Posted on 02/25/2005 8:52:54 AM PST by BlackRazor
Chaney's punishment should be dismissal, not suspension
Feb. 24, 2005
By Gregg Doyel
SportsLine.com Senior Writer
No more excuses for John Chaney. No more explanations, no more minced words.
Temple coach John Chaney has had a handful of run-ins. The Hall of Fame coach from Temple perpetrated a crime on college basketball this week, and the punishment for that crime should be an immediate dismissal.
In Temple's 63-56 loss Tuesday to Saint Joseph's, Chaney sent in a goon -- his word, goon -- to send a message. That message went all the way to a hospital in Philadelphia, where Saint Joseph's forward John Bryant was diagnosed Thursday with a broken arm.
Chaney sent a player into the game for the express purpose of roughing up Saint Joseph's, and the result was the probable end of John Bryant's career.
And so should end John Chaney's career.
Earlier Wednesday, before anyone knew the severity of Bryant's injury, Chaney suspended himself for the Owls' next game, Saturday against Massachusetts.
That gesture, before any of us knew about Bryant's broken bone, looked noble enough. Now it looks hollow. What happened Tuesday night wasn't an act of passion. Chaney was upset with the officials for allowing the Hawks to set what he felt were illegal screens, but sending in his goon was no fateful, split-second decision. One day earlier, he had told the media that he would take action if the Hawks continued with their illegal screens.
On Tuesday, that action was named Nehemiah Ingram. He stands 6-foot-8, weighs 250 pounds and plays almost never. He averages 0.4 points and 0.0 assists per game, not that Chaney called on Ingram on Tuesday to score or pass. He called on Ingram to get rough, and Ingram did -- fouling out in four minutes, including a technical foul.
The result was a disaster, right down to Ingram's stupid shove of Bryant at the end of a layup. Bryant landed hard, and probably won't play again this season. Because he's a senior, he probably won't play again. It's too late to redshirt, and he's not good enough to play overseas. His career, in effect, is over.
And Chaney will miss one game? Not good enough. At the least -- the very least -- Chaney should match Bryant on a game-for-game basis. Bryant's out? Chaney's out, too. If Bryant doesn't return this season, neither should Chaney.
And after this season, a Temple administration that has kowtowed to Chaney needs to take a hard look at the kind of man Chaney has become. Or the kind of man he has been all along.
For years, we've looked the other way. All of us have. Chaney once grabbed the neck of a rival coach, George Washington's Gerry Gimelstob, in 1984. Everyone looked the other way. That's just John Chaney.
Chaney once threatened to kill a rival coach, Massachusetts' John Calipari, in 1994. The threat was captured on video. It was embarrassing, a career-ending move for most coaches. Not for Chaney. Everyone looked the other way.
Last month, Chaney lit into President Bush's stance on Iraq during a Philadelphia sports writers dinner. That was inappropriate -- members of the audience had come to honor Chaney's 700 career victories, not listen to his politics -- but acceptable. But when several members of the audience heckled Chaney as he spoke, saying he was ruining the evening, the Temple coach asked one of them to step outside.
Not acceptable. But everyone looked the other way, even me. Grumpy old men, I wrote the next day. Forgivable, I wrote.
Forgive me. I'm part of the problem. Me and every other sports writer who has been so impressed by Chaney's mission -- to graduate young men; to make them better in basketball and better in life, and not in that order -- that we were blind to the whole picture.
If Bob Knight grabbed another coach around the neck, would Knight still be coaching? Maybe, but maybe not. If Mike Davis threatened to kill another coach, would Davis still be coaching? Probably not. They haven't built up the same level of media equity enjoyed by Chaney.
With the X-ray that confirmed Bryant's broken arm, Chaney's equity should be gone. It probably should have been gone long before, but hey, Chaney didn't really choke Gimelstob. And he didn't really kill Calipari. And he didn't really beat up a heckler at that Philadelphia banquet.
Well, guess what? This time, he really did it. Chaney really hurt Bryant. No, he wasn't the one who gave the airborne Bryant that fateful and unnecessary shove, but he might as well.
Time to go, John Chaney. You were good for the game for a lot of years, but now the game is too good for you.
The free ride is over. You are no longer what we want to believe you are, John Chaney. You simply are what you do.
