March 09, 2023
Raise your hand if you “liked” … Jim Boeheim !!
Assuming I have few, if any, die-hard Syracuse fans here, I don’t expect many, if any, hands raising. To non-die-hard ‘cuse fans, Boeheim was a lot like Coach K … very easy to not like … A LOT.
NOTE: As is the case with any “public figure” fans are only responding to a public persona. Probably not the “real person”.
The, it seems forever, Syracuse Head Coach sorta kinda retired yesterday… shortly before Syracuse officials sorta kinda agreed with him … in a Kabuki dance befitting the goofy world of Big Time College BB.
Boeheim exits stage left with well over 1,000 Ws with or without the ones taken away for whatever he got caught doing or not doing a few years ago.
And THAT is a main reason so many disliked him. For 40 years the sumbitch Won Too Much. NOT a way to be popular with fans of teams you beat often.
This immediate area is certainly a – maybe THE – hotbed for top echelon college basketball over the past half-century plus. Many – far too many in my opinion – folks around these parts take it waaaay too seriously. A pandemic worthy of Dr Fauci and his oh-so-corrupt pals at Pfizer.
“… too seriously” means projecting a tsunami of negative emotions onto anyone who poses an annual threat to “our team”.
Jim Boeheim did so for many years … along with a dozen or so others … Jim Calhoun, Bob Knight, Bill Self, John Calipari, Rick Pitino immediately come to mind. You likely have a favorite “coach you hate / hated” I might have left out.
“Coach K” of course is on his very own Mount Rushmore of Hated Coaches … and likely never to be challenged on that topic.
“The Dean of Dome fame” has his detractors of course but there are some non-UNCer who actually bought into the hype of him “being born in a manger and rising on the 3rd day”. He was not … and did not, of course.
John Wooden also enjoyed a deification from those who insists upn deifying someone.
No one has ever deified Mike Krzyzewski even among his Duke “peeps”. Many have thought he convinced Eve to eat the apple. I digress.
Dean’s acolyte – “Ol’Roy” – managed to gain multiple detractors along the way. Ol’ Roy” – like Dickie V IMO – became a too predicable cranky caricature of himself.
FWIW … Absolutely No One disliked Les Robinson.
The only recent high-profile coach who – IMO – was not “hated because” might be former Villanova Coach Jay Wright. (1) He was/is a nice looking guy … (2) in his brief stay at the top of college BB, he never went out of his way to say or do anything incredibly stoopid.
Going back a few decades … did anyone dislike Al McGuire? Al, and to a lesser degree, Rick Majerus, never seemed to take themselves too seriously which I value. A LOT of sports figures DO take themselves very seriously.
If one needed a reason to Hate Jim Boeheim other than he always seemed constipated and needed to have his eye glasses refitted. … it would be his quite unnecessary disparaging of “Greensboro” as “not a happening place” a few years ago.
No one ever claimed Greensboro was/is “a happenng place” but who the hell is Jim “Freakin’” Boeheim to say so?
The exiting of Boeheim along with Ol’ Roy and Coach K last year really depletes the ranks of “I never liked that sumbitch” coaches.
Who is left that I haven’t named? Bob Huggins maybe? Rick Barnes?
Lower Level UNCers will always HATE Rick Barnes because “that time he ……..” well, you remember. Don’t you?
“Coaches You Hate” and “Referees You Hate” have been integral to the popularity of Big Time College Basketball for many many years. A sad commentary in my opinion.
Did Dr Naismith give a thought to the demons he was releasing when he hung that peach basket in the Springfield YMCA?
I need to ask “The Old Coach” -”CNR” because he held the ladder for Dr. Naismith.
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