Down With Jim Calhoun!

Jim Calhoun is, as has been expected for some time, for lack of a better term, a dirt bag. We all knew it, but at least the general public is beginning to realize it, along with the NCAA, finally! We knew he wasn’t much of a straight shooter when Rudy Gay decided to go to UCONN after a basketball game was scheduled through Gay’s AAU coach whose organization got something like $25K for playing the Huskies, Connecticut Huskies that is. It stunk then and it still stinks now, but I feel like the 8 violations that the NCAA has cited is a little vindication. As the NCAA continues to investigate Calhoun’s basketball program for recruiting violations, I found this story very interesting: http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/news/story?id=5272784

It concerns a former business advisor to NBA player Richard Hamilton, and UCONN”s compliance officer issued a memo back in 1999 saying that no contact should be made with Nochimson and that he was off limits. So, this kind of shadiness has likely been going on, at some level or another, since 1999! That’s over a decade, and man, it was a pretty successful decade for UCONN. I wouldn’t want to speculate (though I will), but my guess is that there are other players who played at UCONN who received some type of illegal benefit. How else did Calhoun put UCONN’s men’s basketball program on the map? Of course I might be way off base here, but having watched and listened to Calhoun for many years now, I suspect that this is the tip of the iceberg. UCONN has already fired their basketball operations director along with one of the assist coaches who had improper contacts with recruit Nate Miles. And, in trying to get my facts straight, I did a Google search for “UCONN basketball firing” and I found this: http://jay-mariotti.fanhouse.com/2010/05/28/calhoun-should-be-fired-amid-the-uconn-stench/

Great minds think alike I suppose, though Mariotti’s story is a bit more substantive than my rant (but I got the facts right! they weren’t both asst coaches who got fired, I mean resigned, Jay) but still went so far as saying that Calhoun should be fired. And I agree, he should. But whether the NCAA has the balls to demand it, or the University has the balls to do it, I won’t speculate (yes I will, again!), but my guess is no. Here’as another one from the local CT paper too.

http://www.courant.com/sports/uconn-men/hc-jacobs-column-calhoun-ncaa-0610-20100609,0,557333,print.column