Jim Boeheim, Central New York’s native son, and its most famous resident, would never retire like other legendary college basketball coaches. Not like Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski, who was fawned over at every away arena for an entire college basketball season. Coach K went out the way he was supposed to, like the prom queen who never did wrong. The shining beacon who made others better just by being near his light. A person who was beloved by all in the media and treated like royalty.
Not like Ol’ Roy Williams, who went out with the same ‘aw shucks’ mentality that he came in with decades before. Not like Mike Brey, who toasted his career with college students in an Irish bar near the Notre Dame campus.
No, Coach Boeheim would stay true to himself and his persona right up to the very end. So it was that on a drab Wednesday afternoon in drab Greensboro, North Carolina, he announced he might or might not retire to a room full of journalists who wanted nothing more than to see him go out gracefully. But if you know anything about Jim Boeheim, you know he wouldn’t do that. It just isn’t him.
To know how Jim Boeheim has comported himself in front of national media and the biggest crowds in college basketball for decades, you need to understand where he comes from. The area that birthed him and made him famous.
Central New York’s personality is cynical, protective, and grumpy. In many ways, Jim Boeheim IS Central New York. He embodies all the great and not-so-great things about the area. People in national media and even Syracuse grads from the Northeast Corridor covering him can’t truly appreciate his symbiotic relationship with Syracuse and the surrounding area.
People from Central New York never believe things will turn out well. Optimism is believing winter won’t start until after Halloween.
We are irritated by pomp, self-loathing to a fault, and fiercely loyal and protective of the place we call home. We are not graceful, and we are not classy. We’re always mildly angry and prone to be blunt and truthful despite how it might come across.
Central New York as a community has been beaten down, built up, and then pushed back down again. From mega malls promising an economic revival to a lake so polluted it's taken decades to get it to a point where it’s okay to even swim in it, people here are always ready for the worst and rarely expect the best.
That’s why we love Jim Boeheim so passionately. He’s just like us. So his retirement/non-retirement statements after a dismal loss in a dismal season were, if not expected, certainly not shocking. He’s too prideful to admit it was time to step aside, too sardonic to cave to the journalists pestering him. And most of all, he was too scared to show how much he cared.
Boeheim wears his emotions on his sleeve. That emotion is often dismissive boredom and irritation with those who deign to question his basketball acumen. He is irrationally prickly and thin-skinned when it comes to the local media. He never lets them forget their mistakes and is quick to thrash them in post-game pressers. But that’s not his only emotion.
One only has to look at his press conference after Pearl Washington died. He was close to inconsolable and deeply human at a moment when that’s what everyone in Central New York needed. He cares too much. He cares too deeply. Most of all, he cares about Syracuse University and the program he built over the past five decades.
So to ask this proud, irritable, sarcastic, and grim 78-year-old to announce his retirement in (of all places) Greensboro, North Carolina, was to expect him to put down his shield and be open and vulnerable.
If he had announced what was expected of him, knowing the man and the coach, and where he comes from, I don’t think he could have held it together. I don’t think he would have been able to hold in his emotions. So he deflected and used sarcasm and wry smiles to get through it.
He knew this was it, but he didn’t want to give all of us the satisfaction of seeing him not be who we thought he was for the last 50 years. He didn’t want anyone to see that behind the tartness, and the irascibility of the man was someone who cared for his community, his university, and his legacy almost too deeply.
In the end, coach stayed true to who he was. He is an enigma to outsiders and gave people in Central New York a reason to be proud. He is ours, and as he steps down awkwardly, he does so, representing a community that knows its shortcomings but will NEVER admit it to anyone who is not from here.
As John and Paul once said when Coach Boeheim was finishing up his career as a Syracuse player, “I am he as you are he as you are me, and we are all together.” If you’re not from here, you won’t get it. And frankly, we like it that way. He’s ours in a way most fanbases can’t understand. His good, bad, and ugly sides are what we in this community are. He’s us. And that’s why we love him.
