Dan Dakich was on the Mark Thomas (99.9 The Fan) show today and, we learned two things: he really likes Karl Hess a lot, and he doesn’t care if State fans and players dislike him.
We also learned that, based on his response, Dakich clearly doesn’t know Hess was in fact reprimanded by the ACC for mishandling this.
Full audio (wralSPORTSfan.com).
Mark Thomas asks Dakich to explain why he thought Karl Hess made the right move tossing Corchiani and Gugliotta last winter.
Dakich:
Well, why’d he make the wrong move? I’ve been in it 25 years and I’ve never seen where a referee, uh, throws guys out for no reason. So, there must have been a reason somewhere, and I’m a big fan of Karl Hess. I’m not a big fan of every referee, and I’ve had referees that, you know, won’t speak to me before games, which is cool with me, either way, I mean, it doesn’t matter to me who speaks to me or who doesn’t speak to me. Uh, but nobody’s told me why he made the wrong move. And my sense is, is, being around, hmm, since, uh, ’82, that I’ve never seen where a referee’s done it. And I’m personally, I coach summer basketball, go around the country coaching kids, I’m kind of tired of people in the stands yelling, and if that was the case, then good for Hess, uh, doing what he thinks he needed to do…
I understand that people defend stars from their school. I totally get that, they can do no wrong, and I understand that, believe me I understand that…so I get the whole star thing, and uh, and uh, and a thing, but I like Karl Hess a lot, I’ve always liked Karl Hess. Karl Hess did my games back in Bowling Green. So, I’m sure there’s a story that North Carolina State fans have, I’m sure there’s a story that Corchiani and Gugliotta have. That’s great, good for them, they should, you’ve gotta come up with some spin when you get embarrassed. I understand that. But I like Karl Hess a lot, I think he’s a terrific ref and I stand up to anybody as a referee that doesn’t take nonsense from people in the stands.
Thomas replies:
Yeah, and I respect that, and obviously —
Dakich cuts Thomas off:
Uh, well let me tell you something. Whether you respect it or not is cool with me either way. But, uh, you know, I thought we [garbled] when you sent me this thing, you said we were gonna talk about ACC basketball, not two guys getting thrown out of a gym. So if you’d like to do that, I’m more than happy to do that. If you want to talk about two ex heroes getting embarrassed, you know, that’s on you guys.
Thomas:
Sure. But you know, you had to know we were also gonna bring it up, correct?
Dakich:
Uh, doesn’t matter to me, I don’t pay attention to it, any of it. You ask me a question I give you an answer.
After talking a few moments (positively) about Lorenzo Brown, Thomas then asks if being disliked is part of the business for a color analyst.
Dakich:
You know, I don’t know, I know the North Carolina State people are all like 12 years old on Twitter hating me, they’re all like college kids. So why would I worry about that?
…
Like on Twitter, North Carolina State fans kill me. And I always look on the bio of the person, there’s, you know, usually like a, I don’t know, a college kid or something. Who cares? Why do I care if some 18 or 22 year old doesn’t like me?
…
I know there’s a couple guys, North Carolina State players don’t like me. But who cares about that? I mean, why would that make any difference to me? I don’t know ’em, I’ll never know ’em. If they knew me they’d really like me. But so what?
So, in summary, here’s what we learned about Dakich:
*He likes Karl Hess. A lot.
*He doesn’t like it when fans yell.
*He gets bullied on Twitter by 12 year olds.
*He doesn’t care if State fans or players like him.
*But, if we only knew him, we’d like him.
This topic, among others, is being discussed on the SFN Forums.
