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Kentucky Wildcats Morning Quickies: Keith Van Horn Edition

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By Glenn Logan

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Brian Bahr

Remember Keith Van Horn? You should, we defeated his team in the 1998 (although he wasn’t there, having left Utah in 1997). Apparently he is into coaching now, and has his own blog. In this entry, he talks about "Delusional Parent Disorder," a condition first introduced to Kentucky by the mother of Alex Legion. Consider:

The parent suffering from DPD can cause their child to become a bad apple on their team. John Calipari, the current head men’s basketball coach at the University of Kentucky and my first head coach in the NBA once told me a story. When he was the head coach at the UMass, one year he had a top ten team that had a chance to win a national championship. They were struggling early and he had a very talented player who was constantly getting in trouble, causing problems at practice and just plain being a cancer to the team. After trying to help the player both on and off the court, his problems continued and eventually Calipari had to kick him off the team. After dismissing him from the team, the team began to play great and they made it all the way to the Final Four. Coach Calipari, after telling me the story said, "Our team that year was like a big tub of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream. All of the ingredients mixed together so well and the result was something great. But when that player was on our team, he was like a little, itsty bit piece of (expletive that starts with an "S") in our tub of ice cream. You put one little, itsty bit piece of (expletive that starts with an "S") in your tub of ice cream, and all the ice cream is just absolutely (expletive that starts with an "F") RUINED." Parents suffering from severe cases of DPD are like the you-know-what in their child’s team ice cream, causing relationship problems with coaches and teammates.

This is absolutely right, and we see cases of DPD more and more frequently.

You should really read the whole thing, as it is a really good piece, thoughtfully written, and quite rightly skeptical of the "there are no losers" mentality that has pervaded our schools and warns us not to live our athletics dreams vicariously through our children.

Tweet of the Morning

Heh. It’s so easy to mock the Hoosiers these days.

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  • When we attempt to be politically correct, sometimes we completely lose ourselves and wind up looking foolish. In this piece, Michael Rosenberg at SI tries to untangle Jameis Winston’s childish misbehavior and the allegation that he sexually assaulted a woman. That’s a good idea, and he does yeoman’s work. Unfortunately, he destroys his own credibility at the end when he implies Winston’s accuser is the only victim:

    But the idea of Winston as any kind of victim is dangerous, because that other case is a lot more serious. The mind gets jumbled when it thinks of a man as both victim and predator. It also gets jumbled when we think of a man as both serial knucklehead and potential rapist. But maybe we should not be so worried about the effect of Winston’s actions on his football career, and wonder more about the effect on the woman who has accused him of rape.

    We don’t know what happened, mainly because the police botched the investigation, an investigation that, incidentally, might have exonerated Winston and found his accuser falsely alleged the assault. Consequently, we have no real idea who the victim is in this alleged rape — Winston or his accuser — but the truth is, both are victims in their own right.

    Winston is undeniably a victim of police incompetence, and so is his accuser. Neither will receive the justice our system is set up to provide, because the process failed them. So it’s right that we should feel for both of them in this matter, because whatever the outcome of the likely kangaroo court to be held at Florida State, Winston will be forever tarnished with the accusation, whether objectively true or false, that he is a rapist.

    Arguably worse but no less tragic is the concomitant possibility that a victim of rape will see her accuser walk with only a damaged reputation as punishment.

  • Vegas betting line for Notre Dame-Florida State taken down due to concerns about Jameis Winston being able to play.

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