And you've done too many unforgivable things to be forgiven this.
LOL. I was just thinking the same thing, as in Dave "The Hammer" Schultz!
If he were a hockey coach, no one would be breathing a word of criticism.
Actually, last week, the Motor City Mechanics, a minor league team in Michigan suspended their head coach for the entire season for a similar incident. He offered $200.00 to any player who could take out a certain opposing player.
Color him gone.
Owl_Eagle
"You know, I'm going to start thanking
the woman who cleans the restroom in
the building I work in. I'm going to start
thinking of her as a human being"
You were working on a truly great post until the last line. Then you blew it. I would add that the "incident" took place over 4 basketball minutes (perhaps 10 real minutes), involved several elbows, hip checks, shoves in the back and other miscellaneous hard fouls, and a million opportunities for Chaney to stop the madness. It was also premediatated (as Chaney threatened the goon action the day before), and he was remorseless in the post game interview. Lastly, I believe the lack of punishment has less to do with race (as some others suggested) and more to do with Linda Bruno being out of her league.
The Hawk will never die.
Isn't Cheney in his 70's now? I've heard him talk about retirement the last couple of years. Since he committed a Woody Hayes by proxy the date should be moved up immediately.
I have always admired Cheney for his involvement and getting his players graduated. Sometimes though a decision has to be made. Jesse and Al will probably spend the next year in Philly if it happens but hell it keeps them out of Indiana because Mike Davis will surely get the ax after the season ends.
This is just breaking on ESPN radio guys, Cheney has been suspended for the rest of the year.
Racist s***bag. Always was. If I were the kid with the broken arm I would sue him and Temple for compensatory and punitive damages. Punitive damages are almost never warranted but here you have actual malice. Firing is simply not enough.
Disappointing. I really like John Chaney. I grew up as an Indiana basketball fanatic and remained so until Sept. 10, 2000--and as a former Indiana fan, I have a great deal of respect for the way Chaney runs the show. He doesn't take any crap, and he didn't send in this kid to break anyone's arm, I'm sure. I think it was a notion of "if you get physical, we'll get physical right back." Can't let yourself get pushed around in things like this.
Chaney is a great coach and I think all this stuff about how coaches are rough on players is just PC crap. He threatened to kill Calipari--shoot, if I had to coach in the same league as that jackass, I might do the same thing. I've had the pleasure to meet Chaney on several occassions and he's always seemed to me to be very genuine; what you see seems to be what you get. His kids win basketball games, they graduate, and he turns a lot of troubled kids into productive adults. Good for him. Of course, maybe I'm a little biased--he did refer to himself once as "the black Bob Knight."
I wish Chaney the best and hope to see him on the bench next year.
Just as an aside, I'm white, and all the times I've dealt with him he has been extremely cordial and polite. Obviously, we don't know what goes on in his head, but I don't think he's racist--I think he says some things sometimes that he might wish he didn't, but I don't think there is racism there.
Maybe it's just because he's gone out of his way to be super nice to me in the past, when he certainly didn't have to be.
hey you have personal experience with the man. I dont know if that is bias or not. Sports fans can't be expected to be objective anyhow.
I never thought one game was enough, but I still dont think he should be fired. Never know, he might step down on his own, but we will see.
Indiana is a young team, and I expect them to be vastly improved next season, whether Mike Davis returns or is replaced.
Two things really hurt Indiana this season. First, forward Josh Smith (rated the #5 high school prospect in the country) originally committed to Indiana for this season, but later backed out and entered the NBA draft, where he was selected 17th overall in the first round. He would have made a big difference.
Second, the Hoosiers had a brutal non-conference schedule that included teams like North Carolina, Connecticut, Kentucky, Notre Dame, Charlotte and Missouri. Unlike most D-I coaches, Davis had no input on Indiana's schedule-making. Granted, they probably should have won one or two of those games, instead of going 0-6, but a more realistic schedule would have helped the confidence of this young team, given them some early wins, and they'd almost certainly be an NCAA team (given that they're currently 8-5 in the Big 10).
I will preface this statement by noting that I was a lifelong Indiana fan that is still bitter over the firing of Bob Knight.
