Washington Post sports columnist John Feinstein certainly is not afraid to speak his mind about Duke Athletics, and that's why we're fans of him over at The Chronicle. Well that, and he was a two-time sports editor of The Chronicle in the 70s.
Perhaps his favorite target was Joe Alleva, and in a recent interview with ACC Nation and in an interview with The Chronicle in April, compared the former athletic director to a "cat"--and not in a good way. He says Alleva got the job at LSU because of the "15 letters of recommendation" he wrote for him.
Now, Feinstein's sounding off on Duke's hiring of Kevin White. The review? So-so.
Feinstein took umbrage that Duke would pay Gene Corrigan of Bill Carr & Associates, a consulting firm that assisted Duke, when the former ACC commissioner and Notre Dame athletic director offered to do the job for free as a member of the search committee. He's also "disappointed" that the committee decided to only review current athletic directors, eliminating associate athletic director Mike Cragg, the director of the Legacy Fund who almost certainly had Mike Krzyzewski's endorsement.
“What I said to some of my Duke friends is, if the committee had take this sort of in-the-box approach in 1981 when they were looking for a basketball coach, Mike Krzyzewski would never have gotten the job as basketball coach. If you want to be great, you have to think out of the box. This committee thought in the box.”
Here's Feinstein's parting shot: “Kevin White will be an improvement on Joe Alleva. So would my cat.” Ah, yes. The feline frenzy, again.
--by Ben Cohen
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