I must say, it was awfully difficult coming up with a list of the 10 most embarrassing moments in the history of college basketball. Not that it was hard to think of examples. The struggle was in scanning the long, sordid history of the sport and picking out only 10. What, pray tell, is a fellow supposed to leave out?
A lot, it turns out. Cincinnati coach Bob Huggins was caught by a police videotape stumbling dead drunk out of his car ... and didn't make this list. Larry Eustachy resigned in disgrace from Iowa State after photographs were published of him drinking with and smooching coeds the night of a road loss ... and didn't make this list. LSU's Dale Brown, in a fit of pique, once asked a reporter at a press conference if he had ever masturbated ... and didn't make this list. Jim Harrick got fired from UCLA for falsifying an expense report and then landed his two subsequent employers, Rhode Island and Georgia, on NCAA probation. He, too, somehow escaped my top 10.
In fact, you could do a top 10 embarrassing list each on Bob Knight and Jerry Tarkanian alone. In the interest of equal time, I selected only one example from the sport's two most noted villains. My apologies to the General and the Shark for the short shrift.
Perhaps the hardest part was in deciding which cash-related scandals were not worthy of enshrinement here. When SI.com asks me for a top 50 list next year, I'll include the Fab Five Fallout at Michigan, which vacated the Wolverines' two Final Four appearances. Speaking of which, Chris Webber's phantom timeout in the 1993 NCAA title game also got tossed in the waste bin. That moment was certainly embarrassing -- just not quite embarrassing enough.
Here, then, is my top 10. Or perhaps I should call it my bottom 10 -- listed, appropriately enough, from the bottom down.
10. UNLV players photographed with "The Fixer": May 26, 1991
Tarkanian's rebellious reign at UNLV will be most remembered for a single image: a photograph, first published in the spring of 1991, showing three of his players lounging in a hot tub with Richie (the Fixer) Perry. Perry was a Las Vegas resident who spent a year in prison after pleading guilty in the mid-1980s to conspiring to commit sports bribery as part of a gambling scandal at Boston College. In 1974, Perry also was convicted of federal charges related to fixing horse races.
Tarkanian, of course, was shocked -- shocked! -- to learn that his players were gallivanting with a known gambler and convicted sports fixer. The NCAA did not find that any major violations had come of the relationship, but it did later hit UNLV with major sanctions for the many other violations committed under Tarkanian. He was forced to resign in the spring of 1992.
9. McLain reveals his cocaine addiction: March 16, 1987
Villanova's win over Georgetown in the 1985 NCAA championship game was one of the greatest upsets in the history of sports. That achievement, alas, was forever tainted by the SI cover story published two years later that detailed the cocaine habit of the Wildcats' point guard, Gary McLain.
Among other revelations, McLain, whom SI paid $35,000 to have his story ghost-written for the magazine by Lexington Herald-Leader reporter Jeffrey Marx, said he was wired on coke during Villanova's Final Four victory over Memphis State as well as during its ceremonial visit to the White House.
Beyond the admission of his own use, McLain wrote that some of his teammates had done drugs with him. He also said that Villanova coach Rollie Massimino knew about his habit but didn't want to expose it for fear of damaging the program. Massimino denied those charges and didn't speak to McLain for many years, but he eventually forgave his player.
8. Cleveland State coach arrested outside of crack house: July 13, 1990
Kevin Mackey was far from the only coach to succumb to a substance-abuse problem and run afoul of the law. Mackey was, however, arrested under arguably the most embarrassing circumstances.
In the summer of 1990, Cleveland police got a tip that Mackey was using cocaine inside a known crack house. When the police got there, television reporters who monitor their police radios arrived in tow to record Mackey emerging from the house with a prostitute on his arm. Cleveland State fired Mackey a few days later, and after he pleaded no contest to charges of cocaine abuse and driving under the influence, a judge suspended his prison sentence and ordered him to enter rehab for 60 days.
Mackey says he is still clean and sober. After bouncing around the subterranean coaching circuit for a number of years, he joined the Indiana Pacers as a scout in 2004.
7. Worst fans ever: Arizona State, Feb. 1988
Some of the more fun and creative chants from opposing fans concern a player's private life. Even those actions that push the boundaries of good taste -- such as when Duke's Cameron Crazies tossed women's underwear and inflated condoms at a Maryland player who had been accused of sexual assault -- can be condemned with a snicker of appreciation.
