Posted 4:08 PM by Gene

My question from last night -- "Why do so many professional college basketball coaches look -- dishonest?" -- answers itself: because they are dishonest. Or perhaps dishonest isn't the right word -- it's venal. Money and falsehood do go together, even in a world of amateurs. We can start with Lefty "Obstruction of Justice" Driesell ("Don't talk t' th' p'lice, Ah'm tellin' ya, DON'T TALK t' th P'LICE!"), then go to John "400 SATs are Fine With Me" Thompson and his sidekick Nolan "Five Percent" Richardson, and thence to Tark the Towel-Chewing Jark, who was so determined to hire dummies and crooks he took the NCAA to the Supremes -- and lost by one justice. Of course it doesn't help when Tubby Smith looks like a shifty-eyed cross between Ernie Ford and Yosemite Sam, or when Bob Huggins looks like a blend of Liberace, Jimmy Swaggart and Popeye, or when Gene Keady looks as if he's about to be arrested, perhaps for his combover. In any event, there's plenty of corruption to go around. Or as Dickie V (who knows something of ill-gotten gains himself, working for Disney) would say, "These are the giants of basketball, supersensational scintillating rrrrrrrr-in-a-soycle!"