Pat Summitt and Bruce Pearl

This is a continuation of my prior post, and the real post I'd wanted to make before I'd got sidetracked. It's not really a story of devolution media, just of people who let you down, badly. People whom you'd thought had class and integrity.

Pat Summitt is the most successful coach in women's college basketball, as the coach of the Tennessee Lady Vols. In the 1990s, a rival rose on the scene, Geno Auriemma of UConn. The two teams started playing two times a year, and their rivalry was such that people who didn't know anything about the women's game would tune in when their games were on tv - because a game between them was always on tv - to watch.

Part of the interest was because the two coaches didn't like each other very much. Pat was a soft-spoken Southern woman, but with a glare famous from coast to coast, and Geno Auriemma was a brash, outspoken guy who joked easily.

So one day, four years ago, Pat Summitt decided she didn't want to play UConn anymore, even though it was the most popular game all year round and great exposure for the game. But that year Geno Auriemma had signed Maya Moore, whom Pat Summitt had also tried to recruit, and the loss of this player hit her hard.

She also believed that Geno had cheated - and indeed in a sense he had. Or someone at UConn had, arranging a tour of ESPN studios, which are located in the same city as the Huskies.

But when she ended the series, she refused to say why. What she could have said, to defuse all pressure, and what would have been the truth, was "I think this rivalry game is overshadowing women's basketball. I think it's time we each started playing other teams and give them exposure. (Because, apparently, a lot of other coaches really resented how popular the UConn-TN game was, and that that was the only game a non-basketball fan would be sure to watch!)

Well, her cancellation of the game, and her refusal to say precisely why, ignited a media firestorm. Just what had Geno done to her? Had he used negative recruiting (in which women coaches are hinted at as being gay), had he really, really cheated, or what?

"Geno knows. Ask him," is all Summitt would say.

At which point I lost total respect for her.

Six months later the NCAA completed an investigation, after a formal complaint from Tennesee, and they did decide that the Maya/ESPN tour had been a secondary violation.

Was that really so bad that the most popular game of the year had to be cancelled?

If you read the Tennessee Lady Vols message boards, it would seem so.

But it gets better than that.

Bruce Pearl was hired as the men's basketball coach a couple of years ago. (Interestingly, after his first, excellent season, he was given a raise. After two years with the Lady Vols, he now made as much as Pat Summitt who had been with the Lady Vols 32 years and had 7 national championships.)

Pearl was a controversial figure. Some years ago, as an assistant coach, he had turned in another coach for cheating. Some thought this made him a stand-up guy, others thought that he was a "rat-fink."

At the time, my sympathy was with Pearl. If you know someone is cheating, are you going to let him get away with it? (Or if you think it, in the case of Summitt. In Summitt's case, what a true competitor would have done was to continue to play him, beat him, make him shake your hand and smile and like it - not just take your ball and go home!).

Anyway, Pat and Bruce Pearl became great friends. Unlike some universities, where men and women's basketball coaches don't get along - the men's coach invariably thinking that the women take up gym time that could be better suited with him own guy s in there) Pearl supported the Lady Vols - showing up at games and leading the cheers.

Then, last year, he cheated. He invited potential recruits to his lakeside home, even though he was not allowed to do this, and even though he knew he was not allowed to do this. Not only that, but a few months later he called up the parents of these potential recruits and asked them not to tell the NCAA that they'd had dinner with him at his lakeside home.

More than that, when the NCAA asked him about it the first time, he lied to them, and said it hadn't happened.

And so Pearl was suspended for a few games by Tennessee.

Now we get back to Pat Summitt. She was being interviewed by a reporter, and when asked about cheating, said, "If I were caught cheating, I'd expect to be fired." The reporter asked her if she were talking about Bruce Pearl. "No, I was thinking about the woman's game. I was thinking about UConn. There's a reason we don't play them."

To my knowledge, she has never condemned Pearl, either for cheating or lying - but I don't think she's come out in his defense either. Though she did attend one of his basketball games after the whole incident had come out, but before any suspensions were handed down.

Now I, and everyone on the UConn board, thinks this is very hypocritical of her. To condemn Geno Auriemma for cheating - in the same type of way, seeking unfair advantage to get recruits - and yet not speak out against Bruce Pearl for not only cheating but for also lying about it...

Yet the admiration for her sterling and upright character has never wavered on the Summitt message boards, nor has their constant dissing of Geno as a cheater.

To me, it seems black and white. Pat is a pillar of rectitude, and she condemns a coach from another team for cheating, so much so that she will never play his team again (except if they ever manage to get into the NCAA tournament and meet there.) Yet she has no words of condemnation for Bruce Pearl, apparently didn't think he should be fired.

Is it any wonder that sportsmanship and "bad sportsmanship" are now considered synonyms, when even the people whom you'd thought to be above suspicion reveal themselves to have feet of clay?