[Bucktastic]

This guy doesnt think its right.




Cincinnati president not living in real -- basketball -- world

Aug. 24, 2005
By Gregg Doyel
CBS SportsLine.com Senior Writer



In Nancy Zimpher's vision, the Cincinnati basketball program is a place where the team competes for a Big East championship, the coach recruits future pediatricians and the players split their time between the court, the library and their volunteer job at the Humane Society.

And you thought a university president was the smartest person on campus.

While Nancy Zimpher works to lift Cincinnati's academic profile, she is ruining the hoops program.

(AP) Zimpher is the Cincinnati president who has pushed out Bob Huggins after 16 years, his tenure marked by 14 NCAA Tournament appearances, unflattering off-court incidents and inaccurate attacks on his program's graduation rate.

Zimpher, who came to Cincinnati in 2003 from Wisconsin-Milwaukee, has a vision for her new school: UC 21. It calls for sweeping academic reform and an overall lifting of the school's standards, and image, to new levels. It's a wonderful plan -- no, really -- but it doesn't jibe with the reality of big-time college basketball.

Memo to Zimpher: You have a big-time college basketball program.

Or had.

Give Zimpher credit for wanting the very best for her school, from the English department to the admissions standards to the backup power forward on the basketball team. But deduct points for Zimpher's miscalculation of the atmosphere of college basketball.

Cincinnati is about to enter the Big East, which has been lorded over in recent years by Connecticut and Syracuse.

That's the same Connecticut, by the way, that kicked off Antonio Kellogg this spring after a series of ugly off-court issues. And it's the same Connecticut that currently has no idea whether either of its top two point guards, Marcus Williams or A.J. Price, will play this season after they were named in felony larceny charges involving laptop computers allegedly stolen from members of the UConn women's basketball program.

And that's the same Syracuse, it should be noted, expected to get a verbal commitment Friday from Paul Harris, one of the best NBA prospects in the class of 2006 and a young man who has faced drug charges in the past. Syracuse will give Harris this chance because he made his mistakes as a much younger kid, because he comes across as a likeable, nice guy -- and because he can dunk basketballs like donuts.

Please, UConn and Syracuse fans, don't be angry. This isn't an indictment of Jim Calhoun or Jim Boeheim, or an indictment of the Huskies or the Orange. It's not even an indictment of college basketball. It's just a statement of the facts.

A recent national champion, months after winning that title, had on its roster a center who was kicked off his high school team after being investigated for sexual assault. That team also had a shooting guard who would be investigated for marijuana possession, a point guard cited for underage drinking, a backup point guard who confronted an opposing coach during a game and a backup center accused of beating up his girlfriend. Plus it had (gasp) a transfer from another school.

The national champion in question? Duke, 2001.

It's not an indictment of Duke, either. American life has changed, and college basketball has changed with it. Players come with baggage. Coaches try to unpack the dirty drawers and replace them with clean, bleached briefs. Sometimes it works. It has worked more often than not at Cincinnati under Huggins.

Nancy Zimpher doesn't understand right now, but she will. She's at Cincinnati, not Columbia. Her basketball program isn't competing with Brown, but with the Syracuse Orange.

Zimpher's ambition and righteousness are impressive, but let's make no mistake about this one point: Bob Huggins isn't gone because he failed to live up to the standards of college basketball. Huggins is gone because he met those standards.