But there is no excusing or laughing at what a small but demented group of Arizona State students chanted at Arizona guard Steve Kerr in February of Kerr's senior season. Kerr's father, Malcolm, who was serving as president of the American University in Beirut, Lebanon, had been assassinated outside his office on Jan. 18, 1984. As Kerr was shooting in warmups with his teammates that night in Tempe, the ASU students repeatedly chanted, "P-L-O! P-L-O!" and called out to Kerr such despicable phrases as, "Hey, Steve, where's your dad?"
Incensed by the breach of human decency, Kerr scored 20 points in the first half and led the Wildcats to a 101-73 rout of their cross-state rivals. Arizona got the win, but college basketball suffered an ignominious loss.
6. Envelope to Kentucky recruit spills out cash: March 31, 1988
It was an envelope of worms. In 1988, on a conveyor belt in Los Angeles, an Emery Air Freight package that originated in the Kentucky basketball office and was addressed to the father of elite recruit Chris Mills accidentally broke open, spilling out $1,000 in cash. In the bigger picture of college basketball scandals, one lousy grand amounts to a small pittance. But that accident initiated a lengthy investigation that led to charges of academic fraud involving another UK player, Eric Manuel. The whole case led to the resignation of coach Eddie Sutton, who to this day insists he has no idea who put that money in the ill-fated envelope. The scandal left the sport's proudest program in shambles for years.
5. Bob Knight throws the chair: Feb. 23, 1985
Like the picture of Tarkanian's players in that hot tub, the image of Knight tossing a chair across the court in Assembly Hall in Bloomington will forever punctuate Knight's brilliant and tumultuous career.
Having just received a technical foul during Indiana's game against archrival Purdue, Knight became so incensed at the officials that he picked up a chair from the Indiana bench and tossed it toward the free-throw lane, where a Purdue player was preparing to shoot free throws. That gesture earned Knight a second technical foul, an automatic ejection and an entrenched place in the annals of the most embarrassing moments in sports.
Knight would coach another 15 years at Indiana -- and win a third NCAA title, in 1987 -- before his temper and lack of respect for authority would finally lead to his firing at IU. And to answer one of the great trivia questions of all time: The Purdue player at the foul line was Steve Reid.
4. Len Bias dies of cocaine overdose: June 19, 1986
I realize that my pal Jack McCallum has included the Bias death in his list of embarrassing NBA moments, but since Bias was still a college student at the time, and since his death had such far-reaching ramifications at Maryland, I felt it ought to be included here as well.
Many college hoops denizens, myself included, still insist that Bias was the best player they ever saw. A 6-foot-8 physical specimen with a feathery touch (he led the ACC in foul shooting as a senior), Bias was a taller, stronger version of Michael Jordan. On the court he looked virtually immortal, which was what made his death so shocking.
Just two days after the Boston Celtics made him the No. 2 overall pick in the NBA draft, Bias died of cardiorespiratory arrest brought on by the use of cocaine. Aside from the personal tragedy -- and the epically bad judgment that caused it -- Bias' death cast a dark shadow over College Park for more than a decade. Terrapins coach Lefty Driesell was the inevitable fall guy who was forced to resign after 17 years of guiding the program. His successor, Bob Wade, committed numerous NCAA violations that led to a two-year postseason ban and a one-year live television ban.
Maryland alum Gary Williams brought the program to even greater heights than Bias did when he led the Terps to the 2002 NCAA championship. But the folks in College Park will never forget the devastation of Bias' death. Neither will the rest of college basketball.
3. "Hot Rod" Williams blows up Tulane: April 4, 1985
John Williams earned his sobriquet as a child, when he had the habit of making engine-like sounds while sliding across a floor. The nickname would take on an entirely different meaning in 1985, when Williams, a 6-foot-11 forward, was indicted, along with two other players, on charges of fixing three games at Tulane. (Two more Tulane players were also accused of fixing games, but they turned state's evidence in the case and were not indicted.) Williams' bribery case ended in a mistrial, but as part of the school's investigation Williams confessed that two Tulane recruiters had given him a box containing $10,000 to attend the school. Amidst all the fallout, Tulane president Eamon Kelly shut down the basketball program for four years.
