Dave Sez

Rollie Follies

Gregg Doyel gives a pretty good rundown of the rise and fall of Rollie Massimino. Of course, everyone remembers the great run his underdog 1985 Villanova team had, eventually winning the national championship against prohibitive favorites Georgetown.

Later, it came out (in a memorable Sports Illustrated cover story) that one of the stars of that team, Gary McLain, was routinely high on cocaine that season. Massimino ended up leaving 'Nova to go to UNLV to take over for Jerry Tarkanian. Frankly, anytime someone takes a job at UNLV, it sends up red flags. Rollie lasted only two years with the Rebels, getting fired after it was discovered that he had an illegal contract.

Massimino eventually turned up at Cleveland State, another school with a sordid history. Just like at UNLV, he did nothing to clean up the school's rep, getting run off after only moderate success on the court and tons of bad news off of it.

Now, the NCAA is looking to pile it on, investigating claims of academic fraud at Cleveland State.

And after all that, Gregg Doyel defends Rollie. He compares him to Jim Valvano, another coach who everyone seemed to love despite his rather lengthy list of misdeeds as a coach. It seems that to many, including Doyel, a good (or cute) personality offsets shocking faults in personal ethics.

In fairness, Gregg Doyel is usually pretty good in calling out bad behavior, but in this case he's defending the wrong guy.

(Thanks for the link, Yoni)