Coach K

As the great Dustin Hoffman recites in the Robin Hood adaption: What would the world be without a Captain Hook?

After serious thoughts of leaving his Devils behind for a high-payed set of other devils, Coach K decided to remain in Durham. We Tar Heels are greatly relieved. Had he left, we would have little to contrast with the Good (long ago, philosophers concluded Good is hardly noticable in the absence of Evil).

Coach K's bad-ity is not alone sufficient for revulsion. Many coaches curse the players, refs, and others; and many coaches care more about winning than creating good and honest men out of college players. The Stank of K gets its odor, rather, from the strange glow the press affords him. Rather than portrayed as Bobby Knight's protege, K is the gentleman that follows his heart and hugs his Wojos.

Thus, the scattered he's-not-God essays in mass press are a relief to the seekers of the Good.

Here, for you out there, is Jason Zengerle in the New Republic. The article is called "the Case Against Mike Krzyzewski, and the following are some excerpts:

...
Granted, Brodhead is just the latest in a long line of Duke presidents to kiss Krzyzewski's ring. Even before 1992, when Duke had just won back-to-back national titles and the school's New York alumni group pointedly told the school's then-president Keith Brodie that it wanted Coach K, not Brodie, to address its next gathering, Duke realized that Krzyzewski was its most important employee--and one to whom homage must be paid. The basketball court at Duke's Cameron Indoor Stadium is now called "Coach K Court." The area outside Cameron where Duke students camp out for tickets has been officially dubbed "Krzyzewskiville." Krzyzewski has a faculty appointment at Duke's business school. He even has an institution within the B-school--something called the "Coach K Center of Leadership & Ethics."

In addition to paying Coach K homage, Duke has paid him deference. While it's true that Krzyzewski runs a clean program--his players stay out of trouble, they go to class, they aren't paid under the table--he's hardly an angel. Although Krzyzewski is always happy to field softballs from Dick Vitale, he rarely grants less obsequious journalists an audience and when he does, he gives them clipped, testy answers. He's even harder on student journalists. In 1990, angered by a mid-season report card issued by Duke's student newspaper that gave his team a B-plus, Krzyzewski summoned the student journalists to a meeting and, in front of his players, cursed out the students for not giving the team straight As.

Krzyzewski is similarly abusive to referees, constantly berating them--usually in florid language--for their apparent shortcomings. In March, after his team blew an 11-point lead to lose to Connecticut in the Final Four, Krzyzewski barked over and over at the refs, "You killed us, you killed us." A favorite pastime for Duke detractors is to count how many times each game Coach K is caught on camera dropping, as they call them, "F-bombs." Krzyzewski has even abused his position for partisan politics, hosting a fundraiser for North Carolina Republican Senate candidate Elizabeth Dole that--because the event was called "Blue Devils for Dole" and was held at a university-owned facility--gave the impression that Duke was endorsing Dole. In all of these cases of misbehavior, Duke has simply looked the other way.

That's bound to continue now that Brodhead has made it evident just how indebted he is to Krzyzewski. (After all, if Krzyzewski had left, no matter what else Brodhead accomplished at Duke he'd always be known as "the president who lost Coach K.") Indeed, a cynical person might be tempted to think that was exactly what Krzyzewski intended by his flirtation with the Lakers. Perhaps Krzyzewski never seriously considered leaving Duke but, faced with Brodhead's arrival, seized on the Lakers' offer as an opportunity to show his new boss who's really in charge. In the process, he showed just how imbalanced the relationship between athletics and academics has become at one of the country's flagship schools--and, by extension, in all of college sports.

At the press conference announcing that Coach K was staying, Brodhead revealed that, in his attempts to get Coach K to spurn the Lakers, he'd asked Krzyzewski to serve as a "Special Assistant to the President." Krzyzewski played along, assuming the role of humble servant. "The honor of being special assistant to President Brodhead was really one of the factors in coming back," Coach K said. But to anyone who'd been paying attention for the past few days, it was clear who's really the special assistant.