Tag: Men’s NCAA Tournament

Opinion: Why is Jim Boeheim so cranky all of the time?

Lighten up, man.

I don’t spend much time thinking about Jim Boeheim. Not because I don’t actually cover college basketball but because, as a former resident of the state of Indiana, I recognize zone defense for the abomination that it is and would never spend mental energy on someone who relies upon it.

Nevertheless, I can’t help but keep seeing that Boeheim, the 76-year-old coach at Syracuse, is incredibly cranky seemingly all of the time now.

After the 11th-seeded Orange lost 62-46 to the No. 2 seed Houston Cougars in the men’s NCAA Tournament on Saturday, Boeheim took an innocuous question and used it to punch down on a student reporter.

Asking questions fans care about and doing good journalism is, in fact, “normal” for “Syracuse people,” by which I think he means “journalists.” They’re very well trained!

Boeheim also recently said that “Not one sentence on the internet matters. Not one.”

Earlier this year, Boeheim got angry about a question from The Athletic’s Matthew Gutierrez and pulled the old “Never Played The Game” Card and then, like a bully who isn’t even trying to be creative, made fun of his height:

This is truly bizarre behavior from a man who has been in a leadership position at a great university since 1977. He’s supposed to have gained perspective and wisdom over the last four decades. But instead he just seems angry and aggrieved — all while making over $2 million a year and having the chance to coach his son, Buddy.

Constantly being questioned by reporters is not fun, I’ll grant that. It’s also not fun asking questions and rarely getting clear answers. The relationship is strained by definition. But plenty of coaches manage to find a way to get through it without being so condescending.

Boeheim also dropped this take during his post-game press conference Saturday:

My son’s at Cornell and he’s been miserable for six months, as have all the other athletes in the Ivy League because they didn’t even get a chance to play.

And some day we’re going to look back and say why didn’t we play? Why would we ever even have thought about not playing? These kids, if they get sick, they’re better, they’re back in a few days or they don’t get sick. And it would have been a monumental mistake to not play basketball.

A lot of people have been miserable for a *year* because they’ve been unable to do a lot of things because the world has been in the grips of an actual pandemic that has killed nearly 2.8 million people.

Sports were stopped not just to protect the young players but also anyone else involved with them. The virus jumps from body to body. It was a good move to limit the nearness of bodies. This isn’t hard.

Some leagues didn’t re-start as early as others because they decided to be more cautious — and, oh by the way, they also don’t have humungous TV deals to uphold.

Whether we’ll look back with regret at not playing more sports through a pandemic is something I’ll let the historians sort out, but we’re already admitting that a better response could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

But I guess if a guy can’t even learn to run a real defense or deal with difficult questions without resorting to school-yard taunts, it’s a little ridiculous to expect him to have nuanced views on anything else.

This paragraph has no meaning because it’s on the internet but: Jim, there’s still time to just relax, man. You’ve been able to get rich coaching a game. You work with young, talented people. Those questions you get so offended by are just normal; coaches get second-guessed. That’s sports! Maybe just try to enjoy it.

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