So if you have checked the news recently about Coach Auriemma, you have probably read some interesting things.
I am only going to offer a few of my thoughts from when I reported on the women's basketball team. I heard Geno talk a lot. I have hours of recordings of him talking.
He was funny and smart and I think I learned a lot from just listening to him so much. I would say he has made me a smarter and better person and leader. I feel like I was blessed to have been able to listen to him at press conferences. I think he is an effective teacher of concepts because he makes some great analogies.
I have nothing but great things to say about Coach Auriemma. As a matter of fact, I have never heard anyone say a bad thing about him from people who I have been in contact with in Athletics. Even Franklin Pierce and their coach had great things to say to me about how welcoming Geno and the program were to them when they played an exhibition game at Gampel in 2010.
I think Coach Auriemma is a confident person, maybe cocky, but he has every right to be in my mind. Arrogant is not a word I would use to describe him. He said hello to me when I ran into him in Gampel a year after I reported on the team and I had small talk with him. Not many high profile college coaches would initiate small talk with a former student reporter.
When I met him for the first time he offered to help me in any way he could.
He doesn't seem like the type of person to have tried to kiss a security guard. I can see him making fun of the security guard, or yanking their chain, but I can't see what he was accused of happening.
I have heard bad things about other coaches in college athletics, but never about Coach Auriemma. Having not been a witness and just hearing the story I would side with Geno.
You never do know, but for now I would give Coach Auriemma the benefit of the doubt.
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