WINNAR.

THE STORY EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT
Dear Cancer: Die. Love, Coaches

We normally struggle to make light of potentially fatal diseases - even we have depths to which we won’t stoop, much to the surprise of our wife - but we do call the lede “the story everyone is talking about,” and the news late Friday that UConn coach Jim Calhoun once again had cancer qualifies for such title.

Calhoun had already beat cancer twice - prostate cancer in 2003 and skin cancer in 2007 - by catching it early (good for cancer and chicken pox; bad for gonorrhea). This time, he alerted his doctor to a growth on his neck that was determined to be squamous cell cancer. Growth removed, radiation administered, and four weeks later, scans show his lymph nodes and skin to be cancer-free.

Upon hearing the news, Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski expressed relief - not only that his colleague was safe and would return to the sidelines, but also because Cancer’s third consecutive loss to Calhoun in a championship round gave it a slightly worse record than Coach K’s own 0-2 against Calhoun in games that count. (Not that we’re bitter.)

TWO STORIES THAT CAUGHT OUR EYE FOR NO GOOD REASON
Bowl Game Wins Not Required

When we saw the headline “It’s Official - Kevin White is Duke’s New AD” on DBR, we did a double take. Wait, Notre Dame’s Kevin White? The guy with a list of management and publicity blunders we can’t begin to list? A guy whose departure has Irish fans dancing in the streets? THAT Kevin White?

And then we thought about it some more, and it all makes sense. White’s three main attributes: a talent for developing non-revenue sports, cowardice and subservience to coaches of the school’s most powerful teams, and totally incompetence in football program development. My God, he’s PERFECT for Duke!

Hired on Name Recognition Alone

We had no similar surprise when Jeff Goodman broke that Billy Donovan was once again down one assistant coach at Florida - when you win two titles, your assistants tend to be a hot commodity. When Donovan filled the position within three days by poaching Shaka Smart, the lead assistant and recruiting director from Clemson … well, color us impressed. No indication that Smart will bring any talent with him to Gainesville besides his completely awesome name, but a solid hire by UF all the same.

FOUR STORIES WORTH ONE LINE APIECE

Anecdotal Analysis Always Right - We’re not saying the San Francisco Chronicle is wrong when they claim that former college stars rarely make good college coaches - but a little data would be nice, guys. Blogs can do it, so can you.

Does This Mean We’ll Start Outsourcing Mid-Majors? - Team China punishes Team Conference USA by 23 points in an Olympic tune-up, giving our future overlords three straight wins over the all-conference-well-sorta-cause-nobody-in-the-draft-was-there team.

We Wouldn’t Do That If We Were You - Rutgers extends head coach Greg Hill through 2012 based not on his on-court performance (20-39 in two years!) but on one good recruiting class. You would think a Jersey school would be more wary of awarding a no-show contract.

Mormons Get Dirty and Freaky - A Utah TV reporter’s mailbag contains some strong language from Ute and Cougar fans, but also a link that burned our corneas, so now we pass the pain along to you, fair reader.

Nightmare. Fuel.