Media Minutes With Pat Forde: How He's Surviving and Advancing in March
March is truly madness for Pat Forde. The Yahoo Sports writer flies state-to-state splitting his time between covering the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament and watching his children compete in the Men’s and Women’s NCAA Swimming Championships. Last week, his youngest daughter Brooke won an individual title in the 500 free with Stanford, and this week his middle son Clayton is swimming in multiple events with Georgia. Meanwhile, he still wrote about Duke and the tournament and is covering the Louisville region this week. It’s truly a mad, yet fulfilling, time for Forde, who carved out some time to speak with The Big Lead about finding a work-life balance, his expectations for the Sweet 16 and the current state of men’s basketball as cheating scandals continue to rock the foundation.
Brian Giuffra: Hey Pat, want to start out strongy congratulating you and your daughter Brooke on her win last week. What was it like having your daughter win the national championship?”
Pat Forde: It was a big thrill. Watching all three of our kids swim in college [his oldest son Mitchell swam at Missouri] has been one of the great things as parents for my wife and I. Brooke has had a very good career and this was kind of the next step to win an individual championship. It was an unbelievable week. If you want to get into what student-athlete life is like, she had to take two human biology finals: one on Tuesday, one on Wednesday, swim the 800 freestyle relay and anchor that, miscount her laps and have to swim an extra 50 at the end because she was so fried mentally, and then turn around the next day and swim the 500 and win that and get a term paper finished and turned in. It was just a crazy, crazy week. Just to be able to watch, we couldn’t be more thrilled for her. And now I’m going to go back to Austin this week to watch my son swim for Georgia in the men’s championship.
Giuffra: How do you strongalance your jostrong at Yahoo with watching your children swim?
Forde: It’s difficult but it’s fun. I gotta give a great deal of thanks to my bosses at Yahoo for being as understanding as they have been. You know, it’s the middle of March Madness, and they’re letting me go to a swim meet. That’s been huge for them to be so understanding. But it’s crazy.
This week I’m going to cover two games in Louisville Thursday night. First thing Friday I’m flying to Austin, Texas, to watch Clayton swim. Then Saturday morning I’m flying back for the regional final. So trying to do both is difficult, but what the heck. Last year I was driving between Columbus, Ohio and Pittsburgh. Columbus was where the women’s (swimming) championships were. Pittsburgh was where the basketball was. I drove back and forth between those two every day. And then the following week for the men’s (swimming) championship, I was flying back and forth between Atlanta and Minneapolis. So it’s a bit expensive, it’s a bit crazy, it’s a bit exhausting, but I would not want to do it any other way.
Giuffra: How do you stay up on everything happening in the tournament when your children are in the pool?
Forde: I have great colleagues. Nobody is more on top of what’s happening in college sports than Pete Thamel. I’m in constant contact with him and he’ll tell me, this is what’s happening, this is what’s going on. And the rest of our college crew and our editors at Yahoo do a great job making sure I know what’s happening when I’m at the pool. And when I’m not, I’m in front of a TV somewhere watching games or on my laptop trying to keep up with things. It’s been a team effort and I am the beneficiary of the team.
Giuffra: Have you ever missed anything strongecause you were watching a race?
Forde: Yeah. This goes back to 2012. Missouri [Forde’s alma mater] as a No. 2 seed was losing to Norfolk State as a 15 seed, like down to the wire, and I’m literally watching Clayton swimming in the state championships while it’s going on. People and calling me and texting me and I was like, just give me four minutes here. I also remember last year, when Virginia lost to UMBC, we were at a Stanford parent function celebrating because they had swam great that day and all of a sudden that game starts going the other way and I was like, ‘Uh I gotta go. I’ll see you later.’ I had to pick up and go and write a column about that game. The two things can conflict certainly. If the NCAA would ever like to consult me on scheduling these events, I’d be happy to give them some feedback.
Giuffra: What are you focused on heading into the Sweet 16?
Forde: It’s really chalky, which in a way is disappointing because you’d like to have some fresh faces, some new blood, some bootstrap programs in there. But at the same time, the games should be really good, really competitive. I’m pretty sure we have single-digit point spreads on every game and most of them are 5 and below. So I think the expectation is for some really great basketball.
To me, and I’ll start with the Louisville region because that’s what I’m covering, someone is going to the Final Four for the first time in a long time, unless Oregon shocks everybody. But if it’s Virginia, if it’s Purdue, if it’s Tennessee, somebody is going where they’ve never been or it’s been a long, long time, so that’s going to be interesting to watch.
The Duke-Zion Williamson story is captivating to me and everybody else. We’ve just never seen a player like him, so watching them go forward and possibly meet with Michigan State in a huge regional final is exciting. A possible North Carolina-Kentucky regional final is there. We saw that before when Luke Maye hit the winning shot to put them (North Carolina) in the Final Four. And is this the year Gonzaga can win a national title? There’s a lot to watch and it’s going to be fun.
Giuffra: How are you doing in your strongracket?