2. Baylor coach slanders murdered forward: August 2003
It was bad enough that college basketball was at the center of a national mediathon. In the summer of 2003, Baylor junior forward Patrick Dennehy disappeared with no explanation. Dennehy's body turned up several weeks later, and his teammate, Carlton Dotson, later pleaded guilty to the murder and is currently serving a 35-year prison term.
Tragic as Dennehy's murder was, nobody was blaming his coach, Dave Bliss, for what happened. Yet the intense scrutiny on the program soon turned up evidence that Bliss had arranged for Dennehy to receive tens of thousands of illicit dollars in tuition and housing. (Bliss had asked Dennehy, a transfer from New Mexico, to forfeit his scholarship so that he could bring in another player.) As details of the scheme came to light, Bliss asked a member of his coaching staff to spread rumors that Dennehy was selling drugs, which would explain his mysterious cash flow. Bliss was even caught on tape callously surmising that Dennehy wouldn't be able to refute those rumors, seeing as how he was dead and all.
Unbeknownst to Bliss, the assistant secretly taped those conversations. When the tapes were made public, Bliss was fired, and college basketball had suffered a truly humiliating moment.
1. CCNY point-shaving scandal rocks the sport: Jan. 17, 1951
Though it may be hard to believe now, the City College of New York was once the pride of the Big Apple. The school's prominence peaked in 1950, when it became the only school to win both the NCAA and NIT championships in the same year. Coached by local legend Nat Holman, CCNY's dominance of the sport made Madison Square Garden the mecca of basketball.
It all unraveled quickly and embarrassingly the following year, when seven CCNY players were found guilty of taking money from professional gamblers to fix games over a three-year period. Those findings were part of a larger investigation by New York District Attorney Frank Hogan that eventually implicated 32 players from seven schools. (One of those players, LIU guard Sherman White, had just been named college basketball's national player of the year.) The New York City Board of Education also found that the high school records of 14 players had been altered so they could gain admission to CCNY. Many of the relationships between the players and the gamblers had been forged at summer resorts in upstate New York, and the vastness of the episode made it the worst sports scandal since members of the Chicago White Sox threw the 1919 World Series.
One aside: When the scandal first broke in New York, Kentucky coach Adolph Rupp boasted that the gamblers "couldn't touch my boys with a 10-foot pole." Shortly thereafter, five of Rupp's players were likewise charged with accepting bribes to fix games. As a result, the NCAA suspended Kentucky for the 1952-53 season.
A lot, it turns out. Cincinnati coach Bob Huggins was caught by a police videotape stumbling dead drunk out of his car ... and didn't make this list. Larry Eustachy resigned in disgrace from Iowa State after photographs were published of him drinking with and smooching coeds the night of a road loss ... and didn't make this list. LSU's Dale Brown, in a fit of pique, once asked a reporter at a press conference if he had ever masturbated ... and didn't make this list. Jim Harrick got fired from UCLA for falsifying an expense report and then landed his two subsequent employers, Rhode Island and Georgia, on NCAA probation. He, too, somehow escaped my top 10.
In fact, you could do a top 10 embarrassing list each on Bob Knight and Jerry Tarkanian alone. In the interest of equal time, I selected only one example from the sport's two most noted villains. My apologies to the General and the Shark for the short shrift.
Perhaps the hardest part was in deciding which cash-related scandals were not worthy of enshrinement here. When SI.com asks me for a top 50 list next year, I'll include the Fab Five Fallout at Michigan, which vacated the Wolverines' two Final Four appearances. Speaking of which, Chris Webber's phantom timeout in the 1993 NCAA title game also got tossed in the waste bin. That moment was certainly embarrassing -- just not quite embarrassing enough.
Here, then, is my top 10. Or perhaps I should call it my bottom 10 -- listed, appropriately enough, from the bottom down.
10. UNLV players photographed with "The Fixer": May 26, 1991
Tarkanian's rebellious reign at UNLV will be most remembered for a single image: a photograph, first published in the spring of 1991, showing three of his players lounging in a hot tub with Richie (the Fixer) Perry. Perry was a Las Vegas resident who spent a year in prison after pleading guilty in the mid-1980s to conspiring to commit sports bribery as part of a gambling scandal at Boston College. In 1974, Perry also was convicted of federal charges related to fixing horse races.
Tarkanian, of course, was shocked -- shocked! -- to learn that his players were gallivanting with a known gambler and convicted sports fixer. The NCAA did not find that any major violations had come of the relationship, but it did later hit UNLV with major sanctions for the many other violations committed under Tarkanian. He was forced to resign in the spring of 1992.
