How bad is Digger Phelps???

[6th Man]

He's so bad that in ESPN's tournament special tonight, he picked his East regional Final game to be, (!)Pittsburgh to play (4)Xavier to go to the Final 4. For those of you with no brackets in front of you, Pitt and Xavier can only play to see who advances to the Elite 8. Now how in the world can Digger or ESPN allow that to slip through the cracks? A word of advice for anyone trying to win an office pool. DON'T LISTEN TO DIGGER!

[roywhite]

He's so bad that in ESPN's tournament special tonight, he picked his East regional Final game to be, (!)Pittsburgh to play (4)Xavier to go to the Final 4. For those of you with no brackets in front of you, Pitt and Xavier can only play to see who advances to the Elite 8. Now how in the world can Digger or ESPN allow that to slip through the cracks? A word of advice for anyone trying to win an office pool. DON'T LISTEN TO DIGGER!

Actually, that was a repeat broadcast of their Bracketology show from last night. Digger is normally not available on Mondays due to his Mensa group meetings.

[mgtr]

When I was in college, a long, long time ago, there was a fellow named Digger O'Dell, who would have himself buried in a coffin-like affair with an air tube and speaking tube. He was used in California to attract people to housing developments (in those day they were building 5,000 houses at a crack!). So when I hear of Digger Phelps, you can see what I think of, and why I just start laughing. He is up there with Dick Vitale and Mike Patrick in terms of the laughability factor. I sure hope those guys make a bunch of money, because they have no respect at all.

[KrazyKfan]

Digger's just old, he forgot that Duke murdered Xavier earlier this year.

Oh by the way, don't you just love Jay being the only one to pick Nova to beat us.

That's a loyal player and assistant coach for ya.

[JBDuke]

...
Oh by the way, don't you just love Jay being the only one to pick Nova to beat us.

That's a loyal player and assistant coach for ya.

Please, please, please stop the griping about Jay Bilas's lack of Duke bias. Having a Duke diploma on the wall and being a former K assistant does not obligate Jay to be a shill for all things Duke. Jay does his alma mater more credit by being one of the best prepared and most polished college basketball analysts in the business than he ever could by promoting the Blue Devils. His lack of Duke bias is an ASSET to both his reputation and Duke's. Contrast Jay's work to, say, Kenny Smith, who did some Fox broadcasts of North Carolina games and kept saying "we" when referring to the Heels. He came off as a complete joke, and we've heard little of him since on college broadcasts.

The complaining about Jay and his work makes you and others look like petulant children and does much more disservice to Duke by making our fans look bad than anything that Jay Bilas has done.

[4decadedukie]

Please, please, please stop the griping about Jay Bilas's lack of Duke bias. Having a Duke diploma on the wall and being a former K assistant does not obligate Jay to be a shill for all things Duke. Jay does his alma mater more credit by being one of the best prepared and most polished college basketball analysts in the business than he ever could by promoting the Blue Devils.

Of course, Jay could be prepared, polished, articulate, and knowledgeable while also refraining from making remarks concerning Duke. Saying nothing is a reasonable alternative.

[devildownunder]

Of course, Jay could be prepared, polished, articulate, and knowledgeable while also refraining from making remarks concerning Duke. Saying nothing is a reasonable alternative.

Being a college basketball commentator who will not make remarks about Duke is like being a political commentator who will not make remarks about the president. He has to comment on Duke to do his job. As the previous poster said -- in one of the best posts I've ever read in this forum -- he does neither himself nor his alma mater any good if he turns into a shill.

[miramar]

I just remembered the best example of how dumb Digger was as a coach. It was probably back in the seventies, ND at UCLA. UCLA scores to go up by one in the final minute, and Digger does not call a time out and decides to hold for the last shot to win the game.

I can understand that decision if a coach is really confident in his point guard, but it turns out that he didn't notice that UCLA had a foul to give. So when ND got down to the seven second mark, UCLA let the guy go down the lane and then they basically tackled him. ND then got the ball out of bounds with about three seconds or so left, so they had to throw up a desperation shot that did not come close. Good call, Digger!

[dukemsu]

Phelps is far and away the worst analyst on any college basketball program. He doesn't converse with his fellow analysts, leaning on two or three prepackaged stats, and he then rushes through his sentence while waving his highlighter. HIs stats often don't even relate to the point he is trying to make.

Phelps wasn't much of a coach either. He is famous solely for ending UCLA's win streak. He had a number of pro players in his time at Notre Dame but made one Final Four. He also, rather classlessly, brings up UCLA's booster issue (Sam Gilbert) constantly and never gives Wooden credit for his excellent coaching of the extremely talented players he had. If Phelps could have gotten as much out of his guys as Wooden did, he might have more than one Final Four appearance. The Gilbert issue is a valid point, but Phelps has often brought it up appropos of nothing.

I don't understand how this guy holds his position at ESPN. He contributes nothing.

dukemsu

[mgtr]

I don't understand how this guy holds his position at ESPN. He contributes nothing.

dukemsu

I agree. The only logical explanation is that he has "special" pictures of the ESPN brass. If anyone here has dupes of those, we would all like to see them. Particularly if Ole Roy is also involved.
Now, this is all hypothetical. If the pictures do not exist, then there is no rational explanation for how he holds his job.

