LAVIN TAKES FIRING WITH GRAIN OF SUGAR.Byline: KEVIN MODESTI The firing of Steve Lavin Steve Lavin (born September 4,1964), a San Francisco, California native is a former college basketball coach and current ABC and ESPN TV analyst. As UCLA head basketball coach from 1996-2003, Lavin compiled a record of 145-78. , as long anticipated as war in Iraq, was completed over breakfast at a restaurant near UCLA UCLA University of California at Los Angeles UCLA University Center for Learning Assistance (Illinois State University) UCLA University of Carrollton, TX and Lower Addison, TX . One pictures Lavin, the coach, spooning lite yogurt onto his granola, and Dan Guerrero, the athletic director Athletic director (commonly, "athletics director") is a position at many American colleges and universities, as well as in larger high schools and middle schools, which oversees the work of the coaches and related staff involved in intercollegiate or interscholastic athletic , hunching over a tall stack of French toast. Guerrero later said that after he and Lavin ``went through the exercise officially,'' they enjoyed ``a pleasant conversation'' about mutual ``fresh starts'' and other felicities. The impression is that the two men get along so well that it was easy for the AD to ask the coach to clean out his desk in one breath and to pass the syrup in the next. ``For lack of a better term,'' Guerrero mused later, ``it was almost surreal.'' As if Monday's firing should have been any different from the past 25 years of Bruins basketball coaches' comings and goings. At last, Lavin found a comfortable place in UCLA lore. Not in the old tradition of annual championships but in the post-John Wooden tradition of perpetual weirdness. Surreal? It's right up there with the story of Gene Bartow Gene Bartow (born August 18, 1930) is a former college men's basketball coach. The Browning, Missouri native coached 34 years at six universities. He coached at Central Missouri State University from 1961-64, Valparaiso University from 1964-1970 and Memphis State University , the apparently perfect replacement for Wooden in 1975, who grew so frazzled after two years of pressure from boosters and news media he said he worried less about getting fired than ``assassinated as·sas·si·nate tr.v. as·sas·si·nat·ed, as·sas·si·nat·ing, as·sas·si·nates 1. To murder (a prominent person) by surprise attack, as for political reasons. 2. .'' Bartow quit to take a job as head coach at Alabama Birmingham, a university that didn't yet have a basketball team. Surreal? It's right up there with the story of Gary Cunningham Gary Cunningham is a college men's basketball coach. He was the head coach of the University of California, Los Angeles from 1977 to 1979, guiding them to a 50-8 record. As of 2007, he is the winningest coach at UCLA by percentage of wins to losses at .862. , the former Wooden player and assistant who took the job from Bartow and put up with the havoc it wreaked on family vacations for all of two years before walking away. Cunningham soon landed in the glamorous position of athletic director of Western Oregon This article is about the region of Western Oregon. For the University, see Western Oregon University. Western Oregon is a geographical term that is generally taken to apply to the portion of the state of Oregon that is west of the Cascade Range. State College. Surreal? It's right up there with the story of Larry Brown, the outsider who made himself a campus hero by leading the team to its first NCAA NCAA abbr. National Collegiate Athletic Association final of the post-Wooden era only to skip back to the NBA NBA abbr. 1. National Basketball Association 2. National Boxing Association NBA (US) n abbr (= National Basketball Association) → Basketball-Dachverband (= a year later for the relative riches of the New Jersey Nets. Brown would call that the biggest mistake of his frantic professional life, and would be on the verge On the Verge (or The Geography of Yearning) is a play written by Eric Overmyer. It makes extensive use of esoteric language and pop culture references from the late nineteenth century to 1955. of rectifying it in 1988, agreeing to return to UCLA before flying back to Kansas and having second thoughts. Surreal? It's right up there with the story of Larry Farmer, the one-time Wooden pupil who withstood the pressure for all of three years, then was pushed in front of the cameras to announce a contract extension that he would never actually sign. Four days after saying, ``I'm very happy'' at UCLA, Farmer resigned and embarked on a coaching odyssey that would take him to such hoops hotbeds as Ogden, Utah and Kuwait. Surreal? It's right up there with the story of Walt Hazzard, the old Bruins and NBA star and Chapman College coach who picked up from Farmer, went for four years and might have gone longer if it hadn't been for the shrinking interest of the fans and the growing attention of NCAA investigators. Hazzard became the first basketball coach to be fired by UCLA but not the last or, now, the second-to-last. Surreal? It's right up there with the story of Jim Harrick, the old high school and Pepperdine coach who took the Bruins to their only post-Wooden national championship in 1995 and was canned in 1996 for lying about an expense report, the athletic-department equivalent of nailing Saddam Hussein for tax evasion The process whereby a person, through commission of Fraud, unlawfully pays less tax than the law mandates. Tax evasion is a criminal offense under federal and state statutes. A person who is convicted is subject to a prison sentence, a fine, or both. . Who could have predicted at the start of this season Harrick would get the boot (a suspension, but just you wait) from Georgia before Lavin would get his pink slip from UCLA? This has to be the politest firing in the history of big-time sports. Guerrero had been thinking about it when the season began, but the rookie AD felt obliged to ``evaluate'' Lavin for an entire year. For his part, Lavin knew he was next after football coach Bob Toledo was cleared out in December, but he stayed upbeat to the last sip of prune juice. Toledo got his walking papers handed to him across Guerrero's desk. Lavin got his handed to him along with dish of margarine. Guerrero is no doubt hoping that his first basketball coaching hire will bring an end to a quarter-century of the bizarre. But on behalf of columnists everywhere, I'd like to say this has been too entertaining to stop now. |
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