9. McLain reveals his cocaine addiction: March 16, 1987
Villanova's win over Georgetown in the 1985 NCAA championship game was one of the greatest upsets in the history of sports. That achievement, alas, was forever tainted by the SI cover story published two years later that detailed the cocaine habit of the Wildcats' point guard, Gary McLain.
Among other revelations, McLain, whom SI paid $35,000 to have his story ghost-written for the magazine by Lexington Herald-Leader reporter Jeffrey Marx, said he was wired on coke during Villanova's Final Four victory over Memphis State as well as during its ceremonial visit to the White House.
Beyond the admission of his own use, McLain wrote that some of his teammates had done drugs with him. He also said that Villanova coach Rollie Massimino knew about his habit but didn't want to expose it for fear of damaging the program. Massimino denied those charges and didn't speak to McLain for many years, but he eventually forgave his player.
8. Cleveland State coach arrested outside of crack house: July 13, 1990
Kevin Mackey was far from the only coach to succumb to a substance-abuse problem and run afoul of the law. Mackey was, however, arrested under arguably the most embarrassing circumstances.
In the summer of 1990, Cleveland police got a tip that Mackey was using cocaine inside a known crack house. When the police got there, television reporters who monitor their police radios arrived in tow to record Mackey emerging from the house with a prostitute on his arm. Cleveland State fired Mackey a few days later, and after he pleaded no contest to charges of cocaine abuse and driving under the influence, a judge suspended his prison sentence and ordered him to enter rehab for 60 days.
Mackey says he is still clean and sober. After bouncing around the subterranean coaching circuit for a number of years, he joined the Indiana Pacers as a scout in 2004.
7. Worst fans ever: Arizona State, Feb. 1988
Some of the more fun and creative chants from opposing fans concern a player's private life. Even those actions that push the boundaries of good taste -- such as when Duke's Cameron Crazies tossed women's underwear and inflated condoms at a Maryland player who had been accused of sexual assault -- can be condemned with a snicker of appreciation.
But there is no excusing or laughing at what a small but demented group of Arizona State students chanted at Arizona guard Steve Kerr in February of Kerr's senior season. Kerr's father, Malcolm, who was serving as president of the American University in Beirut, Lebanon, had been assassinated outside his office on Jan. 18, 1984. As Kerr was shooting in warmups with his teammates that night in Tempe, the ASU students repeatedly chanted, "P-L-O! P-L-O!" and called out to Kerr such despicable phrases as, "Hey, Steve, where's your dad?"
Incensed by the breach of human decency, Kerr scored 20 points in the first half and led the Wildcats to a 101-73 rout of their cross-state rivals. Arizona got the win, but college basketball suffered an ignominious loss.
6. Envelope to Kentucky recruit spills out cash: March 31, 1988
It was an envelope of worms. In 1988, on a conveyor belt in Los Angeles, an Emery Air Freight package that originated in the Kentucky basketball office and was addressed to the father of elite recruit Chris Mills accidentally broke open, spilling out $1,000 in cash. In the bigger picture of college basketball scandals, one lousy grand amounts to a small pittance. But that accident initiated a lengthy investigation that led to charges of academic fraud involving another UK player, Eric Manuel. The whole case led to the resignation of coach Eddie Sutton, who to this day insists he has no idea who put that money in the ill-fated envelope. The scandal left the sport's proudest program in shambles for years.
5. Bob Knight throws the chair: Feb. 23, 1985
Like the picture of Tarkanian's players in that hot tub, the image of Knight tossing a chair across the court in Assembly Hall in Bloomington will forever punctuate Knight's brilliant and tumultuous career.
Having just received a technical foul during Indiana's game against archrival Purdue, Knight became so incensed at the officials that he picked up a chair from the Indiana bench and tossed it toward the free-throw lane, where a Purdue player was preparing to shoot free throws. That gesture earned Knight a second technical foul, an automatic ejection and an entrenched place in the annals of the most embarrassing moments in sports.
Knight would coach another 15 years at Indiana -- and win a third NCAA title, in 1987 -- before his temper and lack of respect for authority would finally lead to his firing at IU. And to answer one of the great trivia questions of all time: The Purdue player at the foul line was Steve Reid.