[devildownunder]

...scratch that. It was Jim Rome, whom I think most of us will agree is a buffoon. Still, he said something wise once. Once! And I think it applies here: It does you no good whatsoever to try to makes sense of why someone else has the gig they have in show business.

It's true. There really is no rhyme or reason to any of it, especially if you are not privy to inside info. So don't make yourself crazy trying to figure it out.

[roywhite]

I agree. The only logical explanation is that he has "special" pictures of the ESPN brass. If anyone here has dupes of those, we would all like to see them. Particularly if Ole Roy is also involved.
Now, this is all hypothetical. If the pictures do not exist, then there is no rational explanation for how he holds his job.

Perhaps it could be explained as Nebraska Sen. Roman Hruska defended Nixon's nomination of the undistinguished Harold Carswell to the Supreme Court:

"So what if he is mediocre? There are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren't they? We can't have all Brandeises, Cordozos,and Frankfurters and stuff like that there.."

Interesting, but Carswell didn't make it to the Court.

[gwwilburn]

Digger wasn't that bad of a coach, if I understand correctly. He coached the only team to beat a UCLA squad that contained Bill Walton.
But from what some of you guys are saying, that was one of the only highlights of his career. I'll trust your analysis.

[77devil]

Digger wasn't that bad of a coach, if I understand correctly. He coached the only team to beat a UCLA squad that contained Bill Walton.

Except for that other team with a guy named David Thompson that won the national championship. They were pretty decent.

I liked Digger as an opposing coach. His bloviating always exceeded his performance against Duke which was something on the order of 2-10 lifetime.

[77devil]

Digger wasn't that bad of a coach, if I understand correctly. He coached the only team to beat a UCLA squad that contained Bill Walton.
But from what some of you guys are saying, that was one of the only highlights of his career. I'll trust your analysis.

I should have added to my earlier post that Digger always has been anti Duke and critical of the ACC. He constantly complained as a coach that the media and the NCAA tournament committee were biased toward the ACC. He unethically continued to heavily recruit Gene Banks after he signed his LOI. He refused to accept the consensus pick by all of the other analysts of Duke over Illinois during the 2004 ESPN tournament selection show, and made a big issue of it, even though the format of the show was to present a consensus bracket.

Digger became ever more bitter as a coach during the long stretch of mediocrity and worse that his program experienced due in no small part to Coach K's successful recruiting of the kind of players Notre Dame had attracted earlier in Digger's tenure.

[dukemsu]

I should have added to my earlier post that Digger always has been anti Duke and critical of the ACC. He constantly complained as a coach that the media and the NCAA tournament committee were biased toward the ACC. He unethically continued to heavily recruit Gene Banks after he signed his LOI. In the 2004 ESPN tournament selection show, he refused to accept the consensus pick by all of the other analysts of Duke over Illinois, and made a issue of it, even though the format of the show was to present a consensus bracket.

Digger became ever more bitter as a coach during the long stretch of mediocrity and worse for his program due in no small part to Coach K's successful recruiting of the kind of players Notre Dame had had success with earlier in Digger's tenure.

Digger also had some bitterness toward his geographic rivals in the Big 10, though he did manage to stay on good terms with Knight. He developed a particular disdain for Michigan State after the '79 Spartans kept his best team (which was a #1 seed) from the Final Four.

dukemsu

[FerryFor50]

Phelps is far and away the worst analyst on any college basketball program. He doesn't converse with his fellow analysts, leaning on two or three prepackaged stats, and he then rushes through his sentence while waving his highlighter. HIs stats often don't even relate to the point he is trying to make.

Phelps wasn't much of a coach either. He is famous solely for ending UCLA's win streak. He had a number of pro players in his time at Notre Dame but made one Final Four. He also, rather classlessly, brings up UCLA's booster issue (Sam Gilbert) constantly and never gives Wooden credit for his excellent coaching of the extremely talented players he had. If Phelps could have gotten as much out of his guys as Wooden did, he might have more than one Final Four appearance. The Gilbert issue is a valid point, but Phelps has often brought it up appropos of nothing.

I don't understand how this guy holds his position at ESPN. He contributes nothing.

dukemsu

I was always under the impression that UCLA was so dominant because they got all the talented players BECAUSE of the boosters.

[dukemsu]

I was always under the impression that UCLA was so dominant because they got all the talented players BECAUSE of the boosters.

That is certainly a debatable point.

My point was that Phelps sounds like a bitter has-been whenever he talks about it. Ole Roy may call the NCAA cops on people, (he's long been said to have called them on Donovan), but at least he's never called anyone a cheater in public.

dukemsu

[FerryFor50]

That is certainly a debatable point.

My point was that Phelps sounds like a bitter has-been whenever he talks about it. Ole Roy may call the NCAA cops on people, (he's long been said to have called them on Donovan), but at least he's never called anyone a cheater in public.

dukemsu

Fair enough. If I had to coach in an environment where all I heard about was how dominant a team was that I knew was cheating, and then beat that team, and in my retirement hear constantly how great the coach of that team was... well, yea, I'd be bitter, too.

[blueprofessor]

I was always under the impression that UCLA was so dominant because they got all the talented players BECAUSE of the boosters.

Actually,UCLA recruiting was clean.It was remarkably lacking in intensity.A good number of recruits arrived sight unseen and an inch or 2 shorter than advertised.Different game then.

Best regards--Blueprof