Earlier this week, Mike Krzyzewski called out the trolls on social media – and there are a lot of them – for their constant hate, negativity and bullying. While some programs – and players – get more of this unwanted attention than others, Krzyzewski doesn’t think it has any place in college basketball.
Former UConn and current Saint Joseph coach Jim Calhoun agrees.
“I see it and don’t believe it,” Calhoun said on Tiki & Tierney. “They’re kids. They’re finding themselves. They make mistakes. They don’t put the ball in the basket when you want to. It bothers them. My point being, enough.”
Indeed, while trolling professional athletes is bad enough, trolling amateur athletes is even worse. Being competitive is one thing; being combative is another thing altogether.
“Do you know how much I love Mike Krzyzewski?” Calhoun asked. “We had battles where we thought we were going to kill each other, but that’s between the lines while you’re playing. Mike couldn’t be a better friend. Tom Izzo, working for ESPN, every time we went up to Michigan State, we went to dinner with him. We had great battles.”
Calhoun, 77, was in the national spotlight at UConn, where he coached from 1986 to 2012. Coaching Division III gives him – and his players – some refuge from the toxic world of Twitter and social media.
“I don’t know how I would handle it all, but I’d be a fool if I didn’t handle it,” Calhoun said. “I’d have to find ways. It gets ridiculous when people’s own frustration with their own life, they take out on young people. That, to me, is one of the worst things in the world. They take out their own frustration on kids. There’s no way and no room in my world for that. . . . In today’s day and age, people go 100 percent over the top at athletes. It’s ridiculous.”