I’m not gonna lie, there are moments where I don’t know why I even like sports. When Auburn won the college football title, that was one of those moments. Unbeknownst to me at the time, I’d have felt the same later on had Oregon won instead. When the disrespectful, pathetic Jets beat New England, I was there again. And then tonight, with UConn dropping Butler, this has got to be the ultimate nadir for college sports. The true bitch of it? No one actually realizes it, so it seems.

Jim Calhoun is a bum. Not in the literal sense of the word that he begs for corroded pennies so he can piece together enough for a pint of Black Velvet. He ruins college sports, and is glorified for it rather than admonished.

This might be one of those articles where I get a bunch of commentary about “sour grapes,” (still the dumbest effing statement of all time, since that’s what grapes are about…being sour. It’s like saying “she’s a slutty stripper.”), but the bottom line is, Calhoun will be shrouded as some sort of basketball saint and visionary after his third national title, but really, the guy’s nothing more than a dude hiding cards up his sleeve in Go Fish and demanding to deal every hand.

How Calhoun gets off scot free is beyond me. He’s done more than Jim Tressel and Bruce Pearl combined, yet they’re basically tarred and feathered verbally at every mention. And hell, I have something Pearl doesn’t because of it…a job. He still has probably 10 mil bankrolled, but that’s beside the point. Calhoun, on the other hand, is painted as some sort of loveable curmudgeon who “accidentally cheated, but we’ll act like it never happened.”  As someone who coaches the game of basketball, I'm embarassed to even be mentioned under the same title as a guy like Jim Calhoun. 

There were a few moments where I thought all would be right in the sports world, if only til another season of something, anything (pick your choice, NBA, MLB) ends badly. Like when Andrew Smith blocked Kemba Walker with his armpit, as if to say “screw you, and screw the taxes I did for you last month.”

Then, like most of the time in college sports these days, reality set in. I got to hear a bunch of stories about how Walker will be graduating in three years, an achievement considering that about 5% of Calhoun’s paid recruits probably can even read. Then I got to hear Walker talk, and he could barely complete a sentence. Three years? Is Chutes and Ladders a major at Connecticut?

Then I sat down to read about the sordid tale of Nate Miles, a former Calhoun recruit who covered Jim’s ass during the NCAA investigation by refusing to talk to them. Surely, there was probably money in it for him. That’s the Calhoun Way. You think Jim cares about Nate Miles now, a kid with less than 0 future and less than 0 place to live? No, because Nate’s not making Jim shots and winning him titles.

Jim Calhoun is terrible for college sports, and the worst part of it? Hardly anyone notices. Bruce Pearl has a barbeque for a few recruits, Jim Tressel goes all Ghengis Kahn on his email inbox, and they’re pariahs. Jim Calhoun skates by accusations that an NBA scout funneled money to recruits to get them into Storrs, gets all of 3 games for providing recruits’ coaches with high school tickets, and the media paints him as some sort of victim. Granted, you’d need to pay any sane individual to live more than 5 days of his life in Storrs, CT, but they don’t make special NCAA exceptions for coaching in a state that completely sucks in all facets of life. Put Jim Calhoun somewhere other than a stone’s throw from ESPN, and he’s basically John Calipari. But such is life. Cheaters win, in 2010.

There was a time when sports reminded us that “doing it the right way” still had a place in our lives. The dirty reality of actual daily living could be numbed a bit by a favorite team winning, or at the very least, a deserving team winning. Anymore though, sports is a greed machine where the deepest pockets win, legally (New York Yankees) or illegally (Connecticut). Anymore, sports resembles less a getaway, but the dirty reality of actual daily living that we try to get away from. Jim Calhoun tonight reminds us of that. Don’t stand up and applaud if you value having a spine. There’s an old, sarcastic axiom that says “if you ain’t cheatin, you ain’t trying.” When it comes to the NCAA, you ain’t winnin, either.