All-time NCAA basketball wins leader Pat Summitt, coach of the Tennessee Lady Vols and arch-nemesis of the UConn (Don’t Call Them Lady!) Huskies, has filed for divorce from her husband of 27 years. :(

UPDATE: Here’s the divorce complaint, in PDF form. (Hat tip: Jay.)

If Becky wasn’t going to be in her eighth month of pregnancy by then, I’d seriously consider making a trip to Boston for this game:

The UConn men’s basketball team will face Gonzaga on Dec. 1 at the TD Banknorth Garden in Boston in the second annual Basketball Hall of Fame Challenge. …

The Huskies and Zags have met twice previously, with UConn taking both meetings. The Huskies knocked off upstart Gonzaga in the 1999 NCAA Tournament West Regional final on their way to a first national title. UConn took a thrilling victory in the title game of the 2005 Maui Invitational thanks to a buzzer-beating baseline jumper by Denham Brown.

The NBA Draft is tonight, starting at 7pm EDT. Greg Oden is expected to go #1, Kevin Durant #2. USC’s Nick Young is projected #14 by ESPN.com, which would keep him in L.A. with the Clippers. Gabe Pruitt is expected to go late in the first round or early in the second round.

Yesterday afternoon, Jay called to tell me that Tennessee men’s basketball coach Bruce Pearl was scheduled to make an appearance at a nearby mall that evening to sign autographs and such. Now, admittedly, I’m a Knoxville newbie, and the UT men are only sixth or seventh, at best, on my list of bandwagons of the moment favorite teams. But I’ve been a Bruce Pearl fan ever since his “kick Florida’s ass” speech, and my appreciation for his unique style and crazy antics has only grown with time. So, considering the mall is no more than a six- or seven-minute drive from where Becky and I live, I figured, what the heck? As a result, I’ve now met two Knoxville celebrities:

Bruce Pearl is a lot tanner than I am, isn’t he? Not that it takes much…

Anyway, I got a couple of things autographed and had the above picture taken. I also chatted with Coach Pearl briefly, mentioning (among other things) that I was subjected to the “infernal Florida fight song” far too many times at the Midwest Regional, so I’ll be rooting for the Vols especially hard when they play the Gators. (He responded with something noncommittal like “it’s always exciting when we play them.”)

He’s a great promoter for the program. The line wasn’t excessively long — there were maybe 20 people ahead of me when I got there — but it moved quite slowly, which was actually a good thing, in a way (even if it did make me a few minutes late for dinner… sorry, Becky) because it meant he was taking time to talk personally to each person who lined up for an autograph. He came off as very friendly and likeable. If I were a lifelong UT fan, I’d be very happy to have him as my team’s coach. (Of course, it also helps that the Vols have been winning. At one point, some guy walked past the end of the line and remarked, referring to the merchandise that people had bought to be autographed, “You’ll throw it all out if they don’t win 20 games this year.” Heh.)

Anyway, thanks to Jay for the tip. Now the question is, if the opportunity arises to meet Pat Summitt, will I take it? I’d say probably yes, but I’d definitely have to wear a UConn shirt. :)

Great. I move to Knoxville, and the Lady Vols decide to stop playing UConn in basketball each season, as they have since 1995. Bah.

USC’s Gabe Pruitt will declare for the NBA Draft, but won’t hire an agent, so he could return to the Trojans if he isn’t drafted.

Gonzaga at Memphis on Saturday, January 19? I’m so there!

Depending on the exact schedule, the USC-Memphis came in New York might also be worth a (slightly longer) trip…

Round and round the coaching carousel goes: Dan Monson resigns at Minnesota; Tubby Smith moves from Kentucky to Minnesota; Billy Gillispie moves from Texas A&M to Kentucky; Mark Turgeon moves from Wichita State to Texas A&M; and now, Gregg Marshall moves from Winthrop to Wichita State.

