Three Jewish coaches in the Final Four? It's a basketball miracle

Florida's Todd Golden, Auburn's Bruce Pearl and Duke's Jon Scheyer are all members of the Chosen People. What are the odds?

The common, popular storyline in this upcoming Final Four is that all four teams are No. 1 seeds, that this tournament has been unnaturally chalky. This is the first time since 2008 that all four combatants are top seeds. Is this the result of the transfer portal, where top players from smaller schools routinely bolt to play for power conference schools, or is this a brief anomaly?

All good fodder for a week’s worth of columns heading into the Final Four.

For me, the story line is quite different.

For me, a proud Jew, the story that’s caught my eye is this one: In a sport where just 13 Division 1 coaches are Jewish, three of four Final Four coaches are Jewish – Auburn’s Bruce Pearl, Florida’s Todd Golden and Duke’s Jon Scheyer. Consider the outlandish odds of that happening. In a sport where a Jewish head coach hasn’t won a national title since Larry Brown did it at Kansas in 1988, 75 percent of the field are run by a lanzman.

The eternal joke about Jews and sports is that an accounting of great Jewish athletes would take up a small pamphlet. That’s not entirely true; there are Jews sprinkled throughout sports and Jewish athletes were among the best back in the earlier portion of the 20^th Century. Boxers, in particular, made a huge mark. In other sports, there’s Sue Bird (basketball), Mark Spitz (swimming) and Hank Greenberg (baseball), among many others.

Still, the old joke goes, a young Jewish boy has a better chance of owning a team than playing for it.

This is a proud moment, three of four in the Final Four – remarkable and almost statistically impossible given the dearth of Jewish coaches in the sport.

I got to thinking about this remarkable feat and thought about my late mother, a very Jewish mother out of central casting, who would be thrilled about this Final Four. Not that she cared about sports; hell, she was a sports widow who only saw me play hockey once, fearful I would get hurt (which I did with some frequency). Like most Jewish mothers, she didn’t put much emphasis on sporting endeavors, more concerned with our academics – which is pretty typical of Jewish mothers.

But every year before big events like the Super Bowl or the World Series, she’d ask me, “Does either team have a Jewish player. Just so I know which team to root for.”

We had a pretty decent run going for a while there, with Harris Barton, an offensive lineman, playing for the dynastic San Francisco 49ers.

Then it got dicey during the Buffalo Bills’ four consecutive trips to the Super Bowl from 1991 to 1994.

“This is an easy one, mom,” I’d tell her. “Marv Levy, the coach of the Bills, is Jewish.”

She was bummed every time the Bills lost, which was, well, every time they competed in the Super Bowl.

She would have loved this Final Four. She would have loved the fact that Pearl, in particular, is very vocal about his faith, which I appreciate despite my disagreements with him on politics (he’s a Trump guy and, in case you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m most certainly not).

Look, I’m not trying to suggest I’m a deeply religious person. I’m not. I can count on two hands the number of times I’ve been to synagogue since my Bar Mitzvah at age 13. Once, at IU, I went to a synagogue service to check out the Jewish girls on campus (I ended up marrying a shikse). A few times, I went for a friend’s or family member’s child’s Bar Mitzvah. Religion has never been an important element in my life, so I’m not sitting here telling you I’m a rabbinical scholar and read the Talmud every day. Or any day, for that matter.

Still, I feel a deep, cultural and emotional connection to my people, especially now with the frightening rise of global anti-Semitism and the perpetual madness in the Middle East. We are a small, proud and remarkably successful minority, comprising just 2.4 percent of the U.S. population and .2% of the world population. And in sports, at least on the playing field, we are a tiny minority.

It’s part of the culture. My parents wanted me to grow up and attend college and find a profession, a doctor, a lawyer, hell, even a journalist, which was a proud vocation back in the day. In general, Jewish parents de-emphasize sports, or at least the crazy notion that we are capable of competing at the highest level of athletics. That’s a generality, sure, but it’s generally true. With us, it’s all about academics.

So…I’m going to name-drop here and I hope you’ll forgive me.

When I was at Sports Illustrated for about 10 minutes in the mid-‘80’s, I was covering a story about baseball’s California Angels. At that time, late in his career, Reggie Jackson was a bit player and was hitting below .200, so I didn’t bother to talk to him as I was reporting the story. But then one night, I’m in my hotel (same one where the Angels stayed) and it was Jackson calling, inviting me to the bar for a drink.

Jackson, a noted glory hound, wanted to know why I would do a story on the Angels and not bother to talk to him. So we got talking about this and that, and at some point, he wondered, “Why are there so many Jewish guys in the sports media?” It wasn’t a nasty question, just an honest observation that was certainly true – especially in New York, where Reggie played for so many years.

I would be lying if I said I remembered my pithy retort – it was likely not very pithy – but I vaguely remember wondering why so many top athletes are Black.

We agreed, to some extent, that it was a cultural thing.

And in my case, being 5-foot-7 (on a good day) probably had something to do with it.

Let me tell you another story:

One day, I was in Tucson, Ariz., for the Colorado Rockies’ spring training. There was supposed to be an exhibition game one afternoon, but in a rare occurrence in Arizona, the skies opened up and it poured all day, canceling the game. So later, I was in the Rockies’ clubhouse and I was shooting the shit with the Rockies shortstop, Walt Weiss.

He was going through his reams of fan mail.

“This guy wants me to do something for his son’s Bar Mitzvah. I also got an invitation to speak to B’nai B’rith,” he said with a laugh.

“I get a ton of these. They’re convinced I’m Jewish.”

He was not. He was Catholic, although he had a somewhat Jewish last name.

But, dammit, Jewish fans wanted him to be one of us.

He then told me the story of an old teammate - the name escapes me - who was Christian, but had a Jewish-sounding last name and routinely accepted invitations to speak to Jewish groups. He cleaned up financially.

Anyway, it’s a proud time for the Chosen People. For most of you, it will be the four best teams in the nation, possibly the most accomplished group of Final Four teams ever. Not for me. Not for my Jewish compatriots.

I’ll be honest: I’m getting verklempt just thinking about it.