I was watching some of his speech at the gym today during lunch. The guy is a legend, and so misunderstood. I really hope they play his speech in full on SC or somewhere else over the next few days because it was some powerfull stuff. He pretty much summed up why he is such a great person, and a great coach for all those years. It's rare to have a coach who's priority is making a difference in his players lives over basketball.

i heard most of it on the radio. i respect him as much as any coach i can think of.

what was the deal with his practices? Didn't he have them at 5 am every day or something like that?

I hate to disagree, but from a distance the guy appears to be a racist jackass.

If a white coach pulled some of the stuff he did I don't think they would have lasted as long. The one glarring thing is the post game press conference where he threatned the life of another coach. If I remember correctly it was Calapari (sp?).

Again this is the opinion of someone who doesn't follow Temple bball. But, he has just rubbed me wrong from what little I have seen him.

Most people who really have no idea about what kind of person he is usually say the "racist" crap about Chaney. I have had the debate for years with friends, parents of friends and others who have no clue about him. People like to say he never recruits white players, thats a flat out lie, the majority of the good white players want no parts of going to Temple. Why would they go from their nice, white neighborhoods and go to Temple which is in the worst area of Philly and is 99% black? Most white players aren't even going to consider it.

The guy rarely ever got the top recruits and constantly took chances on kids with shaky backgrounds, prop 48 kids, mid-level players who he felt he could help in the personal lives as well as with basketball. The guy wanted to be a father figure to these kids as much as a coach and teach them much more than just hoops. He stressed education over anything else and I can tell first hand that he made sure his kids are in class every day, if not he throws the kids off the team.

I think he gets a bad perception because of the stuff that he has done over the years that has gotten the big headlines. It's all the other stuff that has gotten my admiration over the years. He is really a great guy who cares about his players and his community as much as any public figure I have ever seen. Yeah, he has some screws loose and loses it sometimes, but it is always in the heat of the battle. I respect that he always spoke his mind rather than the ridiculous coach speak that I am used to. Sometimes he blew up on the media but I'd rather hear him yell and bitch about something than give some condiscending attitude like most coahes.

I wish I could find a page that listed all the non-basketball stuff he has done over the years, he is a great guy as far as I'm concerned.

The guy is insane, he should have been kicked out of the NCAA when he sent in the goon to break that kid's arm.

Yeah, 5:30am every day. When I was at Temple Rick Brunson was in one of my 8:00 classes and he'd be in there exhausted every day. They actually would send the assistant coaches around to classes every day to make sure the kids were there.

his legacy will be looked upon fondly... but he was a complete ass a couple of times in his career (beyond out of line), though with all he has accomplished, those can be forgiven

and he claimed to have his practices so early as to keep his players out of trouble at night... who can drink till 3am and practice 2 hours later effectively?... not anyone i know (maybe john daly, but that's golf, not hoops)

He did not send the guy in to break the kids arm. What he did happens all the time in basketball, the problem was Chaney admitted to doing it.

it's clear he had a few incidents that will tarnish his legacy...but from what I've read, it seems like that stuff is tremendously outweighed by all the good he did.

yes, I think this is probably closest to the truth. One of the best college basketball coaches ever. He did a lot for the community bringing the kids he did into Temple. It's a good and difficult (respected) academic school and he did a lot to bring and keep the Philadelphia kids at home. I seriously doubt he sent a kid in to break an arm, sometimes you get fouled hard and you fall badly, stuff happens. Cheney was an excellent coach all around even if he was a lot rough around the edges at times, but then again so is Philadelphia. As far as tarnishing reputations, I guess it depends on who you ask. I like Coach K at Duke, but the guy gets a huge pass on a lot of his issues that aren't afforded to others and he dosen't usually have the big media incident, pretty glaring he took his starters off for the last second at FSU and put in his clearly meaningless players since he "feared for the safety" (of his starters the hell with the scrubs right?) and Coach K is a good guy, I'm just saying other coaches get passes. Yes, John Cheney has been out of line at times, but doing what he has for that community makes up for it.

It's funny hearing the names the national media is throwing out as a replacement. If you know Temple basketball you know that Dean Demopoulos will probably be the next coach. I'd say there's a 80% chance and I have not heard his name mentioned at all.

I'd like to see Mark Macon be head coach. I'm sad to see him go. Yes, he is a controversial man, with GoonSquad and some other things he's a good guy. He's pasisonate about the game he loves. It was nice of him to stay for Mardy Collins' senior year.

every bball fan should have seen chaney interrupt the interview of Collins before they played Duke. Collins is answering the typical questions and Chaney comes in wearing a hoodie heckeling collins saying "if you start turning the ball over your ass is coming out". "jj is gonna be all over your ass". "you better not say anything, that boy is gonna KILL you" Collins looked like we all do when one of our friends is subject to our drunken dad or uncle busting our balls about something.

Here you go Jimmac. Good article on your man Chaney.

http://www.nj.com/columns/ledger/izenbe ... xml&coll=1


Chaney leaving players a legacy that's sure to last
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
BY JERRY IZENBERG
Star-Ledger Staff
Once, in a moment of shared confidences, John Chaney and I talked about a time in space neither of us could imagine. The subject was retirement, and I wondered how he would handle it.