Forde: Ok. Not great. I had the Murray State pick, but I think everybody else had that too. I had Irvine, when Dean Wade got hurt that seemed like a logical pick. I went with a pretty chalky Final Four so I’m in pretty good shape there. I had Duke, North Carolina, Michigan and Purdue, so we’ll see if that can stand up. I wish I could say I had some real insight, but the fact is, there haven’t been any real shockers that someone can claim as having some brilliant thought to pick.
Giuffra: Michigan State is 1-11 against Duke under Tom Izzo. Do you think it’s the same if they meet in the Elite Eight?
Forde: Yeah. I’m picking Duke to win it all so that’s my expectation. That was my expectation going in. It might be my expectation a little less after Sunday. I will say, it’s hardly clairvoyant, but I thought Central Florida could pose a huge problem for Duke just because of Tacko Fall’s ability to shut down the paint and make them play outside. But I didn’t think it would be that difficult and I thought, for them (Duke) to make 10 three-pointers and still almost lose is a pretty big warning sign I would say. But I’m gonna ride the Duke train and say Zion Williamson is going to find a way to make plays and the other two guys, that is the problem, they’re almost down to a three-man team offensively, but they’re going to make enough plays and beat Michigan State and theoretically everyone else.
Giuffra: What’s your take on the Tom Izzo story?
Forde: You know, this is what you sign up for when Tom Izzo is your coach. Everybody knows it. This is not different than how he’s coached for 20 years, probably longer. I don’t really have a problem with it. These are intense people in intense settings and you’re going to get yelled at. If you’re physically putting your hands on somebody, if it becomes an altercation, that’s a different deal to me. But if it’s just screaming at a player, okay. I’m sorry the cameras caught it, but that’s kind of how coaching goes sometimes. And Izzo has a really amazing relationship with his players. There seems to be a lot of give and take. He can give it for sure, but he can also take it. He’ll have players come back at him or suggest, we should do this instead of that, and I think it’s just part of the whole bag with him. I have always liked Tom Izzo, I’ve appreciated the way that he’s coached and I don’t see this being a major issue.
Giuffra: There’s strongeen a lot of controversy around college strongasketstrongall the last year and a half, Sean Miller, Rick Pitino, Will Wade. Where’s the distinction in your mind in terms of evidence and presumed guilt with them?
Forde: No one has done more work on that than we have and it’s been a pretty extraordinary 18 months or so with more to come. My feeling, we broke the story about the Will Wade wiretap, and I don’t see any way around what he was talking about. There’s no other logical explanation for what he was talking about, and if I’m the school, that guy ain’t coaching my team. So the presumption of guilt there, especially with no explanation from Wade, if Wade isn’t going to offer you an explanation that makes sense, I would absolutely suspend him.
I’ve been surprised at the response from Arizona and from Kansas in terms of them allowing their coaches to continue coaching. I know there’s been a lot of deliberation, discussion, meetings at Arizona. I would imagine there have been similar things at Kansas and maybe we’ll find out more when the next trial gets going. But the lack of reaction from those schools and others has been one of the more notable side effects of this whole thing.
Giuffra: You mentioned more to come, what else is out there?
Forde: We will be moving toward this next trial and there will be more legal filings and evidentiary findings and then we’ll get to the trial and the expectation is there will be subpoenas for Sean Miller and Will Wade and others and there’s a good chance that they will either end up on the stand or having to try and get out of ending up on the stand. We’re going to see a trial with potentially more fireworks than the last one. And the last one had a fair bit of fireworks, but this time, prominent active head coaches could be pulled into the trial on this one.
Giuffra: Do you think cheating among coaches is still prevalent in NCAA strongasketstrongall? And is that surprising to you considering all the people who have strongeen caught?
Forde: I don’t know what the prevalence of cheating or buying players has been since Sept 2017. I don’t know if there’s still the same market. From what I’ve been told, some people have been scared straight, but not everybody. I think there’s always been a belief that people weren’t going to get caught. Now that belief has been shaken in a lot of people, but there might be others out there saying, nobody’s paying attention now. It’s like when you are speeding and you see a cop who’s got somebody pulled over, you figure you can keep speeding because they’re not going to catch you because they’ve got the other guy. I think for the most part, the sport has been pretty shaken.
Giuffra: Do you think this is an issue that’s important enough for the FBI to investigate?
Forde: I have a hard time wrapping my head around this as a federal crime and that people are going to prison because of it. That seems excessive to me. To a degree, it seems like the government may be majoring in minors. I will say the programs that have tried to do it without cheating and have avoided that, and the coaches who have lost their jobs because they were trying to do it without cheating and were getting beaten by those who were buying players, I feel for them. It’s an unfair situation and I wish the NCAA could police its own rules more effectively. But I still don’t know whether that means anyone should go to jail.
Giuffra: What is your take on the Michael Avenatti situation?
Forde: Just the latest bomb to drop in a sport dealing with a lot of bomb craters — but this one is wild. Just because he’s charged with extortion doesn’t mean his information is bogus, which could mean big trouble for Nike and at least two of its flagship college basketball programs, Arizona and Oregon. Avenatti started rolling out non-specific allegations, and I’d say a lot of people in the sport are very nervous about what he will do next.