The sacking of University of San Francisco men’s basketball coach Jessie Evans and the hiring as his replacement, sight-unseen, of Eddie Sutton -- a retread shady operator and a septuagenarian alcoholic to boot -- is another reminder of one of those sports world questions you’re not supposed to raise in polite company. But, hey, that’s what we’re here for.
Just what is it with Catholic institutions and basketball? Saint Louis University, with its appointment of another recycled dinosaur in retirement, Rick Majerus, is another example. There’s also Gonzaga, Loyola Marymount, Loyola of Chicago, Boston College, Holy Cross and numerous others -- including the re-emergent local entrant St. Mary’s of Moraga. The Gaels, who once brought us the All-American football player who went on to play Duke on Hawaii Five-O, now offers Canberry, Australia’s Patrick Mills, along with three fellow countrymen fresh from the ‘hoods of Melbourne, Perth, and Launceton.
The classic 1994 documentary Hoop Dreams follows the recruitment of two inner-city Chicago African-American basketball players by St. Joseph High School of suburban Westchester, the same school that sent Isaiah Thomas on the path to his current sterling reputation. (My favorite passage in the film shows the coach, Gene Pingatore, berating his team in the huddle during a timeout, which ends with a group handclasp and “Hail Mary.”) Jason Kidd got his start at another St. Joe’s -- St. Joseph Notre Dame High School in Alameda.
Of course, some Catholic schools are better known for football, like the University of Notre Dame, which boasts one of the sports industry’s franchise brands (and, not incidentally, most corrupt programs). Here in the Bay Area, I wish someone would take a closer look at perennial football powerhouse De La Salle High School of Concord. Chronicle columnist Gwen Knapp has written serial tearjerkers over the years about De La Salle’s Terrance Kelly, who was shot to death in Richmond in 2004, just before starting a football scholarship at the University of Oregon. But what we really need in Kelly’s memory is a study of the breadth of De La Salle’s outreach programs in Western Contra Costa County for non-linebackers.
Getting back to hoops, the commercial appeal of roundball is obvious for Catholic universities that don’t enjoy massive infusions of state funding or huge endowments. With rosters of 12 and with only five players on the floor at a time, it’s easier to make a splash with a marquee coach, and you get more bang for the buck from a single superstar.
Superstars like Quintin Dailey, the USF basketball player who was accused of rape in 1982, which led to cascading scandals that caused the university to discontinue the program for three-plus years.
We don’t yet know why USF granted Evans what sounds like a permanent “leave of absence,” but there were signs that his basketball team was about to sink under academic eligibility sanctions. If that was the case, you have to wonder about the caveat emptor snap signing of Sutton. At the University of Kentucky, Sutton was forced to resign in 1988 after reports of his drinking and drug use combined with things like an express package, containing $1,000 in $50 bills, that a high school recruit received from one of Sutton’s assistants. Another player got banned after he was shown to have gotten undue assistance with college entrance exams. UK barely avoided the NCAA “death penalty” that USF effectively was imposing on itself during the same period.
I’m all for second chances. But Jesus (sorry), Sutton has had three or four, and a perfectly -- or imperfectly -- closed, multi-decade career. What exactly does he bring to the Bay Area sports scene besides smelly baggage? And where does a distinguished Catholic university, with a checkered big-time sports history, come off with making this mystery hire-and-fire?
Jesuits pride themselves on intellectual inquiry. Let’s start inquirin’.