Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim is a curmudgeon, and it is well documented. He has a reputation for being an ornery joke, and to his credit, he has totally leaned into that.
It won’t be long until he joins Roy Williams, Mike Krzyzewski and Jay Wright as legendary college coaches nearing the end of their careers, who had already accomplished enough that the better option was to step aside, instead of adjusting to the brave new world of having to re-recruit your own team that you already have every season.
In other words, Jim Boeheim has kind of earned the right to be a dick, at least to a point. But as his team comes into the Champaign tomorrow, for the final Big Ten/ACC Challenge ever, it’s time to flash back to Oct. 15, and what he said on Syracuse Media Day.
His team will take on the #16 Illinois Fighting Illini, and they’ll be massive underdogs when the points spreads are set overnight. They’ll be double digit underdogs, as ESPN gives Illinois an 87% chance of winning this game.
So when the Illini crush them tomorrow night, it will be very rewarding, for fans of additional teams, not just the Illini.
Why? Watch the clip above and read the quotes below.
On a very open-ended topic of what defines a season as successful, Boeheim thrashed the Big Ten and said only March Madness matters.
“If you can’t play in the [NCAA] tournament then you’re just not good,” Boeheim said. “At the end of the day, you play for the tournament.”
You already know what happened to the Big Ten in the big dance, they sent nine teams and their tournament record was 9-9. Lots of high seeds lost early on, just like the year before, when the league’s best teams made early exits. The Illini are just as guilty of this as any other conference team, although Iowa was on par with them in the choking department.
“You can say what you want about the Big Ten,” Boeheim continued, during his talking season event that doesn’t really need to exist anymore, as we definitely don’t need a talking season.
“They sucked in the tournament. To me, that’s what they did.”
“I don’t care what [The Big Ten] did during the regular season. They beat themselves. All of their wins were in their league. If you can’t play in the tournament then you aren’t good. That’s what you play for. To get to the tournament and to win in the tournament.”
There is a lot right, and there is a lot wrong there. Yes, the Big Ten “sucked” in the last two tournaments, but the idea of “beating themselves” is a stupid fallacy.
The Big Ten won some big preconference games. And while yes, the average fan overstresses the NCAA Tournament, the conference seasons and the preconference slate count as well.
It’s true the general population doesn’t care about college hoops except for in March, but if you’re Jim Boeheim, why go meathead and lowest common denominator.
Why?
Because his team sucks. They’re 3-3 with losses to Colgate, St. John’s and Bryant. They suck, as did the ACC, by their standards, last regular season. Only five teams made the tournament, and Wake Forest, 13-7 in league play, was relegated to the NIT.
Still Boeheim thinks the ACC was the superior league.
“It’s obvious who was better,” he said. “We won the most games in the tournament. So who was the best league last year in the country?
Honestly, this is really stupid, on a lot of levels. Kudos to Jim Boeheim for actually saying something of substance, at an event where the goal is to talk but never say anything, but he’s still a total meathead moron here.
Yes, the teams in the Big Ten conference sucked in the tourney- that is undeniable. And the Big Ten has a serious problem in terms of winning the tournament. They consistently send teams to the Final Four and the title game, and they consistently lose.
But it has nothing to do with the concept of a league. There is no great generalizable truth here, as each game, each matchup, each team is different. It’s not about a conference.
More importantly, it’s not about “conference pride” as no one really believes in that. People root for their team and care about how they do, plain and simple. They do not care about how their conference rivals do. Jim Boeheim is doing nothing but wasting time batting down a straw man.
Great job bro!
Kudos to Illini coach Brad Underwood, who said this about Jim Boeheim at his presser today:
“I admire longevity, and longevity at one institution is really special. It’s so hard to do to find a level of success and do that over the course of time. You don’t win 1,000-plus games because you’re a bad coach.”
He took the high road. Brutalize Jim Boeheim Tuesday night, Orange Krush. Have at him!
Paul M. Banks is the Owner/Manager of The Sports Bank and author of “Transatlantic Passage: How the English Premier League Redefined Soccer in America,” as well as “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry.”
He has regularly contributed to WGN News, Sports Illustrated and the Chicago Tribune, and he co-hosts the After Extra Time podcast. Follow him and the website on Twitter and Instagram.
Eat crow Jim b and make sure not to run over another innocent person while DUI