11 March, 2002

John Feinstein is the author of a number of bestselling sports books, including A March to Madness, A Civil War, and A Good Walk Spoiled.  He appears regularly on ESPN's "The Sports Reporters" and is a columnist for both the Washington Post and Golf Magazine.  His legendary account of Bobby Knight and Indiana University's 1985-86 season, A Season on the Brink, was recently adapted for the screen by ESPN.  In 2000, he published The Last Amateurs, a look at a year inside the Patriot League.  In addition to recounting the Patriot League's basketball season, the book also delves into the Ivy League in many places.  Feinstein's passion for the Ivies, and the kind of student athlete they nurture, emerges regularly in his writing and commentating.

ivybasketball.com's Ted Mann had a chance to speak with Mr. Feinstein the day after "Selection Sunday."

Q: Thank you very much for speaking with us. I'm sure every fan of Ivy basketball is grateful to you for the nice things you've said about the league.  Let's start with the question on every pool contestant's mind: Do you think Penn will beat Cal in the first round of the NCAA tournament?

A: I think it's very possible.  In the radio interviews I did this morning, I picked Penn to upset Cal.  But I should add that Ben Braun is a very good coach.  I wish Penn were playing a worse coached team because the players and the coaches probably wouldn't take them as seriously.  Braun is smart enough—and the players are smart enough—to know that Penn is very good.

Q: An article in the March 4th issue of Sports Illustrated referenced seven of the eight Ivy coaches as supporting the idea of an Ivy League conference tournament.  Do you think an Ivy League tournament is a good idea?

A: I did see that article.  Yes, I think it's a great idea.  In leagues like the Ivy and Patriot, generally speaking, you're only going to get one bid.  Especially given the Ivy's history of being dominated by two teams.  You've had many years when five or six of the eight teams' chances to play in the postseason were over on the first of February.  And what you do with a conference tournament is you give hope to teams in the middle and bottom of the conference—hope that they can catch lightning in a bottle for one weekend.  Maybe they can win one or two games to get to the NCAA tournament, or even consideration for the NIT.  I think it's great that Yale and Princeton are both in the NIT this year.  I just think it adds an element of excitement.  And to those who say that it's not fair to the regular season champion, well the way you make it fair is with a system like in the Patriot League, where the regular season champion—if it makes the final—gets home-court advantage.  That's a huge advantage.  In the ten years the Patriot League has done it that way, only '93 and this year were cases where the home team didn't win the championship.

Q: Do you think conference tournaments diminish the importance of regular season games?

A: I think they don't.  You're playing for that top seed, which is vitally important.  Or you're playing for position, because the higher seeded you are the better you're chances for advancing.  And the other thing, with the expansion of the NIT—and if the Ivy League continues to improve—they might get a team into the tournament as an at-large.  I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility that—let's say Yale had won Saturday night—Penn would have gotten an at-large.  They have some pretty damn good wins this year: the entire Big Five, Iowa State, Georgia Tech.  They only lost to Illinois by seven.  That's pretty good.  And the Ivy League, which I think was 14th in the RPI this year, was as good as it has ever been.  You could get to a point where the regular season champion gets a bid, even if it doesn't win the tournament.  At the very least it'll get an NIT bid, and maybe, like this year, the third team will go to the NIT as well.  I think a tournament would be nothing but a positive for the league.

And also, if you played at the right place, which for me would be The Palestra—even though the whole league would scream that Penn has an unfair advantage—it would have a great atmosphere.

Q: The last team, other than Penn or Princeton, to win the Ivy League was Cornell in 1988 (the same year you wrote A Season Inside).  This year, Yale tied for the Ivy Championship, but Cornell fell all the way to last place.  How difficult will it be for Yale to maintain its current level of excellence?

A: One thing that happened at Cornell was that Tom Miller left, and then Mike Dement (Tom's assistant) left shortly after that.  They just weren't able to click with the right coach after that.  I think that it's very hard to maintain a level of success in the Ivies if you're not Penn or Princeton and you don't have the right coach.  James [Jones], at the moment, isn't going anywhere.  And as long as he continues to recruit as effectively as he clearly has, they ought to be very competitive.  Yale has no seniors on their team, so they ought to be very good next year.

Q: In The Last Amateurs, you discussed how much respect James Jones was getting in his first season at Yale.  Now, two years later, what do you think has been his biggest impact on the Yale program?

