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SJ-R.COM - Mike Nadel: Weber's sorry apology
Behind a desk in Illinois athletic director Ron Guenther's office, we found a small pile of crumpled-up pieces of paper - apologies penned by his basketball coach, Bruce Weber.
We'll get to those in a second. First, let's review the joint statement Guenther and Weber had underlings post on a university Web site Friday, the day after the wild double-overtime loss to Indiana and Public Enemies No. 1 (Eric Gordon, infamous Illini spurner) and No. 2 (The Evil Kelvin Sampson, recruit thief and all-around scoundrel):
"We value the enthusiastic support of the sellout crowds at the Assembly Hall, but above all we take very seriously the reputation of our basketball program and Illinois. The profanity and behavior by a small segment of fans Thursday night were disappointing and intolerable, and for that we apologize to fans of both teams."
Sweet, huh? As they say in infomercials, though: But wait, there's more!
Thanks to Weber's inability to hit the wastebasket - now we know where his Misfiring Illini get their free-throw form - our crack investigative team unearthed rough drafts of several apologies that didn't quite make the cut ...
* "I'm sorry I can't let the Gordon thing go. And I'm sorry the fans can't, either. We all should grow up and get on with our lives instead of obsessing about a decision a teenager made more than a year ago."
* "Everybody knew the crowd would be on fire. Still, I'm sorry I stoked the flames with my childish refusal to shake hands with Sampson's staff and players, not to mention my incessant whining about how good we'd be had Gordon not reneged on his verbal agreement."
* "Small segment? Right. On multiple occasions, entire sections of fans cursed in unison. Just because yahoos in Hoosierville and elsewhere spew profanity at games, it doesn't mean our fans have to be yahoos, too. Maybe if I had taken the public-address microphone early and demanded better behavior, our people would have shown more class. Then again, they probably would have started chanting: '(Bleep) you, Weber!' So never mind."
* "I apologize for repeatedly calling us the best 10-win team in the nation. (And, before that, the best 9-win team, the best 8-win team, etc.) It's silly. If we were the best anything, we wouldn't be 10-14."
* "I'm sorry I didn't bench Chester Frazier for his excessively aggressive body-bump of Gordon during introductions. Chester probably won't make as much money in his lifetime as Gordon will in one NBA season, so that was his revenge? Most of our fans loved it, of course, but they'd have been outraged had an opponent done the same to Dee or Deron way back when. In the end, the basketball gods took care of Frazier, knocking him out of the game with a sprained ankle and forcing me to play Jeff Jordan through both overtimes."
* "I apologize for striking out so often in recruiting that I had to play a walk-on through both overtimes."
* "I'm sorry Jeff didn't shove aside a defender at the top of the key, sink the winning jumper and hold his follow-through for several seconds to punctuate his greatness. Oops, wrong Jordan. Sorry about that."
* "We're so sorry, Uncle Albert. We're so sorry if we caused you any pain. We're so sorry, Uncle Albert. But there's no one left at home and I believe it's gonna rain. Right about now, I'm sorry I don't have some of whatever Paul McCartney was smoking."
* "I'm sorry that in his column from the game, Mike Nadel didn't admonish the few fans who made the entire university look bad by throwing crud at the Indiana cheering section. He was sitting at the opposite end of press row and was working on deadline, but those are excuses ... and the only excuses I tolerate around here are mine."
* "I'm sorry our fans have lousy arms, lousy aim or both. How could they have missed Sampson?"
* "When I made Shaun Pruitt sit out a game last month for having a bad attitude, I'm sorry I didn't bring in Rick Barry to teach the kid how to shoot free throws granny-style. For that matter, I'm sorry I haven't hired a free-throw guru to work with our whole team because we've been so sorry at the line."
* "I'm sorry I have to write this freakin' apology. I hate caving in to media pressure. Does Coach K have to apologize for the nasty things the Cameron Crazies say and do? Please."
Mike Nadel (mikenadel@sbcglobal.net) is the Chicago sports columnist for GateHouse News Service. Read his blog, The Baldest Truth, at
The Baldest Truth by Mike Nadel.
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