One of my heroes

This past Monday, at about 11:00 P.M., my family was freaking out. My wife was yelling at the television. My son kept saying, “This is intense. This is so intense.” I was pacing back and forth. We were, as you might guess, watching the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship game between Duke and Butler. If you saw it, or read about it the next day, you know that it was a real barn-burner. Commentators dubbed it an instant classic. The hard-fought contest went down to the final buzzer, with Duke prevailing 61-59.

As time ran out, and Butler’s desperation half-court shot just missed, our family let out a tremendous sigh of relief, then shouts of jubilation. My wife and I are alumni of Duke, and thus we are big fans. We also, as dutiful parents, have brainwashed our sons to be fans as well. Thus, with the championship secured, we danced around merrily, hugging each other and giving high-fives all around.

This was the fourth time Duke has won the NCAA Men’s Basketball championship under their long-time coach, Mike Krzyzewski, or as he is commonly known, Coach K.

Now, if you know me, you probably know that Coach K is one of my heroes. In fact, at one point in my life, my wish was to get my picture taken with two famous people before I die: Ronald Reagan and Mike Krzyzewski. Well, I never was able to get a photo with the Gipper, but as the above picture shows, I was able to get a picture with Coach K back in 2001 at a charity event at Duke University. Yep, that’s me in the picture, with my two boys. At the time, my older son was nine, and little Matthew was just three months old (I remember how my arm ached that night because I held him that way for about three hours).

The reasons why someone would hold Coach K in high regard have been well-documented. He is a great leader and master motivator. He invests in relationships with his players and others. He engages in charitable ventures, sometimes out of the camera’s eye. He maintains a high graduation rate. And, year-in and year-out, he maximizes the talents and abilities of his players and achieves outstanding results. Within the next two seasons, barring any personal catastrophe, he will become the all-time winningest Division 1 men’s basketball coach.

But some look at all of this success over the years and quite frankly are getting a little sick of it. I can understand this. In sports, it’s not always fun for the other guys when one team experiences prolonged success. For instance, when it comes to hockey, I am a Philadelphia Flyers fan (I grew up around Philly), and their rivals, the New Jersey Devils, have been so successful for so long, and have dominated the Flyers for so long, that I’m really just numb to it now.

What I can’t understand, however, is the wave of utter hatred that has been aimed at Coach K over the last several years. While one can certainly find flattering coverage of him in the media, one need not look far to see a burgeoning irrational hate for this man. He is accused of being smug and arrogant. He is accused of being an elitist. He is accused of cheating and lying. Referees and officials are said to give him preferential treatment.

But it goes further than this. For instance, last week, in the days leading up to the Final Four games, there were two newspaper articles which defamed Coach K. One was in the Miami Herald, where a reporter unleashed a stream of personal attacks against him. (The paper, in keeping with the contemporary idea of “say anything you want, then issue a brief apology later,” issued a brief apology later.) The second was an article in an Indianapolis newspaper, featuring a head shot of Coach K which was defaced with horns and all sorts of other graffiti (ditto on the “apology”). How would you feel if you saw your picture in the paper that way? And I can tell you that in recent years I have read numerous similar articles attacking Coach K. These are not coming from disgruntled, anonymous fans writing on fan message boards on the internet. This is the mainstream sports media.

The question that I find myself pondering is: Why is there this level of hate towards a successful college basketball coach? I’m pretty sure that he is not a perfect human being, but, he does embody what is good about sports in an era where there is a lot of bad. I think about how I don’t like the fact that the New Jersey Devils always seem to beat my Flyers, and I therefore “don’t like them.” But at the end of the day, I know it’s just a hockey game, just an entertainment event, and nothing more. I don’t despise them or their coach. Regarding hatred of Coach K, some answers have been posited in the media, and as with almost anything in life, jealousy seems to be right there at the top of the list. Whether it’s Duke, or the New York Yankees, or for that matter a successful businessman, barber, or bus driver, success breeds jealousy.

But I think there are some more deep-seated reasons, not just for irrational hatred of Coach K, but for irrational hatred of sports teams and personalities in general. Perhaps I will take these up in a future entry.