A: The sense was that Yale wasn't very talented in Jones's first year.  They were also very young, playing two freshman guards.  But he had them playing very hard. And very competitively.  I remember Holy Cross came out of there just thrilled to win.  You had the sense that this guy wasn't just another Ivy coach who came in to collect a check and said, "Well, we know we can't beat Penn or Princeton."  Jones is determined to compete.

I think there's more of that in the league than there's ever been.  Harvard was pretty good, Brown was pretty good, and Columbia was getting better.  Dartmouth and Cornell are still lagging behind a bit, but with one through six, you knew you were going to have competitive games every night.

Q: Do you think that coaches sometime view the Ivy League as a stepping stone to a job at a bigger Division I program?

A: That's certainly so, as with the Patriot League.  For a young coach in particular—unless you're at your alma mater.  If someone offered John Thompson a job, I don't think he'd leave Princeton.  Unlike Bill Carmody, who's not a grad.  You know that if you coach at an Ivy or a Patriot League school and you win, people in the profession will know that it's not easy to win, and they're going to take some notice of you.  But successful coaches don't always move on.  Fran O'Hanlon has been offered jobs and hasn't left Lafayette.  I'm sure Fran Dunphy could've moved on and he hasn't left Penn.  I'd be hard pressed to believe Frank Sullivan would leave Harvard, because he really likes it there.  It's a mixed bag.  Some guys will see it as a stepping stone and other will say, "Hey, I'm pretty lucky to be at a school like this."

Q: Princeton has begun offering need-based grants, potentially alleviating low-income student-athletes from the burden of school loans.  Ivy League schools are allowed to match financial aid packages, however not all schools (e.g., Brown) have the endowment to offer full-tuition grants.  Do you think these grants give Princeton an advantage in recruiting?

A: Well, they certainly could.  From what I've heard, there's a lot of concern about that.  There are some schools in the Ivy League that can afford to match the grants.  Certainly Harvard can.  And I'm pretty sure Yale can.

The Patriot League is wrestling with a similar problem right now.  When one school changes its rules, and goes outside the box that the rest of the league exists in, then the potential for problems and imbalance emerges.

Q: Do you think the use of scholarships at American and Holy Cross have led to an imbalance in the Patriot League?

A: Look who played in the championship game!  It's particularly a problem at AU right now because they had seven transfers and three JUCOs this year.  That's not what the Patriot League is supposed to be about.  There's a lot of concern within the league about what kind of student American is going to bring in.  AU says, "Oh no, that was just a blip. We're going to bring in high school kids and they're going to have good AI's."  But time will tell.

Q: In The Last Amateurs, you wrote about the Ivy League's "reputational endowment."  In the mind of a recruit, do you think Ivy prestige is enough to outweigh the lack of scholarships?

A: It depends on what level player you are and who else is recruiting you.  I think Spencer Gloger is an exception.  Most basketball players, if given the chance to play at UCLA, will play at UCLA.  If a kid is being recruited by a MAC or a [Colonial] school with full scholarship and they also have the chance to go to an Ivy, and they're parents can afford it, why wouldn't they pick an Ivy League school?  That's one of the reasons the Patriot schools argue for scholarships.  If they can offer a full scholarship, they can stay competitive in recruiting against the Ivy League.

Q: In A March to Madness and The Last Amateurs, you wrote about how referees hate being "shown up" by coaches in televised games. Do you think this applies to small programs and small-market telecasts?

A: Less so.  The Ivy League TV program is a national package on DirecTV, Friday nights.  It's in a relatively low number of homes, though I understand that may be expanding next year.  But the officials always know when a game is on TV.  For one thing, the way they run the game is a little different, with timeouts and stuff.  In the books, though, I was mainly referencing the ACC, where they know Dick Vitale is sitting over there on the side.  And I found in the Patriot League that night in and night out, when the games aren't on TV at all, or on TV in a limited way, that the officials are far less apt to T up a coach.

There was one exception, when an ACC official, Vinny Allen, was officiating a game between Bucknell and Lafayette.  Mike McKey, an assistant, said something to Vinny Allen and Allen said, "No, no, no. You can't speak to me. You're just an assistant."  That doesn't usually happen with regular Patriot League referees.