Marshall had previously turned down South Florida, so I guess this means that one of the best programs in the Missouri Valley Conference is more attractive than one of the worst in the Big East… which seems right. Charles Rich at AOL Fanhouse writes: “If anything makes the argument that the Missouri Valley Conference has made it to at least A-10 or C-USA status of the late 90s, it’s poaching smaller mid-major schools for their head coach.” Earlier, Nathan Fowler wrote that Wichita State was offering Marshall nearly $1 million per year, “a staggering amount of cash for a school without a football team to be able to come up with. If you thought that the Missouri Valley was just a neat story the past couple of seasons, think again - it looks like the league is ready to take on the big boys on their turf, as that was the kind of money reserved only the blue bloods before.”

Dammit: “Leading scorer Nick Young will forego his senior season at USC and declare for the NBA draft, according to sources. … [He] plans to make his official announcement on campus early next week.” And there’ll be no going back: “Young has yet to hire an agent but will do so soon, according to one source who is close to the player.”

No word yet on Gabe Pruitt.

…that Lindsey Harding had made those free throws?

Think about it! Rutgers would have been eliminated in the Sweet Sixteen, so Imus never would have called them “nappy-headed hos” after watching them in the championship game, so he would still have a job right now.

This has been your butterfly-flaps-its-wings alternate-reality thought of the day.

I guess Texas A&M poaching Mark Turgeon from Wichita State pretty much blows my whole theory that the off-season coaching developments prove the Big 12 is more of a mid-major than the Missouri Valley, huh? Heh.

This whole Imus thing has really taken on a life of its own. I caught some of the Today show while in the law lounge this morning, and it’s all they were talking about. It’s also all over Drudge at the moment. Among the linked stories: Imus will meet with the Rutgers women’s basketball team “at a private, undisclosed location.” No word on whether Dick Cheney will be there.

Imusgate rolls on, with Al Sharpton set to interview Don Imus this morning, even as he calls for the “shock jock” to be fired over his racist remarks about the Rutgers women’s basketball team last week. “Somewhere we must draw the line in what is tolerable in mainstream media,” Sharpton said yesterday. “We cannot keep going through offending us and then apologizing and then acting like it never happened. Somewhere we’ve got to stop this.”

Hmm, a confrontation between Al Sharpton and Don Imus. Pompous, self-aggrandizing ass-clowns both. I think my feelings about that particular clash of titans roughly approximates the way most Notre Dame fans felt about USC playing Michigan in the Rose Bowl. Is there some way they can both come away from the interview looking foolish? (Hey, Geraldo and O’Reilly pulled it off!)

Getting back to Imus’s remarks… Media Bistro points out that this is actually another case of life imitating The Onion. A day before Imus dropped his “jiggaboo” bomb, America’s Finest News Source ran a story with the headline “Trey Wingo Apologizes For Accidentally Calling Champion Lady Vols ‘Pat Summitt’s Marauding Army Of Monstrous Lesbians’”:

ESPN broadcaster Trey Wingo said “a slip of the tongue” was to blame for an incident in which he referred to the Tennessee Lady Volunteers in less than flattering terms during their 59-46 victory over Rutgers Tuesday night. “It was an honest, if disastrous, mistake—I was just fumbling for something to say so I didn’t repeat ‘Lady Vols’ one more time, and somehow the thing about the lesbian army just came out,” said Wingo, who has offered to perform any public or private act of contrition the Lady Vols required of him. “They worked so hard to get here and played so well when they did, and then I had to go and embarrass the whole lumbering herd of ungainly she-oxen in front of a national audience… Goddamn it!”

Heh.

Much was made this college-basketball season about computer ratings that showed the Missouri Valley to be the nation’s sixth-best conference — ahead of the mighty Big 12, which came in seventh. This evidence seemed to support the conclusion that the MVC had joined the ranks of the big boys, and should no longer be considered a “mid-major.” But perhaps the opposite was true: perhaps the Missouri Valley is still a mid-major… and so is the Big 12.

