Dear President Hogan -

 

I write to you as a law student at the University of Connecticut, as a journalist, and as a concerned citizen. I write to you because experience tells me that the UConn Athletic Department will not adequately address my concerns, and thus, I must appeal to a higher authority.

 

On Sunday, August 9, 2009, local journalist Stan Simpson televised a 30-minute interview on Fox 61 with UConn men's basketball Coach Jim Calhoun. During the interview, Coach Calhoun misrepresented my academic record by stating I have been in law school for 15 years.

 

In good conscience, I could not let this distortion go. When the Connecticut Bar Examining Committee pores over my file for the character and fitness portion of the bar review in the fall of 2010, I need to make it known that I defended my academic integrity. If I do not defend my own honor, how can I defend clients zealously?

 

So I emailed Stan Simpson, and asked him to correct the misstatement. Mr. Simpson refused, and suggested everyone understood that Coach Calhoun's comment was hyperbole. Mr. Simpson recommended I take the matter up with Coach Calhoun.

 

My last interaction with Coach Calhoun in July 2009 leads me to think that I will find no recourse there: Coach Calhoun told me to contact his attorney, but refused to give me his attorney's name; then he directed me to the UConn press office. I hate to harp on this, but the athletic department is part of the problem, and it will not help correct Coach Calhoun's distortion of my academic record.

 

Open Letter to UConn President Michael Hogan...(con't)

 

The bills for a $2.7 million beach house in Madison must be expensive, because UConn basketball Coach Jim Calhoun groused that he doesn’t make enough money.

 

"I'm underpaid," he said to this reporter while walking into the Middlesex County Chamber of Commerce breakfast Monday, July 20 at a hotel in Cromwell.

 

Calhoun and his wife Patricia purchased an 1850 vintage 3,300 square foot oceanfront cottage at 43 Soundview Avenue in Madison, CT on November 30, 2005 for $2.7 million. See the property card from the Madison assessor here.

 

Without divulging the price tag publicly, Calhoun mentioned his summer home while introducing NBA All-Star Caron Butler as the Middlesex Chamber's Role Model of the Year.

 

Butler is an American miracle, a street urchin from the slums of Racine, Wisconsin who beat all odds to make the pros via UConn's NBA pipeline. Butler is also a tireless philanthropist and volunteer, giving back to his community.

 

Yet the subject of Calhoun's remuneration lingers five months after his tirade over even having to answer questions about being the highest paid state employee at $1.5 million annually during a severe budget crisis.

 

Since that February 22 blow-up, Gov. M. Jodi Rell has negotiated $637 million in salary givebacks from state employee unions. This week, Connecticut reported an 11 percent decrease in tax revenues during the first quarter of 2009, a $400 million income drop that is sure to result in deeper cuts to state services.

 

Calhoun and his meaty salary continue to be politically untouchable, as he enjoys the adulation of voters, like the friendly 500 packed into a bland ballroom to hear him and Butler speak.

 

More importantly, Calhoun enjoys the patronage of the Chamber and its leadership. For example, Middlesex Chamber president Larry McHugh is the new president of the board of trustees at the University of Connecticut. The joke was made about McHugh being Calhoun's new boss.

 

And without prompting, Anthony Assante, the chair of the Middlesex Chamber, defended Calhoun's salary.

 

"Caron Butler is a testament to Coach Calhoun," Assante said. Assante, a banker, looked like the Beaver, with a green baseball cap and t-shirt over a shirt and tie.

 

"Coach," Assante said, "as far as I’m concerned, you're worth every penny."

 

An argument can be made that Calhoun earns his $1.5 million in state dollars, even in hard economic times. Calhoun has become the face of the state for those Americans who follow college basketball. He sends more players to the NBA than any other school in the country.

 

But he has a 22 percent graduation rate for black players. And at the Chamber breakfast, he revealed his disdain for academic achievement when he suggested that honored guest Caron Butler would not understand a passing reference to "Gone With The Wind."

 

Coach Calhoun Claims He's Underpaid...(more)

More reporters cover the University of Connecticut men's and women's basketball teams than cover the Connecticut General Assembly.

 

Dozens of reporters and camerapeople document the niggling details of the 35 or so college basketball players who generate $20 million annually, and nary a handful of journalists cover the 181 or so representatives and senators who appropriate $17 billion annually.

 

And yet, the two biggest stories about UConn basketball this year came from journalists who do not cover the Huskies regularly.

 

As the Huskies verge on a third national title, and Coach Jim Calhoun lays the legal groundwork to protect his title, don't expect the groupthinkers in the media horde to question the way the UConn athletic department dealt with the onset of these alleged violations of NCAA recruiting regulations.

