At 63, recently inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame, Jim Calhoun has produced two national championships at Connecticut and may shortly deliver a third. Yet he remains a popular and a polarizing figure, and another potential valedictory season has also become in the Connecticut news media a referendum on his character.
Even Calhoun's critics will admit that he is a brilliant and loyal coach, and that he can be charming and gracious with his Boston accent and Irish wit, while his supporters will concede that he can be relentlessly consumed, sarcastic, temperamental and thin-skinned.
Such a complicated personality does not make him different from many successful coaches. But Calhoun is also perhaps the most highly visible -- and highest-paid (US$1.5 million annually) -- public employee in a state whose only major professional sports team is a less visible franchise in the Women's National Basketball Association.
As the primary athletic showcase, UConn basketball receives heightened scrutiny from the news media. Nine state newspapers regularly cover the team, along with four television stations. Even as the Huskies (21-1) are ranked No. 1, perhaps more drama is unfolding off the court than on.
A fierce debate is being waged about whether UConn and Calhoun should be allowing point guard Marcus Williams to play the second half of the season after his involvement in the theft of four laptop computers from a university dorm last summer. And Calhoun finds himself embroiled in a vitriolic feud with Connecticut's most influential sports columnist, who has called him a caustic bully in the state's largest newspaper.
Tim Tolokan, an associate athletic director at UConn, said he did not believe readers were interested in the "boohoo" of personal friction between reporters and coaches. The vast majority of Huskies fans, Tolokan said, felt unconditional support for Calhoun, who has helped provide the university and the state with a sense of great athletic accomplishment and whose philanthropic work supports cardiology research at the University of Connecticut Health Center and a holiday food drive.
"I don't have to defend myself," Calhoun said in a brief interview here Wednesday after UConn defeated Syracuse. "I've been here 20 years. I think the record speaks for itself, whether it be in the community or coaching basketball."
The first of the season's flashpoints occurred last August, when two UConn players, Williams and A.J. Price, were arrested and charged with attempting to sell four laptops, valued at US$11,000, at area pawnshops. Eventually, both were placed in a special probation program. Williams, a junior and a star point guard, was suspended for 11 games, while Price, a redshirt freshman who also had been charged with making a false statement to the police, received a year's suspension from basketball.
Calhoun said that he had no involvement in the adjudication process and that the punishments were in line with penalties given to other UConn students for similar transgressions.
"I won't condone their acts," Calhoun said of his players. "It was stupid and very selfish, but I'm not going to abandon kids making mistakes."
Some, though, found the penalty for Williams too lenient. Among the dissenters was Jeff Jacobs, the influential sports columnist for The Hartford Courant, Connecticut's most widely circulated paper and one that has covered UConn aggressively in athletics and other areas.
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