This year’s version of the “coaching carousel” certainly seems to support that notion, as two of the Big 12’s most promising up-and-coming coaches were poached by better teams. First Bob Huggins abandoned Kansas State after just one year West Virginia, and now Billy Gillispie has left Texas A&M for Kentucky.

Isn’t this what routinely happens to successful mid-major schools? They have a good season or two, and then their coach gets stolen away by a major-conference school? Like the Air Force coach going to Colorado*, or the Butler coach going to Iowa? Welcome to the party, Big 12. Heh.

The Missouri Valley Conference, meanwhile, is doing a surprisingly good job of retaining its top coaches. Southern Illinois re-signed Chris Lowery to a seven-year, $5 million deal. And Creighton’s Dana Altman, after initially deciding to leave for Arkansas, had an abrupt change of heart and decided he belongs in Omaha. So he’s staying. Moreover, the bottom teams in the MVC are also acting like big-conference schools, firing their coaches for failing to meet expectations.

In other coaching news, former Gonzaga head coach Dan Monson, who recently resigned from the Minnesota job that he left the Zags for (thus starting the whole Tubby Smith-Billy Gillispie chain of events), has been hired by Long Beach State as its new head coach. Hmm, I wonder if a Gonzaga-LBSU game could be scheduled? Mark Few vs. his former boss? That’d be fun. Of course, Few will have a more immediate version of that when the Zags play San Diego in the WCC next year.

*Pay no attention to the fact that Colorado is in the Big 12, thus disrupting my theory.

Billy Packer hater that I am, I’m remiss in not blogging about the latest Packergate controversy. During an interview last Friday with PBS’s Charlie Rose, Packer accused Rose of “fagging out.” Here’s the clip:

The condemnations came fast and furious. Mjd wrote, “If you’re broadcasting the Final Four, and you’re the voice that accompanies the most watched college basketball game of the year, and you’ve been doing this for 33 years … I don’t think it’s asking much to keep the word ‘fag’ out of your mouth in public.” Deadspin mused, “If Packer really didn’t understand the term he was using, it’s probably not wise to allow a guy like that on television at all.” Sportable chimed in, “It’s hard to call Packer racist, homophobic, or sexist because it’s obvious that Packer hates everyone on Earth. … In other news, Tim Hardaway has announced that he’d love to assume Jim Nantz’s duties alongside Packer during next year’s NCAA Tournament.” Bloggers all over the college basketball blogosphere eagerly called for Packer’s firing.

Some, however, defended the old crank. Despite Boi From Troy’s inability to “find a non-offensive context for the term, ‘fagging out,’” Michael David Smith found just that:

I detest homophobia, and if a broadcaster went on the air and used the word “fag” as a homophobic slur, I’d find it offensive.

But that’s not what Billy Packer did. The word “fag” has multiple meanings, and when Packer told Charlie Rose, “you always fag out,” he wasn’t using the word as a homophobic slur. He was using it…to mean “exhaust or tire out.”

Awful Announcing isn’t buying it:

Ugh…okay. Here’s the thing….Yes, I understand what the term “fagging out” means. I get it….you tire out….like a cigarette burning out….fag is a British slang for cigarette. I get all of that. But why be that insensitive and use the phrase? It’s just so idiotic and ignorant to not pay attention to what you’re saying.

A Brazil nut was once known as a “N****r Toe”. Do we still call it that? Of course not….it’s an inflammatory term, and has no business in our dialect.

The Human Rights Campaign, a prominent gay-rights group, unsurprisingly agrees: “[E]very time someone uses the F Word, gay kids in high school die a little bit on the inside. … Billy Packer and the CBS Network should know better and must apologize for the hurt that this kind of remark causes.”