"Will you hang out on playgrounds and watch the kids? Will you come back to Temple to mingle with the crowd in the gym that you virtually built by yourself? Will you miss it?"

Chaney laughed and then he said:

"I don't want to look back at what's past. You and I are both Sinatra people. Like he sang, I'm going to say, 'Excuse me while I disappear.'"

Yesterday, Chaney said his farewells. His shirt open, his tie draped over his shoulder, his eyes inscrutable behind sunglasses that masked his tears, John Chaney, a Hall of Fame coach who took Temple basketball to 17 NCAA appearances, retired.

And then, true to his word, after finishing with the kind of passionate speech that all who know him expected, John told them all, "Excuse me while I disappear."

His wife is ill and he will not coach Temple's NIT opener tonight.

This is the man who brought his teams to work at 6 a.m. because "by the time we finished, there was nowhere for them to go but class." The man whose temper often got him into trouble ... whose loyalty to the kids who played for him and the city in which they played was legendary.

He is 74 years old and very much a product of a different time in a different Philadelphia. But to the young men who played for him, he was the common denominator that stretches all the way from the ancient blacktop playground on Coster Avenue near Shunk in North Philly to his unique dawn classroom disguised as a gym floor.

To the big-name coaches with their big-name players at their big-name schools, he still is the architect of a fine-tuned, you-can't-hide-from-us-on-the-road-to-basketball-hell matchup zone that respects nobody and nothing that doesn't wear Temple cherry and white.

Years from now, as a long as a single Chaney-made player lives, nobody will have to tell Philadelphia who he is any more than anybody will need to remind him what he means to Philadelphia.

The Basketball Hall of Fame installation in 2001 was nice. But Philly will always be his home.

Ask him about where you can buy the best, the freshest of vegetables, and he will point you toward the city's markets where he shops. Ask him where he lives, and he will tell you he has always been of, about and in Philly.

And Temple was his office.

He had no rolling hills to sell recruits, no stately elms. On soft summer nights, he couldn't tell them to smell the magnolia blossoms or listen for the sound of Philadelphia crickets. Nobody plants magnolias on a concrete campus, and Philly-tough mosquitoes have long since terrorized the crickets.

And when you played for John Chaney, you did not matriculate. You enlisted.

He was, by his recollection, a product of his time -- young, black and consigned to an emotional scrapheap built by an all-knowing Philadelphia public school educator who was sure he knew "what's best for the boy."

"Think about that," he once told me. "Here was my counselor ... my school guidance counselor ... telling me I couldn't go to college ... keeping me out of every college prep course.

"He sent me to wood shop, and every stool I ever made, one leg was always shorter than the others. I kept cutting them down to try to even things off until I had nothing but a flat top left. So even I knew I wasn't cut out to do that."

Back when he was not much older than the young men he later coached, he was told he didn't belong in college and wasn't going to get there. But he got his master's degree. This same man who never got to coach a college game until he was 40 wound up with 741 wins as a college coach, fifth among active coaches.

He probably cries more tears in emotional moments than any other coach in the country.

A high school guidance counselor's bigoted arrogance could have ruined his life, if he had given in to it. So, for that matter, could the once unwritten racism at the school he later coached. But he rose above that as well and came back to coach at a school that wouldn't offer him a scholarship when he was the most talented high school player in the entire city.

His multifaceted skills were not exactly a secret. In a city where playground legends command serious respect and where the public school gyms are testing grounds for some of the best high school talent in America, everybody knew his name.

The story, repeated over and over on those blacktop playgrounds and in those high school gyms his senior year (1951), was that Temple had one last scholarship to give. It was the one he desperately wanted. He had the determination. He had the skills. But racism then counted for more.

That spring, a prestigious civic group called the Markward Club honored Tom Gola, already ticketed for La Salle, as the city's outstanding Catholic school player and Chaney as the best among the public school players.

His mother coaxed him into his father's suit. It was old and it was shiny and it did not fit very well, but it was all they had. For what must have seemed an eternity, he hid in the hotel bathroom.

He thinks about that, too, every once in a while.

He is a product of what he survived. He understands second and third chances. He made his own over and over again. He didn't get the Temple scholarship.

"I got something far more important," he once told me. " I got to know a teacher named Carrie P. Davis at Bethune-Cookman. Later she became a congresswoman. Back then she flunked me in history, got me on academic probation and made me do the work my high school counselor said I couldn't. Years later, I told her I hated her for flunking me, but I loved her for saving my life."

The kids who played for him never got a Final Four ring. But each of them who stayed the course with him came out a far better person for it.

And now he's run his race.

But can you put the Liberty Bell in storage? Can you teach an Eagle fan manners? Can you change anything that made Philadelphia what it is?

Yes, you can try to "just disappear," John.

But you never will from the hearts of the men who played for you or from the city that will keep your legacy evergreen.


Jerry Izenberg appears regularly in The Star-Ledger

I go to Temple and was at the press conference. Its really sad to see him go and he was very misunderstood which is sad in its own right. He did a lot for basketball in Philadelphia and helped out in the community and helped to rebuild Temple University. He is one of the winningest coaches of all times and will be truly be missed on the sidlelines of the Liacouras Center.

sorry

haha yea...it kinda sucks...i'm transferring to penn state though