- February 2nd, 2006, 2:53 pm
#2690
Since you are both bonafide journalists, I was wondering if I can get your opinion on this article:
http://www.courant.com/sports/hc-jeffco ... ity-sports
http://www.courant.com/sports/hc-jeffco ... ity-sports
From Now On, Jim, I Give No QuarterI've oviously got my own opinons but I would like some from a couple of fellas in the business.
January 31, 2006
The funny thing - well, maybe it's not so funny - is the final straw had nothing to do with the written word. That last little push came from talking on the air with WFAN's Mike Francesa and Chris Russo about the Marcus Williams suspension.
So much for the pen being mightier than the Mad Dog.
Radio talk shows pack the big punch these days. The considered written phrase is less potent than the rashly shouted one in the 21st century sports world. And when the talk show emanates from New York, those words pack the biggest 50,000-watt punch of all.
To be honest, the war with Jim Calhoun has been a cold one the past few months.
I stayed out of his way. He ignored me.
He did write a short letter dated Dec. 5 to complain about a notes column that pointed out an assertion in Jerry Tarkanian's book. In it, Tarkanian said a member of the UConn staff told Souleymane Wane that he shouldn't attend Fresno State because Tarkanian was dying of cancer. I wrote that it was an accusation that was hard to believe before pointing out there is no room in college sports for such a "malignant recruiting trick." In his letter, Calhoun denied anyone at UConn did such a thing and his denial was relayed in an ensuing notes column. The other part of Calhoun's letter chastised me for referring UConn fans to a highly critical piece by Gregg Doyel of CBS SportsLine.com - a piece that already was causing a stir in the state - because, Calhoun wrote, Doyel uses his dot-com service for "vendettas."
Calhoun is entitled to his opinions and they are voiced often in this newspaper.
What he isn't entitled to is making threats, direct or indirect.
A well-read man such as Calhoun should know "malignant" has more than one definition. One is "malicious," a word he isn't afraid to employ. A few days before mailing his letter, Calhoun stood before reporters after practice and sent me a less edited message:
"Jerry Tarkanian. Malignant cancer," he said, though I have left out a few highly profane words. "I really think that for a cancer survivor, that's a real nice thing to say. Don't worry. You don't have to print that because I'll tell him when I see him tomorrow. If he has enough [testicles] to come up, he better come up with a couple of armed guards, talking about malignant cancer.
"Your guy," he said, pointing to Phil Chardis of the Journal Inquirer in a reference to columnist Randy Smith, "he's just crazy. So I don't count him. The other guy has some malice, I think."
"The other guy" - that's me.
Calhoun's prostate surgery in 2003 was handled sensitively in this paper. We wrote fondly of him during that period. And over the years, Calhoun has been honored in this space for his Hall of Fame qualities. The supposed Tarkanian incident happened years earlier. Calhoun's name wasn't even mentioned in that note because the accusation was against an unnamed member of his staff. That didn't matter. Calhoun, as is his wont, used a perceived slight to first become a victim, then a bully. He threatened a guy who had just undergone quadruple bypass surgery. Nice.
See, I can be a victim, too.
If it had been Terry Francona making a threat like that, it would have been all over the Boston papers and talk shows. Calhoun is an educator. Calhoun is the highest-paid state employee. Calhoun is held up as a role model for his leadership skills. Forget Francona. Could you imagine Gov. Rell getting away with what Calhoun said?
But this is UConn men's basketball and this is a coach who has grown nearly untouchable. Being ranked No.1 evidently is more important than something as niggling as human decency. Winning apparently entitles the man to treat others badly.
All Calhoun's words brought that day were nervous snickers in Gampel Pavilion.
Dismissing a columnist as mentally ill is clearly a joke.
Making not-so-veiled threats is Jim being Jim.
Just like running and screaming after his players and officials.
And it goes beyond the coach.
On Jan. 20, Kyle Muncy, who handles men's basketball for UConn's sports information department, told our beat writer, Mike Anthony, I wasn't qualified enough to go on WFAN the day before.
I've been there for 11 years, for all the big games, all the big moments. I have written three columns on the Williams-A.J. Price laptop situation and thought for hours about what happened. That's what they pay columnists to do. With the team capable of winning a national championship, a school's decision to allow its star point guard to play the final three months of the season is a controversial subject ripe for continued debate until the final buzzer at the Final Four.
