."
They were there for more than five minutes. By the time Aaron Ware made a free throw with 3:04 left, Xavier had the lead and the Musketeers never looked back, cruising to a 76-69 win. In all, Xavier outscored GW 20-1 over a stretch that last nearly eight minutes.
Click here for the rest of the column: GW has spice, needs seasoning
-----------------------
Some losses are tougher to take than others. As the celebration began Saturday afternoon at Verizon Center in the seconds after Georgetown's stunning 72-69 victory over Connecticut, Jim Calhoun walked through the handshake line, a blank look on his face, probably not even seeing any of the players or coaches he was congratulating.
"I've just never gotten to the point where a loss doesn't tear me up," he said. "I still feel as if I've failed whenever we lose. My friends will say to me, 'Don't you know how much you've done?' My answer is, no I don't. Not when I've got Georgetown to play at noon today. I stay in the present."
Calhoun actually said those words about three hours before Saturday's tip-off. As he spoke, he easily might have passed for just another visitor to the nation's capital, someone looking to stay inside on a frigid morning. He already had worked out and was sipping a cup of coffee while his players sat quietly around him eating their pregame meal.
Click here for the rest of the column: Connecticut's Jim Calhoun still loves coaching
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Mike Leach firing –- there is nothing good in this story; Remember the Syracuse-Connecticut game?
The only thing I know for sure about this stranger-than-fiction Mike Leach story is that everyone is going to have a strong opinion about it.
Let’s take the Texas Tech fans out of the equation because their reaction is going to be pretty much the same as any group of fans who have just lost a coach who was a consistent winner: this is a travesty. They really don’t care what Leach did or didn’t do to Adam James; they don’t care what he did or did not say to his bosses at Texas Tech. All they know or care about is that he took a school in west Texas to 10 straight bowl games and a No. 3 ranking a year ago in November and they’re mad as hell that he’s gone.
That’s the way fans are. As I said last week during the Rutgers brouhaha, fans don’t care about graduation rates (Leach’s was very good) or whether someone is a good guy, an okay guy or a bad guy, they care about wins. So, most Texas Tech fans are going to take the approach that Adam James was a spoiled, under-achieving whiner whose father Craig was a pain-in-the-butt. Some will see this as part of the softening of athletes and of our society in general. Kid complains about being stuck in a room for a couple of hours. What a wimp! We’re talking a coach who was 84-43; he’s just trying to make a man of him.
Okay, now let’s move on to those who might be a tad more objective. Even there you’re going to see and hear sharp disagreements. My pal Sally Jenkins, whose dad is a proud graduate of TCU and a lover of all things college football, took the approach in this morning’s Washington Post that what Leach did wasn’t so bad, that there’s no medical evidence that James’s concussion was made worse in any way by the two days he spent in some form of solitary. (Even Leach’s lawyer hasn’t argued that point, he’s just argued about the size and comfort of the rooms James was placed in).
Sally points out—correctly—that Leach has always been a maverick on and off the field. He once made a player sit on the 50-yard line and study in the cold because he hadn’t been going to class. He’s taken Texas Tech’s graduation rate from nowhere to almost 80 percent. He has a law degree and he has interests outside of football. He’s bright and engaging. She accused those saying there’s no excuse for what Leach did of being politically correct.
The other side, taken already by a number of columnists, is that there is NO excuse for what Leach did to James. Doctors said he had a concussion and whether it was “mild,” or not where did Leach get his medical degree? Whether the rooms involved were small and dark or large and well-lit, making him stand by himself with a guard outside the door is pretty damn close to cruelty and, if God Forbid, something had happened to James, Leach and Texas Tech would have faced the mother of all law suits.
Not only should he have been fired, he should never coach again.
Look, I don’t know Craig James except to say hello. I don’t know Mike Leach at all, except what I’ve read and heard about him. The one thing I will say is that his considerable abilities as a coach aren’t at issue here.
I’m not a doctor anymore than Leach is a doctor but I do know this: Leach clearly was upset with Adam James and wanted to make some kind of example of him the same way he made an example of the kid who hadn’t been going to class. But he was in a very dangerous area, especially nowadays with all the information that has been coming out recently about the dangers of head injuries of any kind. If Leach felt that James had been out of line in the past, there were lots of ways to discipline him that didn’t involve any kind of medical risk.
