Paul Mirengoff has a pretty interesting discussion on the Washington Post’s campaign against U. Maryland basketball coach Gary Williams. The assault seems to be done in concert with the UMD athletic department.

I’ve got no dog in this fight and I understand the nature of conflicts between AD’s and coaches. But it seems at least a little strange that a coach who has won a national championship in the last 10 years and is still playing .500 ball is being attacked, at least in part, because he doesn’t do ethically questionable recruiting. Whatever else his faults, Williams seems to be one of the cleaner guys in a very dirty profession.

Update: Galley Friend P.G. writes in to throw some cold water on my romanticized vision of Williams:

I’ve got to disagree with you on Gary. As anyone knows, nobody is above being fired at the college ranks, regardless of history. Gary has presided over the fastest decline of a national title winner over the past 2 decades. No team, upon winning a national title, has failed to make the tournament 3 of the next 6 years. Teams win a national title and then turn that into building a formidable program that contends every year. Gary has done the opposite. Furthermore, Gary’s program was so perfectly situated in the heart of the best high school basketball metro area in the nation, right when some of the best talent ever to emerge from this area were ready to sign. The list of players Gary missed is insanely long, including some guys who are going to be NBA HoFers. And almost all of them cite Gary as the reason they didn’t go to UMD. He doesn’t play freshmen enough and he doesn’t recruit players he thinks will be one-and-done. Gary also isn’t as clean as he likes to claim, he has long-standing ties to the controversial Pump Brothers. Furthermore, the practice Gary claims is dubious, hosting AAU games, he’s done himself (Nic Caner-Medley).

Look, Gary’s title was a fluke. He won a national title with a hard-working over-achieving group because the best HS players for that stretch of time were not entering the college ranks. They were going straight to the pros. This gave Gary a window to win a title with juco transfers and hard working players, and he took advantage of it. Gary is a fantastic game coach, perhaps the best at the college ranks. But he’s a TERRIBLE recruiter, and a disinterested one at that. His claim that his job is not to recruit is simply crap. It is his job. And not everyone is dirty, while Gary is clean. There are plenty of clean programs that are more successful than the Terps. Gary is just a lousy recruiter, and he should be fired.

Then, the Czabecast talks a little bit about the Sickest Recruit of the Year, the decline of Duke, and Gary Williams’ moral vanity:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTU8Sh-_GIE&hl=en&fs=1]

Update 2: Galley Reader writes in to offer a qualified defense of Williams:

The truly accurate point that Paul makes is that the coverage is out of whack. So much of this has to do with the Post focusing so intently on Maryland’s basketball program – both in how many reporters they assign to cover the team, and which reporters they are – and it’s true of local radio as well. Hell, they act like any program on the other side of the Potomac is basically nonexistent (one of the reasons they had no clue who any of the Mason players were during the Final Four run – it was comical to watch Comcast and see paid reporters weigh in on players they hadn’t ever seen in a single game before the tournament).

It’s true that Williams is a subpar recruiter. But he gets incredible production out of the players he does recruit, and he’s always on the bubble in the second-toughest basketball conference in the country. Without him, I think Maryland would quickly drop to the level of UVA.

Further, look at <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/31/AR2009013101978.html
“>this. So when Gary does try to land a five star prospect, it “reeks of desperation”?

I’m not even a Maryland fan, and this stinks.

Steve Sailer asks if centers are generally smarter than players at the other positions in basketball. I don’t have anything like a real answer for this, but my initial observation would be that the two most intelligence-demanding positions would be center and point guard.

The point guard position is fairly obvious: You need to know the plays, and everyone else’s position in the plays. But the position probably also requires a better handle on spacial relations than the others because you have to see so passing lanes so consistently.

I think you can make the case that the center and PG positions are also the least athletically demanding roles on the basketball court. They’re physically demanding–you can’t play center if you’re short–but that’s very different from innate athleticism. The 2, 3, and 4 positions all let you paper over nearly every possible deficiency with raw athleticism in a way that the 1 and the 5 really don’t. And it might be true–I’d have to think about this some more–that when the center position is properly played it demands the second-best court vision and passing ability on the floor, because you have to see double teams on the post and understand how and where to kick the ball out.

What I’ve always wondered about centers is this: What percentage of men over 7-feet-tall play Division I and/or professional basketball? I’d wager that I’ve never seen a 7-foot-tall man who wasn’t a high-level basketball player–in the tens of thousands of people I’ve walked past on the street, in the airport, etc, I’ve never seen a 7-footer.

So is being born to be 7-feet tall like winning the lottery? Is it a free pass to a paid-for college education and/or at least some professional sports money? What percentage of 7-footers do make it to that level? 5 percent? 10 percent? 60 percent?

I’ve never quite figured out a way to find the data on this.

Over the weekend I did a little piece on Starbucks as a leading indicator for the broader economy. In the course of the piece, I mentioned SBUX’s acquisition of the company that makes Clover coffee machines–space-aged contraptions that brew individual cups of super-premium coffee. How super-premium are we talking? The machines are $11,000 each and the coffee they make sells for about $4 a pop. For regular coffee.

In any case, in March of 2008, shortly after the Clover machines debuted, SBUX bought the company which produces them. The idea at the time was to put a Clover in every SBUX, ramping up the company’s luxury status. Events have since rendered this idea impractical. Almost a year later, only 51 SBUX stores have a Clover.

All of this is prelude to saying that this weekend I found a small, independent shop which bought a Clover machine before SBUX scooped up the franchise. And I bought a cup of the $4 coffee. And while it was good, even pretty good (I had a Guatamalen light roast) it wasn’t worth more than $2.50 and didn’t measure up to Misha’s Caravan Blend, which is the reference coffee for Washington, D.C.

After descending to self-parody a few years back with the WNBA-NBA “3-ball” team-up, this year’s All-Star game will feature something people might actually want to watch: NBA H-O-R-S-E.

If it’s a success, why not go all the way next year and have H-O-R-S-E game featuring not just current players, but legends, too. Would you tune in to see Larry Bird and John Paxson take on Kobe and Ray Allen?

In today’s WSJ, Hannah Karp has a fantastic profile of Julian Jones, a fellow who lives in Vegas and whose job is, as far as I can tell, to hang out with pro athletes and keep them out of trouble. You have to read this thing.

When the Journal finally puts together a sports section, it’s going to blow the doors off everything else around.

That sounds more provocative than I mean it. Prompted by Robert Farley’s brilliant essay arguing that Tom Zarek and Felix Gaeta are heroes, not traitors, I’ve tried to explore the other side of the argument: That a Colonial-Cylon alliance carries real advantages for humanity.

Like, for instance, hundreds of 6’s and 8’s running around looking to get pregnant. I’m just saying.

But I also argue that we can’t pass a final moral judgment on the Cylon empire quite yet. You may not be convinced.

Every so often, two visionary souls with unique visions combine to create a work of staggering genius. Today, Santino brings word that Brett Ratner is going to direct a movie based on Rob Liefeld’s Youngblood.

There will be no feet.

Remember tough-guy Michael Westbrook? He’s into MMA now. And he’s not exactly fighting within his weight class. Click through and watch the video.