Soon this website will be nothing but stories about people who hate Dan Dakich.
After his cross-country radio feud with WEEI in Boston, and being the subject of an Iowa patrolman’s Facebook rant that has him under investigation, the ESPN college basketball analyst is in the middle of a brouhaha once more. And again, it’s someone in the Hawkeye State that is angry with Dakich. But this time it’s actually someone more in Dakich’s neighborhood – Iowa basketball head coach Fran McCaffery.
It all starts with Tuesday’s Iowa-Wisconsin game. The Badgers smoked the Hawkeyes 82-50 but the major talking point coming out of the game was whether Iowa’s Adam Woodbury was intentionally poking Wisconsin players in the eye while guarding them. Dakich called it “complete garbage” and also said the following:
“And it is gutless as well. And he is doing it on purpose. You can say he’s not and everybody can get mad at me all you want, but he’s doing it on purpose and it needs to stop and the Big Ten office needs to discipline the kid.”
You can see the video here of Woodbury getting in the personal space of two Wisconsin players…
On his coach’s radio show, McCaffery lit into Dakich over his comments calling out Woodbury personally in a way that makes you think they won’t be on each other’s Christmas card list moving forward:
“I think that’s the thing that’s most upsetting in this whole situation that has gotten completely blown out of proportion. Danny Dakich is so far out of line. He’s just lost it on this one. He doesn’t know Adam Woodbury. And for him to say the reprehensible things he’s said about an amateur is inexcusable. It’s absolutely inexcusable that his network would allow him to say those things of things about a guy he doesn’t know.”
[…]
“But for him to call Adam Woodbury a coward and gutless is inexcusable. All right. And I don’t appreciate him saying anything about what I should do. He’s a TV guy. If he was a coach, he’d be coaching. I should tell him to go buy some lottery tickets. He’d have a better chance to win the lottery than to ever in any way recommend what I should do with my player or my team. Adam Woodbury is my guy, I’ll go to war with him any day of the week. As far as I’m concerned, I’m through with it. He wants it to continue. He’s got a radio show. He’s probably going to do our game Saturday (Jan. 31 against Wisconsin). He wants to be on radio. He wants his name out there; that’s how they utilize him on that station. That’s his prerogative. He owes Adam Woodbury and Adam Woodbury’s family an apology for how he attacked that kid so maliciously I’m really disappointed in him, I’ll tell you that.”
That wasn’t all. McCaffrey took a not-so-subtle dig at Dakich as a former “assistant” coach in the Big Ten even though he served an interim stint at Indiana.
Dakich is never one to shy away from these things, so he jabbed back at McCaffrey on his Twitter page:
Frannie Goes off on a tangent during his night time radio show and I want to "keep it going"? Lotto tix?? Huh ? Sad
— Dan Dakich (@dandakich) January 22, 2015
Next time Fran yells at a player w a red face remind him these are amateurs
— Dan Dakich (@dandakich) January 22, 2015
I’m not sure there’s a side that necessarily needs to be taken here. Dakich is calling it like he sees it and not mincing words while McCaffery is defending his player. Both guys are doing the jobs they’re paid to do. It’s just unusual to see it in college basketball, where commentators and coaches typically walk on eggshells when it comes to criticism and controversy.
Iowa has a home game against, you guessed it, Wisconsin on Saturday the 31st on ESPN television that Dakich is likely to announce. Better make sure you have plenty of popcorn stashed away just in case we see more fireworks.
Comments are closed.