He can’t make the argument that James was faking a concussion—and hasn’t. If you believe the version of the story told by LEACH’s lawyer, he’s on shaky ground. The idea that Leach liked to keep injured players near the team when it was practicing is just fine. Lots of coaches will have injured players ride a stationery bike by the practice field when they are able to do so while hurt or go through drills with their teammates that won’t exacerbate an injury.
But seriously, has anyone ever heard of sticking a kid with ANY injury, much less a concussion, alone in a room for a couple of hours? Different is one thing, borderline cruelty and perhaps endangering someone is another thing. A firing offense all by itself: perhaps not, but clearly there was an undercurrent of tension between Leach and the school before all of this began.
Here’s what doesn’t matter in this story: whether or not Craig James was an annoying stage-father or a “helicopter father,” as one Leach defender put it. There are plenty of those and coaches learn to deal with them. The same is true about Adam James attitude or work ethic. As for the whole, “softening of America,” argument, there are lots of way to toughen football players without going over the line that Leach appeared to cross.
There’s going to be a lot of he-said/he-said as this mess sorts itself out. The sad thing is there aren’t going to be any winners, regardless of whether Leach is able to force the school to pay him the $1.6 million buyout he says he’s due or if the school is able to convince a judge he was fired for legitimate cause.
Leach has lost his job and if he does get another job (which I suspect he will) he will be under intense scrutiny from day one and it won’t just be about wins and losses. Texas Tech has lost its most successful coach, a coach who brought the school the national attention it craves in the sport it cares about most. There will also be plenty of people who will point out the irony of the school suddenly being so concerned about the welfare of its players when it willingly hired Bob Knight in 2001 after he had been fired at Indiana for repeated offenses involving abuse of players—and, in the final instance for grabbing a non-player by the arm when he had the temerity to call him, “Knight.”
And Adam James is going to be a pariah in Lubbock. Even if some or most of his teammates back him, he’s going to be seen by Texas Tech fans and people on campus as the guy who got their big-time coach fired. If he ever plays another game in a Texas Tech uniform he will probably be booed on his home field. His brother also attends Texas Tech. My guess is that both will have to transfer.
There’s just nothing good in this story. Whether the Texas Tech administration used this as an excuse to get rid of a coach they felt had grown too big for his britches, the fact is Leach gave them that excuse. James might be a whiner or he might be a victim or—more likely—he might be both.
Personally, I like feel-good stories, especially in college athletics. I’m excited about watching Navy and Air Force play their bowl games today. I loved the ending of the Boise Bowl yesterday (does anyone know what Roady’s is or this sponsor for The Alamo Bowl?) with Idaho going for two and beating Bowling Green, 43-42 in a truly classic game to watch even if both teams were 7-5. I still love watching Joe Paterno stalking the sidelines and I’ll always watch The Rose Bowl no matter how mediocre The Big Ten and Pac-10 might be in a given year. It is THE ROSE BOWL—end of discussion.
I don’t know Mike Leach or Adam James and I’ve never set foot on the campus at Texas Tech. But this entire story just makes me feel sad.
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Among the many really good suggestions yesterday about best sports moment of the decade was someone who brought up the Syracuse-Connecticut six overtime game in The Big East Tournament this past March. I was in Atlanta that night at the ACC Tournament and watched the last 40 minutes—10 minutes of regulation, 30 minutes of overtime—in the media hospitality room at the hotel. By the time the game ended there were probably about 150 people in the room, all riveted by what they were seeing.
At the final buzzer, everyone in the room CLAPPED, just clapped for what they had just witnessed. Bob Ryan, who was watching in the lobby bar, told me the exact same thing happened there. That was one of those cool moments in sports—it didn’t matter if you were a Syracuse fan, a U-Conn or couldn’t care less about either team. You knew you had seen something special. I love that kind of stuff.
Happy New Year everyone.
