The strangest twist to yesterday's news out of Raleigh was not the out-of-nowhere hire of Mark Gottfried as N.C. State's basketball coach.
It was a very public resumption of the feud between Wolfpack AD Debbie Yow and Maryland coach Gary Williams ... with a national columnist doing his best to stir the pot.
Yow was Williams' boss at Maryland, and the two did not get along. Here's a quick skinny on that tumultuous history.
The past few weeks have no doubt been frustrating for Yow, whose whiffs at a number of other coaches were publicized as Wolfpack fans went through an agonizing re-run of the process that produced Sidney "C List" Lowe years back.
Yow was asked about the reports and rumors that Williams had told some of the other N.C. State candidates that Yow was difficult to work for.
And that's when Yow went off.
“I don’t have a reputation across all men’s basketball as being difficult to work with,” Yow told chuckling reporters. “I have a reputation of not getting along with Gary Williams, who has tried to sabotage the search. C’mon. We all know that. Okay? So, whatever. It’s not a reputation, it’s Gary Williams out there doing his thing. Whatever.”
The "sabotage" thing is a serious charge, one that Williams forcefully refuted in a statement released soon thereafter.
“I haven’t talked to anyone — coach or athletic director — connected to the N.C. State search. I don’t have any interest in the N.C. State search, since I’m coaching at Maryland and working hard to run our program. Anyone who says I’ve had contact with a prospective coach or athletic director regarding this search isn’t being truthful.”
The story gets even stranger with the inclusion of a third party: Gregg Doyel of CBSSports.com.
Doyel is an interesting dude, and in one respect I admire him because he's not afraid to say what he thinks. And he's a fine writer, too. But on the other hand, his schtick is being outlandish and saying things that provoke. So when you see him absolutely going off on something or someone, it's hard to get away from the suspicion that he's playing to that schtick at the expense of carefully and fairly arriving at genuine opinion.
Doyel's opinion on this Yow situation kind of reeks. Doyel appeared on a Raleigh-based radio show yesterday, and his megaphone-based message was this:
Yow is the greatest person on Earth, and Williams is the worst person on Earth.
The radio interview was noted by Washington Post writer Dan Steinberg in this entry.
Here are some snippets from Doyel's tirade, according to Steinberg:
"If you’re a good coach at a good school...it’s hard to pull the trigger and say I’m winning here at Arizona or Texas, or I’m winning here at VCU, wherever it is that I’m winning at, and I want to go to N.C. State, where they haven’t won the last couple years. It requires a whole lot of confidence. And if you get one person — and that person’s Gary Williams — to say the AD’s not easy to work for, that will allow someone to justify their own [feelings]....Basically, Gary Williams is giving coaches an excuse to do the easy thing, which is stay where they are.”
Well, if that’s all Gary Williams was doing, that’s not a terribly damning thing. The conversation then moved on. But Doyel wasn’t ready for it to be over. He had more to say.
“Are we done talking about Gary Williams?” he later asked. “I want to make this very clear, that if Gary Williams does not return my call, he’s scared of me. And so he can act all big and bad, and he can stand there on his coaching bench and turn around and yell at his assistant coaches, who've done nothing wrong. And when a guy on the court travels, he can turn around and yell at the 12th man on his bench, because he’s a little bit tiny coward runt of a man. He can do all that."
I listened to the radio excerpt myself (and you can too by clicking on hour 2 here), and let's just say Doyel doesn't build a strong case for his position.
The host, Dave Glenn, asks the obvious question: Yo, Greg, why the over-the-top lovefest for Yow?
"It's one of those things you just kind of know. It's a feel thing. You sit there in front of somebody at press conferences or maybe informal gatherings with the media, and you just kind of get a sense this person, first of all, is smarter than I am. ... It's humbling to realize that person is smarter than I am, that person knows what they're doing, and that person doesn't have a huge ego about them and doesn't want all the credit. ... There's some people you don't trust with competency, and Debbie Yow is dripping with competency."
Doyel goes on to say that the N.C. State coaching search "is breaking my heart for the whole program" because mean old Gary Williams (allegedly) said unfavorable things about Yow to his coaching brethren.
Doyel is apparently making a case that, if it weren't for the sinister behind-the-scenes machinations of Williams, the Wolfpack would've been able to land Sean Miller or Rick Barnes or Shaka Smart or some other big name that turned down the Wolfpack.
"It's a tough thing to watch from the outside," Doyel said.
First off, the whole "heartbroken" routine is amusing. Doyel probably should be advised not to pursue a career in acting, because he doesn't do a particularly good job of selling the notion that he genuinely hurts for the N.C. State program.
And second, this bizarre Doyel-Yow alliance becomes almost shady when Yow alludes to Doyel's comments during yesterday's press conference to introduce Gottfried.
I'm no apologist for Gary Williams, but how does one not take his side in this?
If in fact Williams told some of his inquiring peers that his former AD is tough to work for, are we really supposed to believe it sealed the destruction of Yow's coaching search?
Is there anything at all wrong with Williams presenting his thoughts on Yow to coaches who solicit those thoughts?
And, finally, what does it say about Yow's choice of Gottfried when she spends time during his introductory press conference whining about the supposed sabotaging of more attractive candidates?
References work both ways. Coaches are just as justified in doing their homework on Yow as Yow is in doing her homework on coaches.
Advice to Yow and her writer friend: Quit your crying and move on to the next soapbox.
LW
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