 

The timeline, compiled from various sources, looks like this:

Early October 2008 - Yahoo! Sports reporters Adrian Wojnarowski and Dan Wetzel submit Freedom of Information Act requests to UConn, looking for state-owned cell phone records of various men’s basketball coaches.

December 2008 - The UConn athletic department retained the law firm of Bond, Schoeneck & King, a Kansas outfit known for work on NCAA issues.

January 2009 - 80 percent of the Yahoo! Sports story was done (according to reporting by Courant columnist Jeff Jacobs), but UConn stalled and delayed turning over the phone records central to the Freedom of Information Act requests.

March 2009 – Yahoo! Sports breaks the story about Calhoun and company allegedly committing NCAA recruiting violations. Shortly after this story breaks, UConn reports the violations to the NCAA.

Finish Reading this thoughtful, misanthropic diatribe...

Former Waterbury Republican sports reporter Adrian Wojnarowski, who pressed Coach Calhoun's buttons while covering UConn in the 1990s, has done it again, but this time on a grand scale.

 

Now working at Yahoo! Sports, Woj, working with writer Dan Wetzel, has uncovered a series of recruiting violations of NCAA rules regarding highly-rated, but highly troubled prospect Nate Miles.

The University of Connecticut violated NCAA rules in the recruitment of former guard Nate Miles, a six-month investigation by Yahoo! Sports has found.

Miles was provided with lodging, transportation, restaurant meals and representation by Josh Nochimson – a professional sports agent and former UConn student manager – between 2006 and 2008, according to multiple sources. As a representative of UConn’s athletic interests, NCAA rules barred Nochimson from having contact with Miles or from providing him with anything of value.

A UConn assistant coach said he made Nochimson aware of the Huskies’ recruitment of Miles. Later, the assistant coach said he knew that Nochimson and Miles had talked.

The rest of the story is here.

 

Calhoun likely cheated...

Among the four number one seeds in the NCAA collegiate basketball championship, Country Club Jim Calhoun has the worst graduation rate at 33 percent. Number one seed North Carolina, under coach Roy Williams, boasts of an 86 percent graduation rate, according to the 2009 annual study by the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport.

 

Williams, who like Calhoun makes $1.6 million a year, seems to focus his million-dollar time a little more on athletics. Consider, too, how much more genteel Williams is than Country Club Calhoun. When asked about his $1.6 million salary, Williams at least indicated his family is suffering under the economic buckle, as his son recently lost a job.

 

Country Club Calhoun, though, earned himself a new nickname, as he was out there rubbing it in our faces again. Mr. "I-make-more-than-that" gave this to a presser, scribed by Brendan Punty of the Newark Star-Ledger:

Calhoun was asked a question about playing first-round opponent Chattanooga and eventually rambled into watching good friend and College of Charleston (which is a Southern League member with Chattanooga) coach Bobby Cremins.

"I watched (Chattanooga) against (Charleston) because of my friendship with Bobby Cremins," Calhoun said. "Same country club down in Hilton Head that I'm a member of."

"Actually, I shouldn't say that, 'I'm a member of a country club,'" Calhoun said grinning. "Probably not a good idea to advertise, I'm sorry. The public course that I go to and play with him -- $35 greens fees down in Hilton Head -- sure."

Unbelievable, Connecticut. He's yours. You can have him, and his 22 percent graduation rate when it comes to African-American players only.

 

Link to Country Club Calhoun...

If millions of people tell you that something is right, even though you know that something is wrong, does it matter what those people think?

 

No. Of course, people have a right to their opinion. But consider the dangers of an uninformed opinion forcefully argued, like the sports fan who loves his hero.

 

The sports fan opines based blindly on emotion, and this distorts his view of reality.

 

Sports fans should not be trusted, then, to run important enterprises like government. So why are we letting our love for sports lead us right now?

 

More on Calhoun's Spinning Plates...

The New Haven Register editorial board, facing bankruptcy itself, has seen the light. In an editorial from Friday, Feb. 27, titled "Top UConn Coaches Should Give Back," the Register said:

It took a political gadfly to ask a question at a postgame press conference that would normally never be uttered in the self-adoring world of University of Connecticut sports.

Since the state faces a deficit this year of nearly $1 billion and as much as $8 billion over the next two years, would Jim Calhoun, coach of UConn’s men’s basketball team, consider taking a cut in his more than $1.6 million salary?

"Not a dime," snapped back Calhoun, who also earns big bucks from commercial endorsement deals. "We make $12 million a year for this university. Get some facts and come back and see me," Calhoun shouted before telling his questioner, Ken Krayeske, to "shut up."