Let’s take the Texas Tech fans out of the equation because their reaction is going to be pretty much the same as any group of fans who have just lost a coach who was a consistent winner: this is a travesty. They really don’t care what Leach did or didn’t do to Adam James; they don’t care what he did or did not say to his bosses at Texas Tech. All they know or care about is that he took a school in west Texas to 10 straight bowl games and a No. 3 ranking a year ago in November and they’re mad as hell that he’s gone.
That’s the way fans are. As I said last week during the Rutgers brouhaha, fans don’t care about graduation rates (Leach’s was very good) or whether someone is a good guy, an okay guy or a bad guy, they care about wins. So, most Texas Tech fans are going to take the approach that Adam James was a spoiled, under-achieving whiner whose father Craig was a pain-in-the-butt. Some will see this as part of the softening of athletes and of our society in general. Kid complains about being stuck in a room for a couple of hours. What a wimp! We’re talking a coach who was 84-43; he’s just trying to make a man of him.
Okay, now let’s move on to those who might be a tad more objective. Even there you’re going to see and hear sharp disagreements. My pal Sally Jenkins, whose dad is a proud graduate of TCU and a lover of all things college football, took the approach in this morning’s Washington Post that what Leach did wasn’t so bad, that there’s no medical evidence that James’s concussion was made worse in any way by the two days he spent in some form of solitary. (Even Leach’s lawyer hasn’t argued that point, he’s just argued about the size and comfort of the rooms James was placed in).
Sally points out—correctly—that Leach has always been a maverick on and off the field. He once made a player sit on the 50-yard line and study in the cold because he hadn’t been going to class. He’s taken Texas Tech’s graduation rate from nowhere to almost 80 percent. He has a law degree and he has interests outside of football. He’s bright and engaging. She accused those saying there’s no excuse for what Leach did of being politically correct.
The other side, taken already by a number of columnists, is that there is NO excuse for what Leach did to James. Doctors said he had a concussion and whether it was “mild,” or not where did Leach get his medical degree? Whether the rooms involved were small and dark or large and well-lit, making him stand by himself with a guard outside the door is pretty damn close to cruelty and, if God Forbid, something had happened to James, Leach and Texas Tech would have faced the mother of all law suits.
Not only should he have been fired, he should never coach again.
Look, I don’t know Craig James except to say hello. I don’t know Mike Leach at all, except what I’ve read and heard about him. The one thing I will say is that his considerable abilities as a coach aren’t at issue here.
I’m not a doctor anymore than Leach is a doctor but I do know this: Leach clearly was upset with Adam James and wanted to make some kind of example of him the same way he made an example of the kid who hadn’t been going to class. But he was in a very dangerous area, especially nowadays with all the information that has been coming out recently about the dangers of head injuries of any kind. If Leach felt that James had been out of line in the past, there were lots of ways to discipline him that didn’t involve any kind of medical risk.
He can’t make the argument that James was faking a concussion—and hasn’t. If you believe the version of the story told by LEACH’s lawyer, he’s on shaky ground. The idea that Leach liked to keep injured players near the team when it was practicing is just fine. Lots of coaches will have injured players ride a stationery bike by the practice field when they are able to do so while hurt or go through drills with their teammates that won’t exacerbate an injury.
But seriously, has anyone ever heard of sticking a kid with ANY injury, much less a concussion, alone in a room for a couple of hours? Different is one thing, borderline cruelty and perhaps endangering someone is another thing. A firing offense all by itself: perhaps not, but clearly there was an undercurrent of tension between Leach and the school before all of this began.
Here’s what doesn’t matter in this story: whether or not Craig James was an annoying stage-father or a “helicopter father,” as one Leach defender put it. There are plenty of those and coaches learn to deal with them. The same is true about Adam James attitude or work ethic. As for the whole, “softening of America,” argument, there are lots of way to toughen football players without going over the line that Leach appeared to cross.
There’s going to be a lot of he-said/he-said as this mess sorts itself out. The sad thing is there aren’t going to be any winners, regardless of whether Leach is able to force the school to pay him the $1.6 million buyout he says he’s due or if the school is able to convince a judge he was fired for legitimate cause.
