Saturday, April 06, 2013

The Inevitable Grampa Sports Walkback

I've lived in the Twin Cities for over 20 years now and if there's any constant in the media world around here, it's this eternal pattern:
  • A coach is fired
  • Sid Hartman hates it and provide much hagiography upon said coach's departure*
  • The new coach is introduced
  • Sid is hostile to the new coach at the press conference, or to the athletic director/general manager who hired the new coach, or both
  • The subsequent column begins the process of hagiography for the new coach
We saw this again when Tubby Smith got ashcanned and new Gophers basketball coach Richard Pitino was introduced. Sid's Friday column was hostile, especially where Gopher AD Norwood Teague was concerned:
That’s why it made a lot of sense to hire Flip Saunders, with his experience as a coach in college and the NBA, but it was pretty evident that even though he was offered the job, he turned it down because he couldn’t operate under Gophers athletic director Norwood Teague’s terms.

Well, it turned out before and after the Saunders negotiations that it was difficult to hire a coach. Teague didn’t contact incoming coach Richard Pitino until Monday and hired him two days later, after Teague was turned down by a number of other candidates. And Teague didn’t contact Eric Musselman until a few days ago, and the son of former Gophers and Wolves coach Bill Musselman was available if Teague hadn’t decided to hire Pitino.
Today, after Sid took a few shots at Teague at the press conference, he's begun the lionization of young Pitino:
I’ve attended many news conferences at the University of Minnesota concerning new head coaches in major sports, and I don’t believe anyone made a better impression than Pitino did when introduced as the successor to Tubby Smith.
Heh. Guess I can't blame Sid. This shtick has worked since he attended the press conference introducing Bronko Nagurski. Why stop now?

*This does not apply to women's coaches for any team, who don't actually exist in el Mundo Sid.

3 comments:

Brad said...

My favorite Sid press conference moment was the one where the T-Wolves introduced first round draft pick JR Rider in 1993. Because Sid and Bob Knight were such good buddies, Grandpa Sports thought it was a mistake the Wolves didn't take Indiana player Calbert Chaney. When Rider finally arrived (Two hours late, BTW. A hint of things to come in his Wolves career), Sid barked "Calbert Chaney woulda been on time!"

As GM Jack McCloskey was introducing Rider, Sid kept making snarky remarks in the background. As McCloskey gave way to Rider at the press conference, you could hear McCloskey say to Sid "If you don't shut the f*ck up, I'm gonna belt ya one." Yes, Jack was close enough to the mic for that to be heard over WCCO radio.

Mr. D said...

I remember that one, too. I don't remember that Chaney was much of a player, but Rider was a train wreck.

3john2 said...

Sid has always been a piece of....work. One of the great memories of my life, though, was when I deliberately locked him out of the scoreboard operating room at the Dome (right next to the pressbox) and stood with my back to the glass door, ignoring him while he ranted and questioned my heritage. I collected a lot of high-fives and fist bumps, though.