Actually, Calhoun, the state’s highest paid employee, should get his facts straight. Depending on how the money is calculated, the men’s basketball program brings in $12 million a year in revenue, but has more than $6 million in expenses.

Asking the state’s highest paid employee whether he would take a pay cut is not unreasonable when Calhoun’s boss, Michael Hogan, president of the University of Connecticut, already has effectively done that.

Hogan, who earns $613,908 a year, last year turned down a $100,000 bonus in response to the state budget cuts at UConn. Hogan was already contributing $1,000 a month of his salary to a UConn scholarship.

Krayeske’s question to Calhoun should also be put to UConn women’s basketball coach Geno Auriemma, who had a salary of about $1.31 million in 2008, and UConn football coach Randy Edsall, who got about $1.38 million.

That editorial apparently ran in Middletown and Torrington, too - (h/t to Shoe on that one).

More media from Chronicle on Higher Ed...

Mainstream radio hosts are mostly not your friends. With an exception here or there, many of the most powerful voices on radio dial seem to have no interest in telling two sides of the story.

 

On the plus side, Chaz and AJ stepped it up this week with their operatta about Jim Calhoun, the loser of the week, and actually gave me 20 minutes of air time this morning on WPLR in New Haven. And on Monday, too. Uninterrupted - a miracle for these guys.

 

Monday and Tuesday, I appeared on a flurry of sports talk radio shows in Los Angeles, Phoenix, Chicago, Hartford (with Jason Page), Boston, Miami, San Antonio and nationally on ESPN with Brian Kenny and Chris Russo's satellite station, the B Team with Bruce Murray and Bill Pidto.

 

And as the week wore on, the media that continued to broadcast my story tended to be liberal, like today Joe Dupnik, on Storrs' own WHUS, gave me almost 45 minutes on his show Festive Intoxications. Tonday Cenk Uygur with the Young Turks and Dave Zirin on the Edge of Sports, both satellite and internet venues, offered me an opportunity to speak.

 

It seems Calhoun has more friends in radioland, though.

 

Link to more from Calhoun and his friends...

h/t to Rick Lane for the headline. And note - anything you send to us could be used as a letter to the editor and made public. IF there's no name attached, I don't read it. If you do attach your name, understand it may be printed.

 

So according to the U.S. Department of Education, Calhoun's $12 million isn't really $12 million. Letter writer Michael Chapman tipped me off to the DOE's numbers: UConn men's basketball spends $6,097,728 to take in $7,333,214.

 

The $12 million, I'm not sure where it comes from. Andy thibault at Cool Justice has the same numbers, and adds UConn AD Jeff Hathaway's credibility to them.

 

Ray Rotto at CBS wants a deeper look into the numbers. And on further thought, Calhoun's argument that he generates revenue so he deserves a bug salary doesn't fly.

 

Should cops deserve a cut of the speeding tickets they write? Should the Commissioner of the Department of Revenue Services - the tax man -get a cut of what he collects? Should the people in the Department of Social Services who wrote the legislation to help collect child support from deadbeat dads get a cut of that money? No. They do it for the common good.

 

And USA Today bloggers Reid Cherner and Tom Weir indicate that other coaches will be answering this question.

 

USA Today also reports that other Division I schools like Arizona State, Clemson, Maryland and Utah State are asking for coaches to take furloughs. ASU football coach Dennis Erickson is taking a pay cut for 12 days, or $20,800.

 

In honor of Letters to the Editor - which provide a much more dignified forum than a Topix comment forum, or any forum that runs where people won't identify themselves with their names, here go a slew of emails. These are some of the dozens of emails I have gotten - but only those people who gave their full names and email addresses.

 

Link to more letters and reader feedback...

Update II (2/23/09): Dom Perno was never UConn AD. It was John Toner. My bad.

 

Update: Crazy press on this story. I was totally wrong. People did cover it.

Fanhouse- has the youtube exchange. Calhoun is heated.

emeka, nadav and corny - had the actual transcription of the interview.

Sports Illustrated

Stamford Advocate

A few quick things - no one mentioned that I am a student at the University of Connecticut School of Law.

No one mentioned that I do indeed have a photo of Calhoun from today's game on my website - posted above.

No one mentioned that the next reporter he called on, he congratulated that reporter on writing the best story on Hasheem Thabeet ever.

And finally, I am a freelance journalist. The First Amendment says so. And the flood of angry emails from anonymous hacks calling explains why this website has no comments page.

Clearly, this line of questioning touches a nerve. Here's the story.

