What coaches know, and should do
“They didn’t blame the cabin boy when the Titanic went down.”
Shameless.
That’s probably the ideal word that comes to mind when hearing excuses from Southern Cal, Arizona and other schools caught up in the FBI’s investigation of college basketball.
Limousines full of attorneys have helped both USC and Arizona to peddle the unique (and frankly hilarious) strategy of blaming lone-wolf assistant coaches for all the ills and dubious practices that have cast deep, deep shadows over their entire athletic programs.
You know, like the average hoops assistant is wandering around with several hundred thousand dollars in his jeans — and would be thrilled to hand it over to anyone over 6-9 who can make an 18-foot jump shot.
How can anyone representing a major university spin such a yarn and manage to keep a straight face?
Even a lawyer would start to giggle.
Before we go any further, I want to make two statements. One is a matter of absolute fact, and the other is wishful thinking based on my own years of experience.
First: I’ve covered major college basketball for more than three decades, so I’ve been very close to people “inside” some programs that were gunning for the Final Four — and had to recruit at that level.
When I tell you what these schools will (or won’t) do to stock up on talent, you can trust that I’m not just pulling information out of the clouds.
SECOND…
I really wish that Gonzaga, and plenty of other schools that win by playing it straight, could make a statement by refusing to schedule teams when they know that rules have been ignored.
But it would be so complicated, sorting out known offenders from programs that might be under investigation and then cleared.
Having said that, we KNOW that Arizona, USC and others cheated, because assistant coaches have admitted to breaking the law and didn’t seem terribly remorseful about it.
It would be a powerful statement if, say, Gonzaga cancelled its game with Arizona this December.
Even better, if the Zags dropped their date to host North Carolina (two decades of proven academic fraud) in the second half of a home-and-home agreement.
I’m an alum from the University of San Francisco, back-to-back NCAA champs in the days of Bill Russell, and I’m very proud of the fact that USF actually dropped its own men’s basketball program when widespread rule-breaking came to light.
USF has since reinstated the sport, obviously, but with serious oversight and some internal rules that other schools don’t need to follow.
Good.
In a piece for the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson, columnist Greg Hansen recalled a situation that truly applies now, in this era of monstrous money and Final Four brackets on everyone’s laptops.
Hansen seriously scolded his hometown University of Arizona and coach Sean Miller, then brought up a memorable statement from the past.
Hansen wrote: “It’s almost a reprise of UNLV’s tumultuous 1992 confrontation with basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian, when school president Robert Maxson said the nation ‘was watching to see if we’re going to be a serious academic institution — or a basketball team with a university attached.’ ”
HERE’S THE laughable statement from USC, blaming everything on assistant coach Tony Bland, as obtained by the Los Angeles Times…
“The actions of Mr. Bland and his co-conspirators have significantly damaged the reputation of USC as an institution, the USC athletic department, and its men’s basketball program.
“Further, their actions have prompted an NCAA investigation that may result in penalties. Lastly, USC was forced to expend significant amounts of money to investigate Mr. Bland’s conduct and to cooperate with the government as it has prosecuted this case.”
Arizona’s formal statement, heaping all the blame on assistant coach Book Richardson, was almost exactly the same.
One of my best friends is an Arizona grad, and used the word “embarrassing” more than once to describe how so many UA alums must feel.
The most outrageous notion being thrown around by these schools in the FBI case, not to mention countless other investigations, defies all common sense.
Write this down a thousand times …
The head coach knows everything.
If an assistant coach is caught, you can bet your kid’s college savings fund that the head coach, and most likely the athletic director, the entire board of trustees and probably a couple dozen major donors knew EXACTLY what was going on — start to finish.
Every head coach is precisely aware of what’s happening in the name of his program.
If not, they’d be fired by sundown.
Do you really think anything happens at Kentucky without John Calipari’s approval?
Or at Duke, without anyone telling Coach K?
Get serious.
When you’ve seen how it works at most places, Gonzaga’s rise to college hoops elite just boggles the mind.
It really does.
Steve Cameron’s “Cheap Seats” columns for The Press appear on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Steve also contributes the “Zags Tracker” package on Gonzaga basketball once monthly during the offseason.
Email: scameron@cdapress.com