Denny Crum
February 20, 2001
7:15 a.m.
Garry Garrett and I have had a running conversation about Louisville and Cincinnati basketball for a couple years now. He's a Bearcat fan, and I'm not. I'm on the good side--the side of truth, justice, and the American way. He's on the side of the guys in black.  In the early days (for me, this means the late seventies and the eighties) it was easy to be a Louisville fan, and even easier to pick on the Bearcats. I mean, they tried hard, and they had some good teams. But Cincinnati was not consistently a basketball team you thought would be in the final few teams at the end of the year. But Louisville was. Griffith. Turner. Jerry Eaves. Derek Smith. Rodney McCray. Roger Burkman. Milt Wagner. Lancaster Gordon. Herb Crook. Jeff Hall. Billy Thompson. Pervis. Scooter. Heck--Junior Bridgeman, Jim Price, Bill Bunton, Billy Harmon, Danny Brown. I'm missing a ton of folks. These guys were good--and better yet, they were fun people to root for. But through it all there was Denny Crum. If you don't know, Denny Crum is under a great deal of heat lately. People say he's lost touch with the game, that he's too old, he's lost touch with the kids, that he can't recruit, and that he's stretched the rules a bit too often. They are probably right, too. Louisville's offense seems specifically designed to have four guys stand around and watch one guy dribble. His players are not close to the talent levels that he's had in the past, and the program has done some things that are shady by the rules the NCAA lays down--though I'll stop here and say that I have pretty much always thought the NCAA was an onerous organization that should be disbanded immediately. But, still, this is Denny Crum we're talking about. Denny Crum is, in my opinion one of the greatest coaches to ever step onto the basketball court. In his prime, Denny could outcoach anyone alive--I'll be that bold. Give him a timeout and he got you two to six points, depending on how the press went. But the fans are howling now. Louisville is consistently losing games by twenty and thirty points, even at home. I went to Tennessee late last week--hence the drought in entries--and on the way home, I listened to the talk radio shows on WHAS 840, home of the Cards & Cats. People want Denny Crum gone. They're tired of losing--though I'll say that only in the last year has the losing been so harsh--and they're embarrassed. The school is faced with dealing with the "What have you done for me lately" issue, and it's a difficult position for a new Athletic Director (Tom Jurich) to deal with. There's also this little problem with money that Mr. Jurich has to deal with. The school plays football in a brand new stadium, and now that the basketball revenue is down (no one apparently wants to broadcast a 10-15 basketball team get beat by 40 points), the AD is faced with a bit of a number crunch. It's a painful time all around. This is not like the Bobby Knight thing. Bobby Knight was a discipline issue. Myles Brands fired Kinight for being a offish jerk at times. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know there's more to it. But I'm painting in bold strokes here. Denny Crum is an honorable man. He's for his kids. He's played pretty much up front all the time. The areas where the school has strained the boundaries of ethics have not been directly his fault (and while I agree that the head of the organization has to take some responsibility for all actions, I think we have to be careful about being too quick to assign a person blame for what another actually does). Denny Crum was Louisville basketball. Heck, Denny Crum was Louisville athletics for twenty years. So Garry asks what I think about Denny Crum. Will he be gone? The answer is, yes. Denny Crum, I believe, will be done as coach of the Louisville Cardinals as soon as he loses his next tournament game. This is how the world works. It's not about winning or losing until you're losing. Then things change. I understand that. This is the truth of corporate America. College basketball, to the NCAA's shortsighted rules, is a business. Nothing more, nothing less. This is reality. Denny Crum is going to go because he doesn't perform like he did before. It's a simple as that. But that's not how I want it to be. That's not how it would be if I were in the Athletic Director's hot seat. Heck, I've complained about Denny Crum a zillion times--generally, again, about his offense. But I'm a Denny Crum fan. I believe the guy picked Louisville up off the map and put us into the limelight. I believe the guy should have a platinum ticket, and that he should be given the right to punch it himself. I believe that college basketball should not be subject to the same ruthless laws of nature that dictate how corporate America runs. Yes, it's my own version of short-sightedness, but if I were the University of Louisville's AD, Denny Crum would be my coach until the day he decided to step down.  Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
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