If you live in upstate New York, like I do, you have heard head coach Jim Boeheim go off in press conference. And if you have not been living under a rock you have seen the head man for Syracuse basketball go “somewhat crazy” after a call in Durham (see YouTube below if you haven’t). But now, from an article by Fox Sports here comes another story about Boeheim and his antics.
The small article talks about Drew Franklin, who wrote the piece, finding the SU squad preparing to leave the arena after losing to UVa by 19 points. And this is what he said he heard…
“YOUR JOB IS TO STAND THERE AND BE QUIET,” Boeheim shouted to his security detail, who immediately apologized and insisted he was only trying to tell the coach how to exit the arena.
Boehiem cut off the man’s explanation, emphatically telling him, “YOU SAY NOTHING.”
Franklin then said that he wanted to try to take a picture but the mere look Jim Boeheim showed him basically froze him in his tracks. Or we could say “he thought better of it”.
While I would not put my hand on the fire that head coach did not do this, and while I can understand that Mr. Franklin might not want to take the picture with Boeheim staring at him, here is my simple question… what does writing an article like that do? Besides making the Orange coach seem like a mad man all the time.
Well, reality is that there is a lot more questions to all of this than just that one, but that was the major one for me. The one where all the others would then stem from.
The fact that the coach has just had his third loss in four games, might have lost hold of a number one seed in March Madness, while having lost the ACC regular season crown might be the reason why he would be this way. And with two games left, if the Orange were to lose one out of two and Duke was to finish the season without another blemish, they would have gone from top team of the conference to sharing second place with the Blue Devils. His team has gone from the talk of college ball, to a squad some are saying has lost its edge and then some.
Do not get me wrong, I am not against reporting the truth, that should be the goal of anyone puts pen to paper as a reporter. On the other hand, I am not into bashing someone who has been on the head seat of a program for over 37 years without all things having been looked at. Sure has Boeheim been a hot head at times? Yes, but so has many other head coaches. Is it right, no. But again, that is not the discussion here.
Could have Boeheim snapped at the first words that this security detail said, or could have this been going on for a while, maybe with the man speaking to the head coach while he is trying to get a couple of other things done before leaving. Could the SU coach just gone off or could have the man made a comment to make him go off. None of this is talked about in the article, and that is a true shame in my opinion.
I might not be the biggest Jim Boeheim fan, but I think that on this one it’s time to stand behind him. Whether he did it or not is not really the problem for me, it would have been nice to know why. And in the end, in those few paragraphs posted that never came out, and that is not the way we should do anything, be it main stream media or bloggers.