Q: When you wrote A Season Inside, the Big 5 was just beginning to go into hibernation, with Villanova cutting back its number of games.  With the reemergence of the round-robin format and this year's Big Five tripleheader, do you think the Big 5 is back for good?

A: Temple was right there with Villanova.  Liacoras was just as guilty as anybody for what happened.  He wanted games on campus.  I'd still like to see all Big Five games played in the Palestra.  I think that's where they belong.  Certainly that tripleheader—even though it was a two admission tripleheader—was a great day.  And going back to round-robin is a great thing.  I have always maintained that the Big 5 is unique.  There's nothing comparable to it in college basketball.

Q: A few of this year's regular season games, which ended in buzzer beater shots, were decided by instant replay (e.g. Penn-Nova).  Do you think TV replay might be used in the NCAA tournament?

A: The rules say they can.  There are only a couple instances when you can used replay: to determine who was involved in a fight, to see if a shot was taken before or after a buzzer, to verify if the 35-second shot had gone off, and, I believe, if you're not certain if a shooter had his foot on the three point line.  You obviously don't use it for things like block, charge and travel.  Just stuff where replay might clearly show a discrepancy.

You go back to 1990—the Georgia Tech vs. Michigan State semifinal game.  Kenny Anderson hit a shot to tie the game that clearly came after the buzzer.  There was no replay at the time to correct it.  I think that's what led to replay being used.

Q: What's your take on the pod system?  Is it fair to put high seeds close to home in the first two rounds?

A: I'm basically against it.  I don't want to condemn it until I see how it plays out this year.  My instinct is that it's going to lead to less upsets in the early rounds because the higher seeded will be playing in front of home crowds.  I understand why they're doing it—boost attendance a little bit, give kids' families a chance to see them.  What I would suggest is that they take some of their $6 billion TV contract and pay for the families to travel.

Q: As a Duke alumnus, what was your reaction to the ESPN.com piece on Duke's student athletes and the academic treatment they receive (e.g. Carlos Boozer's independent study project)?

A: I didn't see it.  I heard there was some claim that all the basketball majors are psych or sociology majors.  What's wrong with that?  As for Boozer, I did an independent study project like that too.  I was a history major and I did an independent study where I never went to class.  I just met with my professor midway through the semester and eventually turned in a very long paper.  I guess it's just an easy school.

Q: What do you think of Georgetown rejecting their NIT bid, in the interest of players not missing classes?

A: That's a bunch of hooey.  First off, they would have played Wednesday in Charlottesville, which is a day trip.  In the second round—if they were sent out West, as they said they would have been—it would have been on a weekend.  They might have missed one day of class, tops.

This is a school that, when John Thompson was the coach, would go to the West regional and never come back.  It's a bunch of hooey.  I'm not sure what Esherick and the administration are thinking in turning it down.  It's foolish on their part because they have a young team and they could have played five more games.  It would have been good for them.  They're an extraordinarily arrogant program considering that they haven't been to the final four since 1985.  They've been past the second round twice since 1989.  They still think that Patrick Ewing is playing there!

Q: Was there any part of A Season on the Brink that was left out of the adapted screenplay, and you would have liked to see included in the film?

A: Only about 90%.  Well maybe 95%.  I sincerely hope people will not think that the movie is anything like the book because it's not like the book.  The movie is a cartoon.  It was poorly written.  It was poorly produced.  It was poorly directed.  I won't say it was poorly acted because I think Dennehy did the best he could with the material he was given.  Physically, he was miscast.  He's not big enough and he's too old.  He's sixty-three.  Knight was forty-five when the book took place.  He did the best he could with what he had.  The other people didn't have acting roles; they were just nodding.  ESPN did a horrible job with everything, except the promotion, which is what they're best at anyway.

Q: Can you give us a glimpse of the book you've just finished?

A: It's a nonfiction book on the Rudy Tomjanovich—Kermit Washington punch of 1977, which is probably the most famous punch that ever took place in a sporting event, outside of boxing.  Kermit was playing for the Lakers; Rudy for the Houston Rockets.  Kermit almost killed Rudy on the court during a game.  The book is about how one fluke moment can change people's lives forever.

Q: When does it come out?

A: October.  It's called, cleverly enough, The Punch.

ivybasketball.com is not affiliated with the Ivy League or its member institutions.