Stephen A. Smith and “Towering Fraud” Pat Forde are still out there doing their usual Stephen A. Smith and “Towering Fraud” Pat Forde things.
“It’s not funny. I take no joy in saying this, but if it were me, I’d fire him. Strictly because of being boring. Literally. I’m not questioning his ability as a coach at all. He’s a national champion for crying out loud. I’m not questioning his ability to coach, but you cannot be that boring, that unappealing for so long and get away with it.”
That was Stephen A. on his “First Take” show on ESPN on Wednesday.
The “him” that Stephen A. would fire: Virginia basketball coach Tony Bennett.
“Strictly because of being boring.”
I wish I was making this up.
Six ACC regular-season titles, two ACC Tournament titles, one national title, dude has owned the ACC for the past decade.
Fire him.
“Strictly because of being boring.”
To Stephen A.’s credit, this is also the guy who, while playing at Winston-Salem State under Hall of Fame coach Clarence “Big House” Gaines, wrote a column for the school newspaper saying Gaines should retire, because of health issues.
Smith graduated from Winston-Salem State in 1991; “Big House,” who stepped in to save Smith’s scholarship when the chancellor wanted to expel him, stepped down as the coach in 1993.
I’d expect the same out of “boring” Tony Bennett, honestly.
There are people like Stephen A. Smith, who make their living sniping at people better than them, and then there are people like Clarence “Big House” Gaines and Tony Bennett.
Which brings us to Forde, who at this writing still has a job at Sports Illustrated, which at this writing is still in operation, but that is subject to change, literally minute by minute.
Forde must get paid by the word, because his latest bit of drivel taking potshots at Bennett and Virginia went on and on and on, but to summarize, the issues that he raised were, Virginia got a NCAA Tournament bid, he doesn’t have the foggiest notion how the selection committee does its job, and then we got this gem:
“Other factors that were disregarded: style of play and tournament history. Perhaps they should have been, if teams are to be judged in a vacuum of present-day competitiveness.”
Basically, Virginia is … boring?
The “tournament history” thing doesn’t make any sense. Forde surely is aware that Virginia won a national title in 2019; that’s when his “towering fraud” column about Bennett from the previous March blew up in his face.
Virginia hasn’t won a tournament game since, but he’s had his program in three of the last four, with an NIT quarterfinal appearance in the down year, 2022.
I must have missed Forde’s columns about Coach K needing to revamp his approach at Duke after he missed the postseason entirely in 2021, and the one about Hubert Davis missing the postseason entirely last year after starting the year as the preseason #1.
And that one that he also didn’t write about John Calipari, whose last national title was way back in 2012, has won one NCAA Tournament game since 2019, and missed the postseason in 2021 with a 9-16 record.
It’s oddly personal for Forde with Bennett – maybe his wife has a man crush on our boyish-good-looks coach, or something.
Stephen A., meanwhile, is just, Stephen A.
You know how everybody has somebody in their circle of friends that the others in that circle of friends wonders, how is this jerk in our circle of friends?
This is how you can tell Stephen A. and the “Towering Fraud” aren’t in the same circle of friends.
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Chris Graham
