A roller-coaster of events in the past week resulted in a lot of bad feelings for Arizona Basketball, but after holding his position throughout the week, Greg Hansen finally regrets some of his word choices.
Arizona Daily Star long-time sports writer/reporter Greg Hansen was greeted by an Arizona Basketball fan at baggage claim in the Tucson Airport. The fan gave him something to think about when he asked him when he was going to quit his job. The conversation resulted in Hansen’s regret for what he had written and published in the Arizona Daily Star about head coach Sean Miller.
Hansen had written a few posts damning the University for not sticking up for Deandre Ayton questioning his eligibility by condemning Arizona Basketball head coach Sean Miller. Hansen told readers Miller should not be allowed to ever coach the team again. After Miller’s comments on the Pac-12 Network, Hansen published a post about his regrets and how he “blew it” and will forever regret not using four words, “If this is true.”
There was no actual apology to Deandre Ayton or head coach Sean Miller. Instead, there was a harrowing story about a conversation with one bold Arizona Basketball fan. The fan asked Hansen when he was going to quit writing about sports, and he did it publicly. Hansen felt bad, then he said it hit him when Jay Bilas said on TV that Coach Miller would never coach again that he may have jumped the gun.
Arizona Wildcats Basketball
In that post, Hansen even threw shade at Allonzo Trier, “The suspended Allonzo Trier? Good luck, son.” Hansen went on to tell the University of Arizona brass what to do:
"Miller cannot be allowed to coach the Wildcats again. Not Saturday at Oregon. Not ever.The school should withdraw from the Pac-12 Tournament and notify the NCAA that it will not participate in the NCAA Tournament.Miller’s coaching career is surely at an end. Unless this is a monumental misunderstanding, Miller will take a place with Rick Pitino among the most disgraced figures in college basketball history."
Where Hansen says he went wrong in his words:
"Here’s what I did wrong last Friday night: I did not preface my opinion that “Miller cannot be allowed to coach the Wildcats again” with a necessary qualifier. I did not precede my opinion with “If this is true.”"
That was one issue, but the other issue was that maybe he didn’t have to go there either as there seemed to be no first-hand knowledge of the ESPN reporter Mark Schlabach actually hearing and FBI sealed wiretap. Schlabach said, “I am told,” but the wiretap recordings are under FBI lock and key. Hansen could have also looked more at the big picture and not have pointed his finger at Miller.
Our stance was that there are a lot of issues in the NCAA and the way it conducts business, yes it’s a business. The entire institution needs to be overhauled, so implied Steve Kerr, LeBron James and Luke Walton after the story broke. So many top schools are said to be implicated, at least by Yahoo sports accounts.
The Arizona Daily Star published a correction in their paper with regards to Hansen’s initial post titled, “Arizona has gone way out-of-bounds; Miller must go” The paper wrote, “[The title] should have read that coach Miller was implicated in an FBI wiretap. Miller has not been accused of any wrongdoing.” The post you can find now on Tucson.com is titled, “Greg Hansen: Sean Miller cannot be allowed to coach the Wildcats again.” The title seems to be different depending on where it is posted according to Muckrack.com but the contents are the same.
We don’t know why it took so long for Hansen to come out publicly that he jumped to a conclusion way too fast, just like Dick Vitale, Seth Greenberg, and Jay Bilas did.
CBS, through 247Sports, reported date discrepancies which prompted corrections by ESPN, and Sports Illustrated reported grounds for possible litigation but said it the odds would be against Ayton and Miller. Sports Illustrated, our parent company, even reported that the player in the ESPN report could be wrong along with the dates and more.
"It’s worth noting that whoever leaked information about Miller may have gotten a lot of things wrong, including the date of the call, the identity of the recruit and, possibly, the dollar amount of a demanded payoff."
You can imagine that the competing sports reporting outlets are having fun with poking holes in their competitor’s report. It was bad enough that ESPN has not backed down, but the pressure built against Greg Hansen. Jason Scheer, 247Sports (CBS), has been adamant that ADS and Hansen retract their post. They got what they wanted.
Pretty impressive that the local paper can double down on the ESPN story and not do one Q&A or opinion piece on how he might be innocent or how the article may be wrong. Don’t make it too obvious.
— stunna (@stunnaIo) March 3, 2018
In case you missed it, here is Schlabach making his accusations with absolutely no doubt that all he reported was facts:
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We are happier that Hansen has come around to regret his words, and further podcast comments, etc. Hansen did apologize to Emmanuel Richardson and his attorney for the podcast comments. But we are not yet at that happy point. We think he needs to apologize to Dre and Miller on video and publish it. There is nothing worse than local media skewering the program they are so close too that added a ton of credibility to the national headlines, especially with Dick Vitale and ESPN.