Tony Buffa wrote:
 
> Hey Larry:
>
> I hope you refer to Wooden only in the Won-Lost sense. Wooden was much
> more than a coach, he was a teacher of life and a great humanitarian. I
> should say "was", should be "is".
 
You know, I find the ongoing canonization of John Wooden aggravating.  During his
championship years, the UCLA program was awash in cash, cars and luxury apartments
provided to his team by boosters.  To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever
connected Wooden to any of the gifts, but it was so widespread that it falls into
the category of, "Things the Coach Would Have to Have Been a Moron Not to Know
About."  Yes, he was a great coach, a good and wise guy and someone who was very
important to the growth of college basketball.  But he simply is not an icon of
what most people think amateur athletics should be about.  Using him so often as
the model that various cheating coaches is ironic in an unintended way; they all
wish they could be whitewashed so thoroughly.
 
J. Michael Neal
 
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