Hopefully Jim Calhoun's dirt doesn't tarnish what UConn's kids accomplished

On Friday, Joe Nocera of the New York Times wrote this column showcasing the NCAA's double standard when it comes to players and coaches.

The central characters?

Jim Calhoun -- the head coach of UConn that earned an $87,500 bonus for winning the national title despite the recruiting violations he was sanctioned by the NCAA for this yeay -- and Perry Jones -- a star freshman at Baylor that was suspended for the Big 12 Tournament because his sick and single mother got a loan from a family friend that happened to be Jones' AAU coach to help cover rent.

Honestly, there is nothing in this column that I disagree with.


I love college basketball. I love the passion that it is played with. I love learning about these kids before they are stars at the college and the professional level. I love the NCAA Tournament. But that doesn't mean that I agree with the way college basketball, and football, players at the top programs are exploited for profit. And it also doesn't mean that I enjoy reading and knowing about the cheating and illegal recruiting that happens at the top of the sport.

Like I said, there isn't much in that column that I disagree with.

What bothers me, however, is the focus that has landed on Jim Calhoun after his third NCAA title. And the overwhelming majority of what was written sounded an awful lot like this column from Gary Parrish. Don't get me wrong, that column from Parrish is terrific, but in worrying and focusing on the wrongs of Calhoun, the national media trivializes just how special UConn's run was.

Kemba Walker didn't cheat anyone. He didn't commit any recruiting violations. In fact, he's every journalist's dream. Kemba was a first-team all-american and the story of the college basketball season, carrying a team full of freshman from 10th in the Big East in the preseason to the top ten nationally, a Big East Tournament title, and an NCAA championship. But he was also a legitimate student-athlete. He'll walk in May and will complete his degree requirements with a couple of online courses this summer.

What about the growth of Jeremy Lamb and Shabazz Napier throughout the season? Did those two look like they were good enough influential members of a national title team as late as January?

Did you hear any mention of the fact that Jamal Coombs-McDaniel and Alex Oriakhi have now won national titles as teammates at the prep, AAU, and college levels?

Winning 11 straight games in the postseason doesn't just happen. In fact, prior to this year, it had never happened. And while it was Calhoun that was manning the sidelines, it was the kids that were on the court that won those 11 straight games.

Calhoun will forever be thought of as a dirty coach.

But his players did nothing wrong.

And one can only hope that their accomplishment won't be tarnished by the legacy of Nate Miles.

UPDATE: For those that don't believe Kemba was a true student-athlete, take a look at this excerpt from Tim Layden's piece in the latest SI on UConn's title run:

Even before that Walker had begun trying to complete himself in ways that underscore the danger of painting any college basketball program—even one that will go on probation immediately after winning the national title—in broad, cynical strokes. Last spring Walker approached UConn academic counselor Felicia Crump and asked her to help him figure out how to earn his degree in sociology so that he could enter the draft this year and still graduate. Together they built a schedule that required Walker to take courses last summer in Storrs and then a full load in both the fall and the spring. "We're talking about a young man who was just an average high school student, at best, and who had always been more concerned with basketball," says Crump. "I told him, 'If you can do this, you'll leave behind a legacy that's more important than anything you do on the basketball court.'"

Walker took schoolwork with him throughout the Big East and NCAA tournaments, completing short required papers while postponing tests until after the season. He met with his campus tutor on Skype. And in his travel pack is a copy of New York Times columnist William C. Rhoden's Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete, a book that Crump encouraged Walker to read as part of an independent study class on racism in sports. Before the Final Four, Crump suggested that Rhoden's book would be the first that Walker had ever made it through cover-to-cover. After the win over Kentucky, Walker confirmed this. "That's true," he said. "You can write that. It is the first book I've ever read."