 

Despite a multi-billion dollar budget deficit facing the state of Connecticut, UConn men's hoops coach Jim Calhoun, the highest paid state employee with an annual salary of $1.6 million, will not take a pay cut to help the state close its budget gap.

 

"Not a dime," Calhoun said during a post-game press conference Saturday, February 21, 2009 in Hartford, after the top-ranked Huskies ran over the University of South Florida Bulls.

 

"I have to retire," Calhoun said. He also mentioned that he makes more than $1.6 million with the side deals. But his value to the university is worth much more, he argued.

 

"We bring in $12 million to the university every year," Calhoun said. "Get some facts and come back and see me then."

 

Calhoun asked what the gate take was for the day, and I responded that I didn't know. He reiterated that the men's basketball program turns over $12 million a year to the university, and that benefits other players.

 

He said that I should talk to him after the press conference, but I was fine discussing it there. This isn't the place, he said. I suggested it was. He raised his voice, yelling like I was one of his college basketball players who failed to get back on defense.

 

I had a knot in my stomach as I pursued the questions in front of the other members of the press who covered Calhoun every day. But I couldn't find a single story that discussed the value of his deal with Comcast.

 

Calhoun would not divulge the amount he gets paid from private endorsement deals like the one with Comcast, which plasters his face across billboards and buses and magazine ads. I didn't even ask about his private deal with Nike.

 

Of course, the reporters and television personalities groaned when I posited that they should have written this story ages ago. I bet that we don't see this mentioned in any game story today or tomorrow.

 

"You're not that stupid" he told me, in front of the assembled press corps. I am, I said, and I repeated the question. He refused to answer.

 

Link...

 

A t a recent freshman experience class for student athletes at the University of Connecticut, some wiseguy frosh asked athletic director Jeff Hathaway when they would get paid.

“I love all of you,” Hathaway said, and he told the students they are not at UConn to get paid.

 

Hathaway related this tale to about 50 UConn Law students at UConn's Davis Courtroom Wednesday, November 19, 2008. Hathaway and NBA lawyer Jeffrey A. Mishkin spun yarns about managing the cut throat world of Big East sports for a half hour or so, then opened the floor to questions.

 

My hand shot up, and I wondered if the scads of money - literally billions of dollars flowing into college athletic coffers from television and marketing contracts - forced us to abandon the myth of college athletes as amateurs.

 

"This is a difficult question," Hathaway said. "There are 343 Division I institutions, all of them are very different in a lot of ways.” Even in the 16-team Big East, public, private, Catholic, and secular schools compete, all with differing size budgets. It would be trouble dividing revenues, Hathaway said.

 

“Who gets paid and how much?” Hathaway asked. “There are only three sports that generate revenue for our school. I don't believe there is a time we will pay our athletes."

 

Mishkin, upon hearing my question aimed at Hathaway, expressed relief that I had nothing for him. Not so fast. The NCAA is the de facto minor league for both the NFL and the NBA, I said, do the NFL and the NBA owe a duty to college athletic programs?

 

No. But first Mishkin admitted the theory that Division I basketball and football players are athletes has been “strained." Yet he agreed with Hathaway that college athletes shouldn't get paid. Nor will contracts happen unless athletics and academics dissociate.

 

Such a dissocation may be the best fix. It was first proposed way back in 1989 by then-Sports Illustrated writer Rick Telander. Disgusted with the inhumanity he witnessed covering college football, Telander, who attended Northwestern University on a gridiron scholarship, suggested in his classic tome The Hundred Yard Lie that the top 50-80 sports schools should form a bona fide football minor league.

More on the myth of amateur athletes, and Obama, too...

 

M en's college basketball players, like those at top-ranked UConn, should be given a stipend for transportation to and from college and home, according to University of Connecticut men's basketball coach Jim Calhoun.

 

NCAA rules prevent that, and I will support Calhoun and call on the NCAA to change those arcane regulations.

 

At Calhoun's post-game press conference last week, Jan. 25, after UConn's brawlball win over Big East rival St. John's University, I blindsided him with this: At what point do we call NCAA Division I basketball a minor league and ask the NBA to subsidize the operations of programs like UConn?

 

None of the 40 or so reporters made a peep while Calhoun thought how to answer the question that begs asking. Are these kids professional entertainers in training or amateur student athletes?

 

Thousands of people pay $50 or more a night to watch UConn men play. Major television networks make billions in ad revenues off of college hoops. Corporations throw millions to UConn in sponsorship ads, hoping to be associated with Calhoun's success. The NBA relies on NCAA schools to provide an inexpensive, mature stream of players.

 

Room for Reform at UConn, Continued...