4. Len Bias dies of cocaine overdose: June 19, 1986
I realize that my pal Jack McCallum has included the Bias death in his list of embarrassing NBA moments, but since Bias was still a college student at the time, and since his death had such far-reaching ramifications at Maryland, I felt it ought to be included here as well.
Many college hoops denizens, myself included, still insist that Bias was the best player they ever saw. A 6-foot-8 physical specimen with a feathery touch (he led the ACC in foul shooting as a senior), Bias was a taller, stronger version of Michael Jordan. On the court he looked virtually immortal, which was what made his death so shocking.
Just two days after the Boston Celtics made him the No. 2 overall pick in the NBA draft, Bias died of cardiorespiratory arrest brought on by the use of cocaine. Aside from the personal tragedy -- and the epically bad judgment that caused it -- Bias' death cast a dark shadow over College Park for more than a decade. Terrapins coach Lefty Driesell was the inevitable fall guy who was forced to resign after 17 years of guiding the program. His successor, Bob Wade, committed numerous NCAA violations that led to a two-year postseason ban and a one-year live television ban.
Maryland alum Gary Williams brought the program to even greater heights than Bias did when he led the Terps to the 2002 NCAA championship. But the folks in College Park will never forget the devastation of Bias' death. Neither will the rest of college basketball.
3. "Hot Rod" Williams blows up Tulane: April 4, 1985
John Williams earned his sobriquet as a child, when he had the habit of making engine-like sounds while sliding across a floor. The nickname would take on an entirely different meaning in 1985, when Williams, a 6-foot-11 forward, was indicted, along with two other players, on charges of fixing three games at Tulane. (Two more Tulane players were also accused of fixing games, but they turned state's evidence in the case and were not indicted.) Williams' bribery case ended in a mistrial, but as part of the school's investigation Williams confessed that two Tulane recruiters had given him a box containing $10,000 to attend the school. Amidst all the fallout, Tulane president Eamon Kelly shut down the basketball program for four years.
2. Baylor coach slanders murdered forward: August 2003
It was bad enough that college basketball was at the center of a national mediathon. In the summer of 2003, Baylor junior forward Patrick Dennehy disappeared with no explanation. Dennehy's body turned up several weeks later, and his teammate, Carlton Dotson, later pleaded guilty to the murder and is currently serving a 35-year prison term.
Tragic as Dennehy's murder was, nobody was blaming his coach, Dave Bliss, for what happened. Yet the intense scrutiny on the program soon turned up evidence that Bliss had arranged for Dennehy to receive tens of thousands of illicit dollars in tuition and housing. (Bliss had asked Dennehy, a transfer from New Mexico, to forfeit his scholarship so that he could bring in another player.) As details of the scheme came to light, Bliss asked a member of his coaching staff to spread rumors that Dennehy was selling drugs, which would explain his mysterious cash flow. Bliss was even caught on tape callously surmising that Dennehy wouldn't be able to refute those rumors, seeing as how he was dead and all.
Unbeknownst to Bliss, the assistant secretly taped those conversations. When the tapes were made public, Bliss was fired, and college basketball had suffered a truly humiliating moment.
1. CCNY point-shaving scandal rocks the sport: Jan. 17, 1951
Though it may be hard to believe now, the City College of New York was once the pride of the Big Apple. The school's prominence peaked in 1950, when it became the only school to win both the NCAA and NIT championships in the same year. Coached by local legend Nat Holman, CCNY's dominance of the sport made Madison Square Garden the mecca of basketball.
It all unraveled quickly and embarrassingly the following year, when seven CCNY players were found guilty of taking money from professional gamblers to fix games over a three-year period. Those findings were part of a larger investigation by New York District Attorney Frank Hogan that eventually implicated 32 players from seven schools. (One of those players, LIU guard Sherman White, had just been named college basketball's national player of the year.) The New York City Board of Education also found that the high school records of 14 players had been altered so they could gain admission to CCNY. Many of the relationships between the players and the gamblers had been forged at summer resorts in upstate New York, and the vastness of the episode made it the worst sports scandal since members of the Chicago White Sox threw the 1919 World Series.
One aside: When the scandal first broke in New York, Kentucky coach Adolph Rupp boasted that the gamblers "couldn't touch my boys with a 10-foot pole." Shortly thereafter, five of Rupp's players were likewise charged with accepting bribes to fix games. As a result, the NCAA suspended Kentucky for the 1952-53 season.
