As the end of the twentieth century approaches, most Americans recognize the importance of diversity in the workplace.

In a nutshell, gender, race, and religion have been declared non-issues as far as employment qualifications are concerned.

Namely, if a person's skills are sufficient to do a particular job, according to the job description, that person can get hired for the position that he or she has applied for.

That's progress.

Diversity is important in athletics, too.

In fact, one of the reasons that sports such as baseball, football, and basketball enjoy the immense following that they do, in this country (as opposed to soccer, or, say, tennis), is that The Big Three each require a wide variety of skills, abilities, physiques, and demeanors.

Americans like diversity.

Meanwhile, the importance of diversifying intercollegiate sports is readily determined by looking at the goals of Title IX, which requires equity in the way that men's and women's sports are funded by their respective institutions, and by examining the manyfold increase in the number of black men's basketball coaches at the Division I level of competition.

So, especially within intercollegiate athletics, diversity is good.

Now, let's consider the diversity within the men's college coaching ranks--as far as the respective coaches' personal characteristics are concerned.

But first, step back and think about an "average" group of ten or twelve American men.

Out of your average dozen or so American males, you've got a couple smart guys and a couple less-than-smart guys.

And there's generally a shy guy and an outgoing guy.

Maybe two are tall, one short; one fat, another skinny.

Some married and some single; some handsome and some are not.

Some have straight hair...others have curly.

Maybe one guy out of the dozen still wears leisure suits.

And out of that one dozen guys, on average, there's probably one bully.

So if college basketball coaches are to truly reflect the population from which they came, then, in a given conference of ten or twelve schools, there oughta be one bully among that conference's men's basketball coaches.

Now, let's concentrate on the four conferences most familiar to the St. Louis area: The Big 10, Conference USA, the Big 12, and the Missouri Valley Conference.

But first, what makes a bully, a bully?

One sure sign: bullies pick their spots, and often choose to fight against defenseless opponents.

In the case of basketball coaches, their defenseless opponents are often the local media assigned to write stories that summarize each game.

Using that general guideline, Indiana University men's basketball coach Bob Knight is the poster child for basketball-coach-as-bully.

This writer's gigabyte-sized hard disk isn't big enough to chronicle all of the examples of Knight-as-bully, in terms of his boorish behavior with the nation's sports media.

So Knight is the obvious choice as the Big 10's coaching bully.

And Bob Huggins, the head man at C-USA member the Univ. of Cincinnati, is doing his darnedest to imitate Knight.

A recent article in which Huggins blames the media for the problems surrounding his program ("It's a terrible thing to stereotype people the way the media did to us in '92. We've never recovered from that perception," Huggins told ESPN's The Magazine) furthers his reputation in this regard.

Presumably the recent NCAA sanctions imposed on Huggins' UC program, for "lack of institutional control", would have never taken place in the absence of the media.

And presumably the UC men's basketball 0% graduation rate, from 1991-97, is also the media's fault.

So Huggins is our C-USA choice...

The Big 12?

Mizzou's Norm Stewart is the obvious choice here, in light of his "colorful" interactions with the employees of various print media outlets, including Post-Dispatch sportswriter Jim Thomas.

Thomas, who currently covers the Rams, was once the P-D's Mizzou beat writer.

In one well-publicized story, Thomas came away from a conversation with Stewart claiming that he (Stewart) had threatened the well-being of Thomas' offspring!

Knight, Huggins, Stewart--between them, they have won over 1,500 college games.

So maybe there's something to this bully-the-media business, at least as far as wins-and-losses are concerned.

Which leaves the Missouri Valley Conference.

This reporter wishes to nominate Jim Crews, the dean of men's coaches in the Missouri Valley Conference, as its coaching bully.

For one thing, Crews, in his 13+ years at Evansville, has coached the Purple Aces to more than 250 victories.

But Crews' post-game performance, last week, in the wake of Evansville's blowout loss to Southern Illinois, planted a small seed that indicates that he may, some day, rank up there with Knight (his college coach at IU), Huggins, and Stewart.

Nothing major, mind you...but Crews was showing all the signs...ridiculing some questions from inexperienced inquisitors...and, when questioned about his rotation in the second half of the game (his team's two go-to guys played no more than a half-dozen minutes or so in that half), responding that he "didn't want to overplay guys" and that he "wanted them rested".

And it was very apparent, throughout the session, that the team's beat writer, from the Evansville Courier, felt as though Crews needed to be treated with kid gloves.

Still worse was Crews' apparent reaction to the Courier writer's well-meaning attempts to ask inoffensive questions: Crews appeared to enjoy the whole scene.

So, barring additional evidence, Jim Crews is our choice as the MVC coaching bully.

A close second in the MVC race for bully-as-coach?

In the opinion of many, that would be current Southwest Missouri coach Steve Alford, another Knight trainee/acolyte.

Nice job, Bobby.