Lute Olson's Leave of Absence

OK, I am confused.

Is it the divorce or is something else out there.

If it's divorce, the whole thing is ridiculous. So what?

If it's an illness, so what?

I mean with this reaction, you would think someone married a horse or ate an aunt.

Oh, and how did we do in spiking traffic to the site?

 

I'm confused. This is a catch-22. I can't say whether it should be private if I don't know what it is. And I can't know what it is if it's something that, in fact, should be kept private. I have to assume, though, that whatever it is will require this man to be away from his team for an extended period of time. I believe Lute's granddaughter plays basketball for Stetson University.

 

Andy Katz says leave Lute alone.

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/columns/story?columnist=katz_andy&id=3145036&lpos=spotlight&lid=tab3pos1

I am not a college hoops junkie, and I don't know what the deal is here. But pretty clearly, it's sensitive enough for people to be very timid regarding what is going on.

Good luck to Lute's family.

 

Jesus, what a houseboy.

(and I don't mean you, PR).

There's a difference between handling information with discretion, and being a graduate of the DLB school of syncophancy.

 

and to think I was going to make a crack that this was designed to give fans a chance to get comfortable with Kevin O'Neill....

 

If the information I'm cognizant of is the right stuff . . . were I working the CBB beat, I wouldn't be in any hurry to run with it, either.

But I wouldn't withhold it out of any compulsion to genuflect towards Lute Olsen, specifically.

 

I still don't understand what could be so private that nobody would report it. Newspapers generally don't identify rape victims and such. I'm sure there are some others that fall into gray area.

 

That's not it.

It's that it's just none of the public's business. There's no good reason to print it, and there's reason to think printing it could make the situation worse.

I have no particular feelings about Lute Olson, but if the guy asks you not to run with something about his private life I think you should have a decent reason to blow off that request. There isn't one here.

 

You have to have some idea of what the issue is before you can decide whether to honor his request for privacy. Getting treatment for a gambling problem (just to pull an example out of thin air) might be considered a private matter, but I certainly wouldn't hesitate to print that. Olson has every right to ask the media to respect his privacy, but he should also understand that some journalists are not just going to take him at his word. They are going to to their job, which is to investigate, try to determine what the truth is, and then decide what's appropriate to publish.

 

When Magic Johnson left the Lakers if he had asked the media not to report the reason would they have respected his wishes?

 

I think there was a lot more pressure then. There were more city newspapers, and some of the suburban papers that are now "intensely local" staffed pro beats. While there may be a lot more people yapping now, there were more people reporting then. I think newspapers now are a lot more willing to concede "national" stories to "national media." When the Magic Johnson story broke, I was not in the L.A. market, at a metro but not an enormous one, but we threw a lot of resources at the story and tried to produce coverage that was second to none. You don't see many papers do that for an "out-of-town story" anymore. I think everyone aimed much higher then. The National had been dead for only five months and a lot of papers had bulked up -- and some of them had recently taken on National alumni. We were a lot more ambitious then and expected a lot more from ourselves. It would be beaten out of us since, but that was a time of big dreams and high achievement.

 

Mrs. Lute Olson is going to fight the divorce.

Edit: Forgot the link.

http://sports.yahoo.com/ncaab/news?slug=ap-arizona-olson&prov=ap&type=lgns