LeslieAnne Wade, vice president of communications for Sports, told Outsports, “I know he wasn’t meaning to be insensitive at all.” But she added, “While it is a term that is in the dictionary, it was still a poor choice of words. I’m confident that he would agree that it was a bad choice of words.”

Ms. Wade’s confidence, it turns out, was misplaced. On Thursday, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported:

CBS college basketball analyst Billy Packer said he wasn’t being insensitive or homophobic when he made a comment while being interviewed Friday from Atlanta on The Charlie Rose Show, which airs on PBS. …

“I said he fagged out on me and it had nothing to do with sexual connotation,” Packer said yesterday in a phone interview. “I got to know Charlie a number of years ago and have great admiration for his program and intellect. He is a big Dukie, and he has been talking a number of years about coming to the Final Four to be a runner.”

Dictionary.com defines fag out as meaning “to tire or weary by labor; exhaust.”

Which is what Packer said he meant.

“The term has nothing to do with sexuality,” Packer said. “I think he is the most eligible bachelor. It’s about a guy too lazy to get the work.” …

What Packer is probably most guilty of is being out of touch, which isn’t the first time this charge has been leveled. In 1996 he referred to then-Georgetown point guard (now former 76er) Allen Iverson as a “tough monkey.” Packer himself said he is not a politically correct person. …

And despite this latest controversy, he insists that he did nothing wrong. Packer said the expression comes out of the word fatigue.

“I can assure you I will use that phrase again and I won’t think twice about it,” he said. “My meaning is genuine.”

That last remark had even some of Packer’s defenders, like the above-quoted Michael David Smith, backtracking:

I initially defended Packer, but I have a harder time doing that now. Packer’s defiance runs in stark contrast to what a CBS spokeswoman said (”I’m confident that he would agree that it was a bad choice of words.”) And by saying he has great respect for Charlie Rose, is he implying that he would feel free to call someone a “fag” if he didn’t have great respect for him?

And Packer’s critics are even more up in arms: “No Billy your meaning was/is not genuine. If your meaning was genuine you would have either A) Not used a derogatory word no matter what the connotation was. B) Apologized if there was confusion/harm, and explained the true meaning of the term.”

So, where do I come down on all this? I’m of at least two minds on it… possibly three or four. On the one hand, I’m a strong believer in gay rights and a strong opponent of discrimination and bigotry, and as such, I have no love for people who use the word “fag” offensively. On the other hand, I’m also a strong opponent of political correctness run amok, and as such, I hate it when people get in trouble for such non-offenses as saying the word “niggardly” or using the expression “to call a spade a spade,” where there is absolutely no racist intent on the part of the speaker, nor any actual offensive content to the words spoken, only a misunderstanding whereby the listener believes — incorrectly — that something offensive has been said.

On the other other hand, isn’t there a point where it would be wiser to stop using an antiquated colloquialism that’s uncomfortably similar to a far more commonly used slur? It’s different when we’re talking about an actual word, like “niggardly,” or an expression that’s commonly used, like “call a spade a spade.” But does it make any sense to resurrect an outdated expression that nobody even uses any more, just as a matter of anti-PC principle, when it would be easier and less painful to just let it die?

On top of all that, and ultimately eclipsing all principled arguments, is the fact that I hate Billy Packer. Hate, hate, hate. I think he is a blight on the landscape of college basketball, and even if I thought he was getting in trouble for no good reason, the most I would do is shed a single tear for him while playing the CBS Sports theme song on the world’s smallest violin. There are about a thousand reasons why Billy Packer should have been fired long ago, so really, I would love to see him fired for this, whether that’s technically justifiable or not, just because it would mean he’d be gone — good riddance! — and replaced by a Final Four analyst who, you know, doesn’t suck. As a Deadspin commenter, quoted by Charles Rich, aptly put it: “Firing Billy Packer for a very un-PC statement is like putting Al Capone behind bars for tax evasion. Not the worst thing he’s ever done but we’ll take it!”