The Sporting Life:
The Public Professor’s
Saturday Sports Column
Now that Duke’s been bounced from the NCAA tournament, Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski appeared on ESPN Radio to weigh in on Jalen Rose’s comments. For those who may have forgotten or missed it, Rose co-produced last month’s ESPN documentary about the University of Michigan’s Fab Five basketball 
team of the early 1990s. During the film, Rose said that back then as a poor, black kid growing up in Detroit, he felt that the blacks who played for Duke, most of whom were middle class, private school graduates, were Uncle Toms.
I understand “Coach K” not wanting to distract his team during the tournament, but the story’s cold at this point. So why is he flogging a dead horse? Other than the pettiness of not actually being above it, Krzyzewski was providing cover to former Duke player and current ESPN talking-head Jay Williams, who was also part of the interview. For Williams, now a professional analyst, waiting this long is inexcusable; having his former coach there to hold his hand through it is just embarrassing. What a loser. But since neither of them can let a sleeping dog lie, let me update my own take in light of their recent comments.
The “best” part of Krzyzewski’s rant to ESPN is on the unspoken, larger level. Essentially, what we have here is a very rich, older, white guy lecturing a 38 year old black man (Rose) about race, and not even doing it to his face. Classic. While he’s at it, why don’t we just give Krzyzewksi a tall, cool glass of 
lemonade to sip as he slowly rocks in a chair on the veranda and fans himself in the hot Carolina sun while the pearls of wisdom drop effortlessly from his mouth. I do declare.
In full patronizing mode, Krzyzewski took an absolutely ludicrous cheap shot at the Fab Five, saying, “They had a heck of a run, but they didn’t leave anything, they didn’t establish anything there. The guys I had established something Jay Williams [Duke 1999-2003] could do ten years later.”
Wow. As a university professor myself, I would never dream of blaming a prior, successful class of students for the shortcomings of those who followed, much less make a statement like that about students at another school. It’s not only highly unethical, but completely nonsensical and disturbingly hypocritical.
More to the point, however, even the most casual fan knows that college basketball players don’t 
“establish something” long term at their schools. They play four years tops, and then they’re out of there. Turnover’s the name of the game. In fact, it’s the job of outrageously highly paid coaches like Krzyzewski to recruit players every year and “establish something” for the long run.
That the success of the Fab Five didn’t live on at Michigan, which until this season’s tournament appearance had been a rather dismal program ever since, isn’t the Fab Five’s fault. It’s the fault of then-coach Steve Fisher and his staff. Blame also falls squarely on Fisher’s successor as coach, Tommy Amaker, who was by almost any measure an abject failure. Oh, and Amaker is also one of Krzyzewski’s former players at Duke, which might partially explain “Coach K”’s cheap shot: a sad, misguided attempt to place blame on Michigan’s former players for the shortcomings of a well paid coach who was his own former player.
For Krzyzewski to blame a bunch of teenagers for a program’s decline after they left, instead of the people in the front office like him who make six- and seven-figure salaries, is the rankest type of hypocrisy. But beyond hypocrisy, there was dishonesty on display in the interview, like when Williams said, “I think the 
thing that got a lot of people disgruntled was the fact that he [Rose] never came out and said ‘Listen, this is not how I feel now’ in the documentary.”
First of Hall, Rose has since said this repeatedly and in the clearest terms imaginable, and did so weeks before Williams opened his mouth. Furthermore, it’s very clear from the context of the film what Rose meant. To cast it any other way is simply dishonest.
Look, everyone knows what got the Duke guys “disgruntled.” Not only were Rose and his former teammates very honest about how they felt back then, but it also clearly reflects how much of America’s college basketball-watching pubic felt and continues to feel about Duke. Everyone knows it. The Fab Five were tremendously popular while Duke is largely hated, despite Krzyzewski’s ridiculous contention to the contrary. For chrissake, they’re only the third most popular college basketball team in their own state! But the guys from Duke have been missing the point from the start, and they continue to, as can be seen in this comment by Williams:
“If the definition of an Uncle Tom is me coming from a dual-parenting home where my mother and father worked harder for me to receive a better education; if the definition of an Uncle Tom is for me going to a prestigious school like Duke or Harvard or learning how to flow from being in the inner city and also being on TV in the corporate world, I’ll be an Uncle Tom all day long.”
The implication, coming from the mouth of a grown man, that Williams’ parents worked harder than Rose’s impoverished, single-mother is not only far more insulting as anything Rose believed back when he was eighteen years old, but it also gets at the heart of the matter.
As we’ve all known from the start, this isn’t about race so much as it’s about class. So let us be clear, Mr. Williams. The larger public doesn’t think you and your fellow Dukies are Uncle Toms. We just suspect 
you’re assholes. Thanks for proving the point. And it doesn’t matter if you’re black, white, brown, red, yellow, or purple. Being a self-righteous, sanctimonious turd is color blind.
Sorry to burst your bubble.
And finally, let’s not let ESPN off the hook for all this. After all, they’re the ones encouraging Williams and Krzyzewski to spew this crap well after the fact, thereby keeping their film in the spotlight, and making their employees the story.
It also turns out that Rose was arrested for drunk driving on March 11, just before the airing of the film. ESPN is only reporting it now. Is it really possible they didn’t know about this for over two weeks? If not, did they bury the story on purpose?
Of course they’ll deny it, but we need to remember one thing. Despite the fact that Sports Center’s “anchors” wear coats and ties and sit behind a big desk, ESPN is in no way a news station. It’s exactly what its name says it is: the Entertainment and Sports Network. It’s like Lifetime, but for sports. Call me cynical, but I wouldn’t doubt for a second that they got this scoop on March 12 and hid it to protect their much-trumpeted film.
On a day like today, I can’t help but think that ESPN, Williams, Rose, and Krzyzewski all deserve each other
You can also find me every Saturday at Meet the Matts.