I'm sure I was the right guy to go on WFAN.
During a conversation at Louisville Jan. 21, Muncy shot down virtually every other one of my contentions. He explained to me how wrong I was, that there were several others much more qualified because I hadn't spoken to Calhoun about the case. Even if I had, most of it would have been off the record.
A source told me there was a phone call from Muncy to WFAN producers critical of their decision to put me on the air. WFAN denied Monday that was what the call was about.
Once you have been threatened, called malicious and after 11 years told you lack the requisite qualifications to talk about the program with high-profile media, what's next? Well, a quarter-century covering UConn got Smith "crazy." Heck, Calhoun and his Circle of Trust have whispered, in a term Calhoun likes to use, malicious things about me. You never know how serious and how sarcastic they are.
Calhoun always says he knows his story better than anyone else and to come to him on important matters. The Williams-Price matter was so important that sports editor Jeff Otterbein called Muncy on my behalf the night of UConn's Oct. 28 announcement on the punishment in an effort to get Calhoun to call me.
I'm still waiting for Calhoun's call.
In November, I wanted to do a season-opening piece. I try to do one each year on both the men and women. That's when word was e-mailed from Muncy that only media members going to the Maui Invitational were allowed at the final open practice before the team headed west. After my heart surgery, things really didn't rile me. "Temper" has been near the top of the list of my shortcomings, but until this latest situation I've been mellow, just happy to be alive. I shrugged off the Maui slight, too.
After a piece about UConn recruit Doug Wiggins and his buzzer-beating decision to renege on his oral commitment to St. John's, which included the reference to Doyel, word came down from Muncy through Anthony that Calhoun was done talking to me. He clearly didn't like my observation that his over-competitive zeal in the Wiggins case left him at risk of becoming a pariah in the Big East.
That's it, Jacobs. You're out.
Yet there he was after the Tarkanian reference, making it sound as if I didn't have the testicles to show up in his presence.
Don't talk to me. Talk to me. It was a Catch-22.
I wasn't shrugging anything off anymore.
My recourse was to go to the games and sit quietly at Calhoun's postgame press conferences. Not let the problem spill into pieces on the team.
The funny thing - well, maybe it's not so funny - is on Jan. 19, I only repeated on WFAN what I'd written about Williams and Price. Thought they both should have been suspended from basketball for one year.
The problem, clearly, was I stepped out of this box and into a bigger forum.
Look, I'm not alone. A number of others have their own string of intimidation stories. It's just time I be true to the readers of The Courant and myself.
This season, it only seems to be growing worse. Every day seems to bring a new scuffle. After a charter snafu that delayed the team's trip to Syracuse, Calhoun tried to make a public joke at St. John's expense, saying the plane - which first had to bring St. John's home - was late because the team had to wait for a player.
It turned out he got his facts wrong and miffed Red Storm coach Norm Roberts. In the end, Calhoun decided it wasn't enough to further alienate St. John's, so he went after another writer: "Miserable people write things when they don't have anything else to do," he said.
Calhoun threw the first punch on the subject and he threw the last. Nobody is better at that.
If you've seen "Meet The Parents" or "Meet the Fockers," you know about Jack Byrnes - Robert De Niro - and his "Circle of Trust." Calhoun has a Circle of Trust, too, although it's not nearly as funny. A handful of state and national writers and broadcasters, some UConn employees and those close to UConn ... they guard the throne. It is a Machiavellian world of back-stabbing and bullying that has gone unchallenged too long.
For more than 20 years, Randy Smith has been a colleague and friend. He is a terrific writer. That is his gift. He thinks about athletics. That is his passion. Our disagreements can be spirited. We aren't Jonas Salk or Winston Churchill, but neither is the guy with the basketball and the whistle.
Shame on me for waiting two months to pick up the pen on Smith's behalf - and on my own.
Shame on me for allowing myself to be pushed around like the kid who has to give the bully a quarter every day at school.
Being more worried about being "fair" to a basketball coach who doesn't hesitate to demean other human beings, rather than being decent to a colleague and friend, well, if that's not perverse, nothing is. But that's what intimidation does to people.
From now on, the quarters stay in my pocket.
*please disregard this post if dated before 2017 and accept my apologies*
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