Mister Faded Glory | www.misterfadedglory.com

You may not have noticed amid the hoopla surrounding Thursday night’s Marquette-Connecticut game. But with the Huskies’ win, Jim Calhoun earned entry into the prestigious 800-win club, an elite fraternity among college basketball’s longtime coaches. (By the way, Jeff Adrien was only present for 400 of those wins. So you know.)

For the last several seasons, Calhoun and rival Big East coach Jim Boeheim have approached the 800-win plateau, with Calhoun winning the seesaw battle to reach the pinnacle first. (If everything goes ideally the rest of the season, Boeheim, who counts 791 wins – all at Syracuse – will earn his 800th after Syracuse’s second-round win in the NCAA tournament. Hey, permit a guy to dream, all right?)

It’s very possible Calhoun’s milestone was somewhat underreported because of his maligned outburst earlier in the week – castigating a phony reporter asking the most boring question of all time*. It’s possible that because of that state-employee question that ESPN chose simply to run with the zeitgeist and nearly forget Calhoun’s big moment.

(*Really – how was that the proper forum? And I would submit the reporter’s “state-employee, coaches and athletics rake in completely too much” argument on behalf of the state’s welfare is entirely tired. Your quibbles are with college athletics and society in general, and will not be solved at a press conference.)

But I urge you to recall Dean Smith‘s chase for 800 wins, Coach K‘s ascension to the plateau last season, and more appropriately, Bob Knight‘s 2003 run-up to the mark. During Knight’s countdown to the milestone at Texas Tech, each insufferable Big 12 game was televised, led off any and all highlight packages, with on-screen SportsCenter graphics celebrating each Knight win like falling dominoes. And certainly, no shortage of ESPN, Fox, nor CBS talking heads failed to effusively praise Coach Knight – who, get this, not all of us were going to like, but they understood that. The hype rivaled Brady-Manning levels, for crying out loud.

Fast forward to now, when two universally-respected, championship-winning, long-tenured, and veritable institutions Calhoun and Boeheim approach the milestone, and we hear nary a peep. Neither has enjoyed such a graphic, countdown, free recruiting publicity, or such a collective gush. Both are Hall of Fame coaches. So was Knight. Each is universally liked by the media. So is Knight.

So what gives? Why the months upon months of 2003 hype for Knight and the collective quiet for the Big East pair? Is it just because Knight is such a polarizing figure? Or that he was joining Rupp and Smith; and all three have multiple titles? (Er, so does Calhoun.) Or because Knight inspires media lust among journalists – he can treat any and all talking head like dirt and they just love him more? Or because late in college basketball seasons the bubble takes over and the phony stuff goes away.

We hope it’s nothing. Or that media prognosticators have moved on from such rubbish as cosmetic milestones. But (sigh) we doubt it.

(Side note: How about that! I managed to get through the entire column without attempting to prove Boeheim is actually a better coach than Calhoun despite Calhoun’s extra NCAA title! I mean, Jimmy B has more Final Fours, is two years younger, and has a higher winning percentage and more 20-win seasons owing to his 791 wins. But who’s keeping track of that stuff, really?)