Robinson is Toast, Calhoun Can't Count and Gross Can't Keep a Secret

It was a busy 24 hours in the land of Syracuse sports. Big East media day went down, Daryl Gross isn't very good at hiding the fact that he's canning his football coach and Jim Calhoun struggles with math and history. Let's review:

Big East Media Day

As you've no doubt read by now, the monster that is the Big East basketball conference held its annual media day, where everyone gets together and makes useless predictions as to what will happen over the next few months. The Orange are picked to finish 8th, which immediately has some playing the "no respect" card.

I'm as excited about hoops as anyone, but Axe is correct, in October it doesn't mean sh*t if you're "not respected"-- because you've got a whole season to EARN respect. On the surface, the Orange are still young and relatively thin along the front line. Besides, Boeheim always does his best work when people aren't gunning for him - so I like where the team is positioned.

I also like the fact that very shortly there will be SU games being played I'll be excited to watch.

Lions, and Tigers and Consultants Oh My.......

Pete Thamel is a reporter for the NY Times......and he's a good one. Editorial content aside, the Times still employs some of the best people working in the business. Pete Thamel says Daryl Gross has hired a consultant to feel help hire his next football coach.

Gross summarily denies the claim, but no one is fooled by it. There isn't a person with a heartbeat that believes Robinson will be back next year and that includes his wife. Frankly I understand why Gross would deny the claim, until there's an official announcement that the coach is toast, he has to -- but he BETTER have someone on retainer, because after the Robinson fiasco, I don't trust him to make the right call.

We can chalk the incident up to another embarrassing endeavor for the athletic director. Whether it is making unsolicited phone calls to ESPN to defend himself, the weird circumstances surrounding the whole "Mike Hopkins is my next coach" issue, or getting allegedly caught hiring a consultant to hire a new coach - the man is a public relations disaster. The good doctor must believe in the old adage there's no such thing as bad publicity.

Calhoun-a-nomics

I found this story from Big East media day rather amusing. In a story discussing how good the Big East will be this year, UConn coach Jim "the coaching box does not apply to me" Calhoun talks about how the Big East is even tougher than it was in the early 90s. Mike Waters notes in the article that in 1992, the Big East sent 7 or its 9 teams to the NCAA tourney.

Armed with this information, Calhoun went into full pre-season coach mode, claiming that this year will be even tougher than it was back then. It's a defense mechanism all coaches automatically slide into call "job preservation." If you talk about how great everyone is before anyone's played a game, there's no such thing as a bad loss. Just ask Jim:

Calhoun said the Big East had some quality teams in the early '90s. The Big East sent seven teams to the 1992 NCAA Tournament when it was just a nine-school league. However, Calhoun said the teams at the bottom of the Big East back then were much weaker than those holding up the league today.

"You had three teams that weren't very good so you got six wins out them," Calhoun said of the early '90s Big East. "Life was a little bit easier. It's a very honest fact. Now, there isn't a bad team in the league. There's not a team you can just show up and beat."

Ummmm Jim......call me crazy but if only 2 teams missed the tournament in 1992, you weren't chalking up an automatic 6 wins a year. I'd be willing to bet if anyone went back and looked, back then he was telling anyone who'd listen those bottom 3 teams were great. Nice work Jim, keep those "honest facts" coming.