That said, however, Davis is a horrible, horrible coach and deserves to be sent packing at the end of the season. All last year, Davis kept giving the "wait 'till next year" line, "the cavalry is coming." It's next year, and Indiana still sucks. It might be 8-5 in the Big Ten, but until it beat Michigan the other night, a team that has lost 9 in a row and a team with which Indiana was tied until 3 minutes remaining, Indiana hadn't won a game outside the state of Indiana in over a year. That's right--12 months.
His "offense," if you can call it that, is beyond bad. It defies description. I was home for the holidays and watched the Charlotte game on tv. Before the game, I asked my dad what sort of offense Indiana was running this year (you know, since the motion offense is SO outdated--by the way, is Illinois still undefeated?) and he said "well..." and he was sort of quiet after that. I realized why he was quiet after watching about five minutes of the game--he was quiet because Indiana doesn't HAVE an offense. It involves Bracey Wright dribbling around for 30 seconds and then throwing up a 22-footer, which hopefully DJ White can grab an offensive rebound and a putback.
At the end of the Charlotte game, after DJ White scored on the putback with .7 seconds remaining, UNCC called timeout. All the IU players were on the bench, sitting. Where was Davis and all of his assistant coaches? Not at the bench--no siree--they were standing in a circle talking out by the free throw line. That whole timeout, Davis never said one word to his players. Maybe he was talking about where they were going to eat after the game--Nick's is always a good choice when you're in Bloomington--but he wasn't talking to his players, and UNCC inbounded the ball and nailed a three pointer to win the game. IU went away all boo-hooey.
Indiana will get better next year only because I don't think it's possible for them to get much worse. I hope that Davis is fired, and I hope that Indiana has the sense (although I doubt it) to go find someone that REALLY knows Xs and Os, not just go out and hire the biggest name available. Get someone that knows basketball, and Indiana will win.
I don't know this for sure, but I really just don't think Mike Davis has the intellectual capacity to be a successful college basketball coach. He can recruit the pants off people--don't get me wrong--that's why Knight brought him to Indiana; but he can't coach.
The two names I've heard most prominently are Pat Knight and Steve Alford. Is that what you're hearing? What's your assessment of those two?
why, you ask?
because it seems to me that Chaney has been very much a racist in his career....
well, show us....
"Bush" league........lol
I seriously doubt they would hire Pat Knight for obvious reasons, and I also seriously doubt that Pat Knight would accept the job for equally obvious reasons. Besides, I'm not even sure that Pat Knight wants a head coaching job. There's been some talk about him taking over at Texas Tech when his dad retires, but everytime I've seen an interview with him, he always says that he's not interested.
I've heard Alford a lot, and he was the target of my comment about not getting the biggest name available. I like Alford a lot, but I just don't think he's shown himself ready for the big time yet--frankly, he's been kind of a disappointment at Iowa, despite having some teams that had a pretty good amount of talent.
I really think that Indiana needs to scour the DII and mid-major ranks for a coach that just plain knows basketball. I don't know who that is, but I'm impressed with the fellow at Virginia Tech (despite a loss to VMI), I'm impressed with the fellow at Evansville (despite a bad 2005, I think the team is making nice progress after Jim Crews--I hate to bash a Knight guy--really ran that team into the ground), and I like Dan Dakich at Bowling Green--he's ready for a bigtime job, I think. I like Dick Bennett, actually, but I don't think they could get him there...it would be interesting, though, with his daughter coaching the gal's team.
Chaney has always been a hot temper. When he was doing most of his shenanigans, Bobby Knight was doing worse so his antics went under the radar. Now that Knight is at Texas Tech and behaving reasonably, Chaney is more noticeable. That said, just like Knight at IU, Chaney will soon wear out his welcome, and I think this incident will be the end of his career there, or at least the beginning of the end.
What is evident is that the writer of this article cops to giving Cheney a pass for a long time. What he won't say is why, but I think we know the reason. Sort of like what Rush was saying about the media and McNabb.
You're kidding? He's still manager? I think he's endeared himself to Pirates' fans forever with the base-throwing incident.
The situation with the Pirates is different, though. If they fire him, they might actually need to replace him with someone who would actually demand a salary or make other demands on the ownership. McClendon does his job (poorly) and shuts up and that's good enough for the Pirates.
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