OT: Officially Worst Sports Year Ever

Agreed on the Duke comment. Would Kentucky and Calipari's "student athletes" winning the title make the NCAA tournament more enjoyable?

I never understood why people hate Duke so much around here. Duke's basketball program is pretty analogous to Michigan's football program: historic and perennially successful. If you're someone who always roots for the underdog, then why root for Michigan?

I'm not sure how, but I still am smarting from "the collapse." Ah well, 7-1 opener today over Josh Johnson makes it go down a little easier!

I hate how Coach K looks like a child molester. I'm sure he's a great guy, but I can't get past that. I also can't stand how Kyle Singler looks. It's terrible, but that's some of my biggest problems with Duke right there.

I hate them because I'm constantly force fed their games. Much like the Yankees, Cowboys, Lakers, and now the Penguins! Spread the love!

We actually don't know how clean of a program they are. (There seems to be an assumption that teams with lots of white guys are automatically "clean".) Awhile back there was some fishy business involving Carlos Boozer, who seemed to have a Jamal Crawford-type living situation. I remember some stuff coming up about Luol Deng as well. But the NCAA never actually investigated so no harm, no foul, I guess.

They do have an outstanding graduation rate. The cynic in me wants to argue that at the elite private schools, it's basically impossible to flunk out, but even so, it's impressive.

I don't know, 2008 Kansas-Memphis was one HELL of a game. I was in awe going into OT.

Not to scratch any sensitivities, but I doubt anyone but a diehard Michigan fan would have to go back more than 20 years to find a worthy NC game.

you mean duke basketball?

You all realize that the majority of the Big Ten region feels the same way about Michigan football as you all feel about Duke football right?

Fixed it for you. Outside the Big Ten region most people are okay with us. Some Southerners hate us because we've done well against the SEC in bowls (and because Woodson beat their good ol' boy for the Heisman), but that's about it. Notre Dame football is a closer analogy to Duke basketball. (Well, except for the winning part.)

read ur entire post wrong. anyways i still have issues with it: i tip my hat to scheyer, singler, and now zoubek for sticking in the program for 4 years and playing as seniors. as to the "they arent good enuf to be in NBA" argument that will of course come up wen reading this: ill give you zoubek but im sure at one point in time scheyer and singler have all been considered at least to be drafted. thatd be roughly 1m/year. not a lot of kids can turn that down(as shown by the spew of recent 1 and dones) but they did. thats deserving to me.

http://www.nytimes.com/1990/01/24/sports/coach-k-gives-stately-duke-an-u...

DURHAM, N.C., Jan. 23— Along with a reputation for clever and intimidating cheers, the students at Duke University relish their inspirational role in the performance of the school's basketball team. Mike Krzyzewski, the head coach, has gone to considerable lengths to foster that involvement, often lauding the students as his squad's ''sixth man.''

But an angry, profane locker room lecture by Krzyzewski to 10 invited guests from the student newspaper's sports staff now threatens to undermine that relationship. Even the popular coach's subsequent acknowledgement that the matter should have been handled differently has not altogether quelled fallout from his outburst.

''People on campus were surprised he would act like that, he would use profanity like that, he would act like that toward students,'' said Craig Whitlock, the editor of the student newspaper, The Chronicle. ''I think it hurt Coach K. somewhat.''

Already irritated by The Chronicle's recent coverage of his program, the coach grew upset after reading a column that gave his team and its members letter grades for their performances through the first half of the season. No player received lower than a C-plus. The team, 12-2 at the time and rated in the top 10 in the news-agency polls, got a B-plus.

Meeting Is Arranged

Krzyzewski considered the article inappropriate, as well as damaging to the confidence of several players. So last week, he had his secretary call Rodney Peele, sports editor of The Chronicle, to arrange what he regarded as a private meeting between the players and the students who cover them.

The get-together was held Jan. 15 after a late-afternoon practice in the school's 50-year-old arena, Cameron Indoor Stadium. Besides the 12-member basketball squad, several assistant coaches and the team trainer were on hand as Krzyzewski cursed and raised his voice while upbraiding the student-reporters for coverage that ''degrades my basketball team.''