Leach has lost his job and if he does get another job (which I suspect he will) he will be under intense scrutiny from day one and it won’t just be about wins and losses. Texas Tech has lost its most successful coach, a coach who brought the school the national attention it craves in the sport it cares about most. There will also be plenty of people who will point out the irony of the school suddenly being so concerned about the welfare of its players when it willingly hired Bob Knight in 2001 after he had been fired at Indiana for repeated offenses involving abuse of players—and, in the final instance for grabbing a non-player by the arm when he had the temerity to call him, “Knight.”
And Adam James is going to be a pariah in Lubbock. Even if some or most of his teammates back him, he’s going to be seen by Texas Tech fans and people on campus as the guy who got their big-time coach fired. If he ever plays another game in a Texas Tech uniform he will probably be booed on his home field. His brother also attends Texas Tech. My guess is that both will have to transfer.
There’s just nothing good in this story. Whether the Texas Tech administration used this as an excuse to get rid of a coach they felt had grown too big for his britches, the fact is Leach gave them that excuse. James might be a whiner or he might be a victim or—more likely—he might be both.
Personally, I like feel-good stories, especially in college athletics. I’m excited about watching Navy and Air Force play their bowl games today. I loved the ending of the Boise Bowl yesterday (does anyone know what Roady’s is or this sponsor for The Alamo Bowl?) with Idaho going for two and beating Bowling Green, 43-42 in a truly classic game to watch even if both teams were 7-5. I still love watching Joe Paterno stalking the sidelines and I’ll always watch The Rose Bowl no matter how mediocre The Big Ten and Pac-10 might be in a given year. It is THE ROSE BOWL—end of discussion.
I don’t know Mike Leach or Adam James and I’ve never set foot on the campus at Texas Tech. But this entire story just makes me feel sad.
----------------------
Among the many really good suggestions yesterday about best sports moment of the decade was someone who brought up the Syracuse-Connecticut six overtime game in The Big East Tournament this past March. I was in Atlanta that night at the ACC Tournament and watched the last 40 minutes—10 minutes of regulation, 30 minutes of overtime—in the media hospitality room at the hotel. By the time the game ended there were probably about 150 people in the room, all riveted by what they were seeing.
At the final buzzer, everyone in the room CLAPPED, just clapped for what they had just witnessed. Bob Ryan, who was watching in the lobby bar, told me the exact same thing happened there. That was one of those cool moments in sports—it didn’t matter if you were a Syracuse fan, a U-Conn or couldn’t care less about either team. You knew you had seen something special. I love that kind of stuff.
Happy New Year everyone.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
FIU and Isiah Thomas; College Basketball ‘Tournaments’
In most newspapers around the country it was a brief item yesterday with a headline that said something about Florida International being upset about opening its basketball season playing defending national champion North Carolina—in Chapel Hill.
The back story—in short—is this. Carolina and FIU are part of a 16 team tournament that bears the imprimatur of Coaches vs. Cancer but always has some corporate name slapped on it by The Gazelle Group, the entity that runs the event. FIU thought it was going to play Ohio State in the first round. When the ACC announced its schedule for the season earlier this week, the school learned it was going to Chapel Hill.
In defense of FIU, the tournament is bogus in a lot of ways. To begin with, it isn’t really a tournament. Four host schools are ‘designated,’ to play the semifinals in Madison Square Garden, regardless of what happens in the opening round games. So, if FIU, under new Coach Isiah Thomas goes into Chapel Hill and stuns the Tar Heels, they don’t go to New York but instead go to another site along with three other smaller schools to play a round robin while the four glamour schools—Carolina, Ohio State, Syracuse and California. Move on to play on ESPN.
Having been burned in the past by upsets the corporate and TV folks are no longer taking chances. They even announced the semifinal matchups before they announced the first round matchups.
This is not the first time The Gazelle people have pulled a fast one on a smaller school. A few years back, Holy Cross was invited to play in the event. Coach Ralph Willard looked at his schedule and saw that his players had exams the following week. But he really wanted to play since one of his players, Andrew Keister, had beaten cancer as a kid and he knew how much it would mean to Keister and his family to see him play in the tournament.
So he told the Gazelle people he’d like to play but only if The Crusaders could make a one hour bus trip to Connecticut—one of the four hosts that year—rather than being sent across the country someplace on an airplane.
