Syracuse Basketball: The Best Quotes from Jim Boeheim's ESPN Mag Article

Normally, ESPN's longforms are reserved for Outside the Lines or "specials" that are growing fewer and more far between. Their most recent one, written by Tommy Tomlinson (Charlotte Observer, Sports Illustrated) is titled The final act of Jim Boeheim. If you want a good read, this is it. Here are some of the best quotes:

On his game day routine:

If it's a night game, he has soup, grilled cheese, chips and Pepsi. If it's a day game, he doesn't eat. At some point he gets in the shower, which is the cue for Juli, his wife, to lay out his clothes. If it's a big game, she'll pick something snazzy from the tailor who comes over special from Rochester. Most of the time, she puts out what he calls "the uniform" -- gray slacks and a blue blazer.

On his feelings towards the NCAA rules on "monitoring":

"Every bank has had a teller that's cheated," Boeheim said. "And not one president has ever been fired or sanctioned for it. So it's a dangerous world when you are in trouble because somebody did something who works for you."

On the NCAA taking away wins:

"You can't take away wins. We had them. It's a joke that they take away wins. You don't take away wins. That just doesn't, doesn't even, doesn't resonate with me."

On Wegman's:

"The best. Everything is the best. They do only the best."

I could keep going, but the article does an excellent job of looking at Boeheim the man and his legacy in Syracuse, which I think is summed up best in the feature's closing:

Arrange the facts however you like. He'll retire as one of the winningest coaches of all time. Some of those wins were taken away. He won a national title. His teams were put on probation twice. He built a towering program in a city where most of the towers had crumbled.