Once he had spoken his mind, in comments that included scatological and anatomical references, and had given the largely mute reporters a chance to reply, the forthright Krzyzewski believed the matter was settled.

Assistants and team members regarded the outburst as simply the coach's sticking up for his players, and dismissed the profanity and the raised voice as stylistic quirks. ''From a player's perspective, I've learned to listen to what he says, not how he says it,'' said Alaa Abdelnaby, the senior forward.

Others were less understanding when Krzyzewski's remarks, taped surreptitiously by a student-reporter, were subsequently revealed in The Chronicle and the city's largest daily newspaper, The Durham Morning Herald.

Not the 'Best Way'

''I think the general feeling around campus would be that Mike may have had a point to make, but he didn't choose the best way to go about it,'' said Thomas A. Spragens, a political science professor and the school's faculty representative for athletics. ''It's unfortunate, because Mike usually represents himself and the university in a very classy way.''

Four days after the incident, Krzyzewski again invited the reporters to meet with him, this time in the stadium's press room and without anyone else present. While quoted as insisting he wouldn't change ''the substance of the meeting,'' Krzyzewski told The Chronicle he regretted the use of profanity and any perception that he had sought to intimidate.

''I haven't had too many experiences lately where what I said, the reason I said it, was misconstrued,'' Krzyzewski said in an interview today. ''I've got to be clearer.''

Early in his 10-year Duke tenure, Krzyzewski had a combative attitude toward the press, a posture that was perhaps acquired while he was a player under Bob Knight at West Point and later reinforced when he was a Knight assistant at Indiana. But as Krzyzewski's Duke teams became successful, he grew more relaxed, and until his run-in with the student paper, the coach's troubles with the news media had appeared a thing of the past.

''If he had approached things differently, then it wouldn't have been a story in the first place,'' said Peele, a senior from Fort Washington, Md. ''I think Coach K. learned a little more about how to handle the student media, and I think everyone else learned you can make someone out to be as much a saint as possible, but every now and then they're going to make mistakes, too.''

'Coach-Educator'

Krzyzewski is quite proud of the reputation he has built at Duke as a ''coach-educator,'' as he is billed in a national advertisement for a stock brokerage firm.

On the court, Krzyzewski's teams have become perennial contenders for national honors, with three visits to the Final Four since 1986. Entering the Blue Devils' contest with North Carolina State on Wednesday night, Krzyzewski has 216 victories at Duke, leaving him only 11 short of surpassing Eddie Cameron - for whom the school's basketball arena is named -as the most successful coach in Blue Devil history.

Krzyzewski has accomplished all this while graduating every player and running what many consider a model program.

Given that record, especially off the court, faculty and administrators were reluctant to criticize the coach when Krzyzewski's heated meeting with the student-writers became generally known. ''I thought it was an error in judgment and most people do, but you don't want to jump all over him, because he's a person of integrity,'' Spragens said.

Duke's president, Dr. H. Keith H. Brodie, publicly referred the matter to the school's athletic director, Tom Butters. But while Butters apparently worked behind the scenes to ameliorate the situation, he was quoted as saying the incident was a nonissue and warned that ''if The Chronicle chooses to make an issue of it, then I'm going to look at it very, very closely and somebody's going to come out the loser.'' Butters later said, ''I made a critical mistake in calling it a nonissue, although it is a nonissue.''

'Unfortunate Incident'

In a prepared statement, Brodie said Monday that he, Butters and Krzyzewski share ''respect for the contribution The Chronicle makes to the Duke community, and I hope that we can now put this unfortunate incident behind us.''

But in an editorial the same day the paper wrote that the ''behavior of Krzyzewski's superiors has been anything but honest and forthright'' and questioned Brodie's ability to exercise his authority over the athletic department.

''I essentially wanted some assurance that the university does not condone intimidation, at least that Coach K. was wrong, and I haven't heard that,'' Whitlock, the editor, said in a telephone interview Monday.

photo: Mike Krzyzewski: ''I haven't had too many experiences lately where what I said, the reason I said it, was misconstrued. I've got to be clearer.'' (AP)

They're out of scholarships.

I'm still wondering why Michigan's 1998 Rose Bowl win is still on the books when Charles Woodson was ineligible.

The things the NCAA does...