The Gazelle people agreed. When Connecticut Coach Jim Calhoun found out he might play Holy Cross in his second game he wasn’t happy. Under Willard, Holy Cross played a rarely-seen 3-2 zone that gave teams fits, in part because it was unusual, in part because Willard coached it so well. Calhoun told Willard that summer, “I don’t want to play you guys. It will mess up our offense for weeks.”
Willard thought Calhoun—a friend—was more or less joking. After all, he expected to lose the game to the Huskies by at least 20 points. In September, he found out that Calhoun wasn’t joking when someone from Gazelle called to tell Willard his first round games were at Oklahoma.
“I told you we can’t go there,” Willard said. “We can’t travel for that long right before exams. I thought I made that clear.”
“Well,” the guy said. “We think this gives you a better chance to get to New York. (This was before upsets were banned).
Willard knew that was a lie. He knew Calhoun had gone to Gazelle and demanded the switch. He pulled out of the event rather than travel his kids even though it was a huge disappointment.
This time is different. The contract FIU signed stipulated it could be sent to Ohio State or North Carolina. Thomas says he had been assured he was going to Ohio State. Why the switch was made to send Alcorn State to Columbus is anybody’s guess but, in truth, it doesn’t matter—FIU is going to get crushed in either place. In fact, if there’s ever a time to play Carolina in a season opener this might be it with four starters gone from the national championship team.
While it is impossible to sympathize with Gazelle and its bogus event (it would be interesting to request the 501C3 for the tournament and see how much money goes to Coaches vs. Cancer and how much to corporate entities) this is classic Isiah for any and all who know him. Trouble seems to follow him whether it involves being the most disliked player in the NBA; saying that Larry Bird would be no big deal if he wasn’t white (!!) or the sexual harassment suit the Knicks lost while he was running them into the ground the last few years.
I know first hand how little one should trust Isiah. Remember when Bob Knight was fired at Indiana? Isiah was coaching the Pacers at the time and he instantly came to Knight’s defense, saying he wouldn’t have become the person he was if not for Knight. No one stood up for Knight more than Isiah.
I found that interesting since the one and only ex-Indiana player who had refused to talk to me about Knight when I was researching ‘Season on the Brink,’ was—you guessed it—Isiah Thomas. I drove up to Indianapolis to see him when the Pistons came to town. When I told him what I was looking for he shook his head and said, “Can’t do it.”
I thought he meant this was a bad time and I started to tell him there as no need to do it then, that we could schedule it another time. “That’s not it,” he said. “It’s just that my mother always told me, ‘if you don’t have something nice to say about someone, don’t say anything at all.’”
He gave me that Isiah smile, wished me luck on the book, shook my hand and was gone. I found out soon after that he and Knight hadn’t spoken since a well-documented incident in Fort Wayne in which Thomas had described in detail some of the words Knight liked to use when talking to his player during an awards dinner. Knight, who was there, was embarrassed and furious and told Thomas so the next day when Thomas was playing pickup ball back at IU. At the very least Isiah and I have something in common: incurring Knight’s wrath for ‘revealing’ that he can be profane at times.
This time around it would be tough to feel much sympathy for Isiah—he’s going to lose the opening game regardless. Except you DO have to feel sorry for any coach who is told before he plays a game in a ‘tournament,’ that even if he wins, he doesn’t advance.
I just hope this doesn’t give the NCAA any ideas. If The Gazelle Group had been running the tournament in 2006, George Mason never would have gotten out of the first round.
The back story—in short—is this. Carolina and FIU are part of a 16 team tournament that bears the imprimatur of Coaches vs. Cancer but always has some corporate name slapped on it by The Gazelle Group, the entity that runs the event. FIU thought it was going to play Ohio State in the first round. When the ACC announced its schedule for the season earlier this week, the school learned it was going to Chapel Hill.
In defense of FIU, the tournament is bogus in a lot of ways. To begin with, it isn’t really a tournament. Four host schools are ‘designated,’ to play the semifinals in Madison Square Garden, regardless of what happens in the opening round games. So, if FIU, under new Coach Isiah Thomas goes into Chapel Hill and stuns the Tar Heels, they don’t go to New York but instead go to another site along with three other smaller schools to play a round robin while the four glamour schools—Carolina, Ohio State, Syracuse and California. Move on to play on ESPN.
