The best part of Dan Hurley’s latest week at the center of sports villain discourse was his hard pivot on a podcast that was unfolding as expected — a little bit of damage control, a touch of mea culpa, Hurley saying it was embarrassing to have proclaimed himself the best coach in men’s college basketball considering veteran peers who are “as good or better than me.”
Pivot.
“The people that want to have at me, the super soft media people that want to cancel me for being an intense coach, you know, I don’t think we need to make sports softer,” Hurley told Adam Finkelstein on a 247Sports podcast. “So, yeah, go for it. And then the fans of teams and programs that wish they were us, that get joy out of these moments with me on the sideline, then enjoy that. But you know you don’t have what we got, which is the banners. But if this is your moment right here to mock me on social media for being an intense coach, go for it.”
Cancel him? From what, hosting the ESPYs? “Being an intense coach” is how he describes proclaiming, “I’m the best coach in the f—ing sport” to an official he’s berating and ordering to take more of it? Seriously, how do you not love this guy?
He was making his point pic.twitter.com/kfYOPMEmF5
— FOX College Hoops (@CBBonFOX) January 22, 2025
Seriously. You actually should, if you love men’s college basketball, and even if you root for a team that considers UConn a rival, which I suppose could be the entire Big East and any of the power programs that would like to supplant the two-time defending champs. Throw in Syracuse and Pitt, too.
Throw in everyone. Hurley is an adversary to all. Also, he is an authentic, outspoken personality who inspires emotion in others, an increasingly rare commodity in a sport that used to be teeming with them.
His antics this season, which stretch back to Maui and calling an official a “f—ing joke,” have inspired waves of anger. Some laughter. And for me, a longing for the days, not all that long ago, when this sport could out-personality any other.
John Calipari returns to Kentucky this weekend, and he might get booed or he might get cheered. I liked him best when he was getting screamed at by John Chaney. Rivalries? How about Jim Boeheim against John Thompson? How about Bob Knight against Gene Keady?
Throw a Billy Martin or a Jerry Glanville on the table. I’ll raise you an Al McGuire and a Rollie Massimino. Dale Brown, Nolan Richardson, Jim Valvano, Jud Heathcote, Clem Haskins, Rick Majerus, Bobby Cremins, Billy Tubbs … I’m forgetting people, but I really don’t think this is close.
As for villains, let’s try Jerry Tarkanian, Bob Huggins, Boeheim, Knight and Mike Krzyzewski for starters. Krzyzewski, like Hurley, largely because of all the winning.
Yes, we’ve got Rick Pitino back, but he’s slowed down a bit and has become a somewhat sympathetic character, a guy who asks Kentucky fans not to boo his friend-turned-adversary Calipari. We’ve got fire on some sidelines. Brad Underwood. Bruce Pearl. Nate Oats. Tom Izzo, though his heat index peaked in the days of Bo Ryan eliciting smoke from his ears.
Bo Ryan. Damn. The good old days. No offense to today’s coaching community at large, but it seems to be a largely affable, noncontroversial group.
No offense to men’s college basketball, which I happen to love and find compelling from November through March, but its popularity has declined over the past several years. (Women’s college basketball has soared and can thank Caitlin Clark and other stars, but let’s also acknowledge the transcendent villainy of Geno Auriemma and Kim Mulkey.)
Football and realignment are identified culprits, and coaches will make sure the transfer portal gets its due blame. That’s fine. I’d also like to suggest that the more people in the game who make people feel a certain way — especially people who can take or leave the game — the better it is for the game. And that more would be welcome.
That can’t be manufactured. With Hurley, I don’t think anything is. This guy has engaged in trash-talking sessions with fans of several teams, including his own, per Mike Anthony of Hearst Media, and isn’t afraid to let fly with an expletive at the White House.
Yes, he went too far with some of his comments to officials. The “best coach” thing is worth a hearty eye roll. So were Hurley’s comments complaining about TV cameras spending too much time on him and not as much on his counterparts.
(In a pertinent if somewhat weird exercise, I kept track of the camera close-up time during Peacock’s broadcast of UConn’s comeback win over DePaul on Wednesday, and Chris Holtmann had an edge of 51 seconds to Hurley’s 36 seconds. Maybe this just means Hurley is already scaring broadcast partners into leaving him alone, which would actually be his biggest offense yet.)
This isn’t meant to defend all Hurley has done or join the sycophancy that inevitably emerges to counteract coach criticisms. But some of the criticisms are a bit much. He’s not the only coach who barks at officials. Saturday night at Auburn’s Neville Arena, I watched Pearl and Rick Barnes gripe at them all night, taking brief breaks to speak to their teams.
Also, officiating isn’t good enough in this sport because they aren’t full-time employees and aren’t paid enough so they work way too much.
Knight comparisons are unfair. Look closely at Knight’s legacy and you see too much problematic treatment of humans to ignore. Hurley is a hothead.
He acknowledged as much on the same podcast, referring to the “dark side” of his personality. Look closely at his story — read this one by my colleague Brendan Quinn — and you realize you’re witnessing the tightly wound, hypercompetitive little brother of a legend who struggled with that for a long time and tended to his own mental health at an age and time before that was much of a thing.
Maybe that’s the best way for college basketball fans to look at Hurley. As an annoying, bombastic little brother. You don’t have to like him. You do have to love him.
(Photo: David Butler II / Imagn Images)
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