A few months ago I linked to a very interesting column from Gregg Doyel savaging UConn coach Jim Calhoun. The article was fascinating because it’s so rare for a reporter to be so honest in their feelings about a college coach.
You may recall that a few years ago, Maryland coach Gary Williams went public all but accusing Calhoun of bribing the AAU coach of Rudy Gay. Calhoun paid the coach $50,000 to have an all-star team play UConn in an exhibition game. It was largely because of this controversy that the NCAA changed the rules and said that NCAA schools could not play non-college teams.
Well, now there’s this. Jeff Jacobs, a sportswriter for the Hartford Courant wrote a whole article about his ongoing feud with Calhoun. While I think it might have been poor form to use the newspaper to air his problems with Calhoun, it’s equally bad for Calhoun and the Connecticut athletic department to single out and ostracize certain reporters. Worse still, Calhoun physically threatened Jacobs in a press conference. Apparently Jacobs had had enough.
Regardless of what you think about Jacobs’ writing the article, you have to agree that he must have felt pretty frustrated to have reached that point. He knew the criticism he would receive by attacking a popular local coach – one with the #1 team in the country.
At least one other local writer has spoken up and taken Jacobs’ side.
So what does this all mean? In the long run, probably nothing. Calhoun isn’t going anywhere and he’ll win this pissing contest. But people shouldn’t forget. You have to be a hell of a miserable person to get this many different writers making public personal attacks against you. Writers frequently criticize coaches for their coaching or their handling of discipline, but rarely do they make the generalizations that have been made here. Jim Calhoun must be a special kind of asshole to bring about this many articles bashing him. The only other coaches I can remember being attacked this way are Bobby Knight and Jerry Tarkanian (well, and Dave Bliss, but that was different).
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