Having been burned in the past by upsets the corporate and TV folks are no longer taking chances. They even announced the semifinal matchups before they announced the first round matchups.
This is not the first time The Gazelle people have pulled a fast one on a smaller school. A few years back, Holy Cross was invited to play in the event. Coach Ralph Willard looked at his schedule and saw that his players had exams the following week. But he really wanted to play since one of his players, Andrew Keister, had beaten cancer as a kid and he knew how much it would mean to Keister and his family to see him play in the tournament.
So he told the Gazelle people he’d like to play but only if The Crusaders could make a one hour bus trip to Connecticut—one of the four hosts that year—rather than being sent across the country someplace on an airplane.
The Gazelle people agreed. When Connecticut Coach Jim Calhoun found out he might play Holy Cross in his second game he wasn’t happy. Under Willard, Holy Cross played a rarely-seen 3-2 zone that gave teams fits, in part because it was unusual, in part because Willard coached it so well. Calhoun told Willard that summer, “I don’t want to play you guys. It will mess up our offense for weeks.”
Willard thought Calhoun—a friend—was more or less joking. After all, he expected to lose the game to the Huskies by at least 20 points. In September, he found out that Calhoun wasn’t joking when someone from Gazelle called to tell Willard his first round games were at Oklahoma.
“I told you we can’t go there,” Willard said. “We can’t travel for that long right before exams. I thought I made that clear.”
“Well,” the guy said. “We think this gives you a better chance to get to New York. (This was before upsets were banned).
Willard knew that was a lie. He knew Calhoun had gone to Gazelle and demanded the switch. He pulled out of the event rather than travel his kids even though it was a huge disappointment.
This time is different. The contract FIU signed stipulated it could be sent to Ohio State or North Carolina. Thomas says he had been assured he was going to Ohio State. Why the switch was made to send Alcorn State to Columbus is anybody’s guess but, in truth, it doesn’t matter—FIU is going to get crushed in either place. In fact, if there’s ever a time to play Carolina in a season opener this might be it with four starters gone from the national championship team.
While it is impossible to sympathize with Gazelle and its bogus event (it would be interesting to request the 501C3 for the tournament and see how much money goes to Coaches vs. Cancer and how much to corporate entities) this is classic Isiah for any and all who know him. Trouble seems to follow him whether it involves being the most disliked player in the NBA; saying that Larry Bird would be no big deal if he wasn’t white (!!) or the sexual harassment suit the Knicks lost while he was running them into the ground the last few years.
I know first hand how little one should trust Isiah. Remember when Bob Knight was fired at Indiana? Isiah was coaching the Pacers at the time and he instantly came to Knight’s defense, saying he wouldn’t have become the person he was if not for Knight. No one stood up for Knight more than Isiah.
I found that interesting since the one and only ex-Indiana player who had refused to talk to me about Knight when I was researching ‘Season on the Brink,’ was—you guessed it—Isiah Thomas. I drove up to Indianapolis to see him when the Pistons came to town. When I told him what I was looking for he shook his head and said, “Can’t do it.”
I thought he meant this was a bad time and I started to tell him there as no need to do it then, that we could schedule it another time. “That’s not it,” he said. “It’s just that my mother always told me, ‘if you don’t have something nice to say about someone, don’t say anything at all.’”
He gave me that Isiah smile, wished me luck on the book, shook my hand and was gone. I found out soon after that he and Knight hadn’t spoken since a well-documented incident in Fort Wayne in which Thomas had described in detail some of the words Knight liked to use when talking to his player during an awards dinner. Knight, who was there, was embarrassed and furious and told Thomas so the next day when Thomas was playing pickup ball back at IU. At the very least Isiah and I have something in common: incurring Knight’s wrath for ‘revealing’ that he can be profane at times.
This time around it would be tough to feel much sympathy for Isiah—he’s going to lose the opening game regardless. Except you DO have to feel sorry for any coach who is told before he plays a game in a ‘tournament,’ that even if he wins, he doesn’t advance.
I just hope this doesn’t give the NCAA any ideas. If The Gazelle Group had been running the tournament in 2006, George Mason never would have gotten out of the first round.
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