Wow. This is something you don’t see everyday – a well-respected national columnist savaging the head coach of a major athletic program. CBS Sportsline’s Gregg Doyel goes off on Jim Calhoun in this article, saying without reservation that Calhoun is a man of low integrity who plays dirty.
Let me give you a taste:

Connecticut stole a recruit from St. John’s this week, and the sad part is, nobody’s surprised.
UConn coach Jim Calhoun is a Hall of Famer and a champion, but when it comes to coaching, he is not a moral beacon of light. This is not a news flash.

And it gets better:

Calhoun is feared, but he is not respected. Not by coaching colleagues who have grown tired of his cutthroat negative recruiting tactics and by his exploitation of NCAA loopholes like the one that landed him Brown and Gay.

There’s plenty more of that sort of thing in there.
Now, I’m sure this article will piss a lot of people off – Connecticut fans, in particular – but I think it’s great. It seems like Doyel has plenty of facts to back up his assertions and too often reports shy away from telling the truth in these situations because they are afraid they’ll lose access. To be clear, when I say “the truth,” I’m talking about the specific instances he lists, not his interpretations of those. I think his interpretations are spot on, mind you, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t still opinions.
Give it a read and see what you think. An unfair hatchet job? Is Doyel right and Calhoun is a snake? Or is Calhoun just doing what everyone else does and Doyel is off-base for singling him out?
I think you can guess what I think.
Credit goes to the Georgia Tech Sports Blog for finding this one. They were particularly interested in the story about how Calhoun recruited Ed Nelson to UConn while Nelson was still at GT.