Bruce Pearl retired this week after a 23-year career as one of the most successful college basketball coaches ever. And in short order, the retirement has drawn more scrutiny to Pearl’s history of NCAA infractions and political screeds, with Bomani Jones the latest to rip the Auburn coach on his way out of the sport.
Early in Pearl’s career, he became known for a series of recruiting violations, most infamously when he illicitly recorded a phone call with a high school player while at Iowa, and then tried to get the player to admit to being paid by a rival program. In more recent years, Pearl became a vocal supporter of President Donald Trump and the right-wing Make America Great Again movement.
Jones was no fan of any of it, and is more than happy to see Pearl go.
“I have to say this about Bruce Pearl, he is probably my least-favorite college basketball coach of all time,” Jones said on his podcast, The Right Time.
Later, Jones called Pearl empty and phony.
“I can’t think of anybody emptier than Pearl,” Jones added. “He’s a good basketball coach, there’s no way around that part. He just seems like a guy who says whatever it is that needed to be said at a given point in time, and it all felt so phony. Then the last couple of years, he decided to show us just how real he was, and I liked that even less.”
Jones is not the only one to lay it on Bruce Pearl in short order following his retirement. Monday on Pardon the Interruption, within hours of Pearl’s departure from Auburn, host Michael Wilbon went so far as to say he actively hoped Pearl had been forced out of his position.
What Jones did uniquely put forth, however, was a prediction for Pearl’s next steps after the Auburn coach insisted he would not run for office”
“He’s going to be on his phone a lot, and the podcast is coming.”
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