We don't know (nor will we be going there to find out) all the particulars of What's Going Down in Fayetteville and Little Rock, Ark., to get Coach Nolie into such a display of controlled anger. We figure local columnists, radio talk show hosts and local TV sports guys are acting like their sensibilities are offended because Nolan Richardson dares coach a team playing .500 ball at the Valhalla of college basketball, the University of Arkansas. We presume this.

	Straight-shooter Nolan Richardson fired back at the Arkansas media.

Nolan Richardson seems to suspect it isn't really his won-loss record that's offending them. Nolie has made the NCAA tourney 13 times. He's been to the Final Four three times. His won-loss record at Arkansas is impeccable at .700 ... and in the SEC, at that. And that's supposed to be the bottom line. We all wish that a good college education for all was the bottom line (don't we? maybe we don't) and we know what's in the till is actually the bottom line, but the won-loss is supposed to be the bottom line. Nolan knows this too. He has a lot of pride, but we can look over that, because he's a straight shooter, seems to be a man who basically has nothing to hide. Such men are rare in any occupation. By contrast, I give you one Mr. Lay, I give you one Mr. Skilling. I give you every man-jack among us, pretty much.

"The greatest thing the University of Arkansas has going for it is Nolan Richardson ... all the key football players talk to Nolan Richardson. Why? ... Anybody know? ... I guess not ... I've earned the right to have the type of season I've had ... do not call me on my phone ... at my home ... when I look at all your people in this room, I see no one (who) looks like me, talks like me, acts like me. Now why don't you recruit? Why don't the editors recruit? Like I'm recruiting? ... my great grandfather came over on that ship. Not Nolan Richardson ... I know for a fact that I do not play on the same level as the other coaches at this school. I know it, you know it, people of my color know it. My practices are closed to the media ... you can run that on every TV show in America ..."

You could tell what went down. Some wags weren't happy that the Hogs were .500 in basketball, and thereby putting the kibosh on their own anticipated and expensed trips to the Midwest Regional, or wherever. They decided to speculate that maybe a younger guy, like Calipari at Memphis or Pitino at Louisville, might be able to recruit young players to Arkansas better than old Nolie. Maybe Nolie had stayed too long at the party. Blah-blah-blah. Then they sit back and say, hey, a white writer should be able to criticize a black coach without being accused of racism. Well ... Nolie is a public figure, and as such very safe to criticize indeed. "Journalists," to use the word loosely, and it is a loose occupation, are said by the lawyers to be "absent malice" when criticizing famous coaches. But often they are not absent malice. Sometimes they are full of it.

	Richardson's Razorbacks won the national championship in 1994.

Nolie doesn't see that the columnists, radio talk shows and the local TV sports news broadcasters are becoming less important because the best have already jumped to ESPN. Joe Average sports nut gets his skinny from SportsCenter now. The sports sections of the newspapers, the sports talk shows, the local TV sports news broadcasters are all becoming the minor leagues of ESPN. They do not have the luxury of assessing Big Picture every day, nor would they care to, or even see it if they did. The best that can happen to them is to be hired on to do the field work or the analysis shows or work the wee hour time slots of ESPN SportsCenter, or ESPN Radio, or ESPN Magazine, etc., then work their way up, or not.

ESPN is the big leagues of sports broadcasting, the same way the NBA is the big leagues of hoop. D-I college hoop is like Double-A baseball. Now, personally, I wouldn't sit up and watch much AA ball, not unless my boy was either playing or going over with me to watch, for some reason. I wouldn't take it seriously even then.

Same theory when reacting to columnists, radio talk show hosts and local TV. I wouldn't take what they say very seriously, unless they were attacking me. Nolie acted no different than Bill Parcells would in that situation. Looking at Nolie, you could see this is a tough guy who went to the College of Hard Knocks and learned humility is a trait best saved for prayer meetings. He knows, in fact, he's the reason young black players acquiesce to social lockdown in Fayetteville, Ark., for nine months out of the year, with their social lives under the severest of restrictions. Nolie knows that of 17 sports head coaches at Arkansas, he's "the black one." Unlike some African-Americans, all this does not make Nolie feel like some kind of unworthy cur, who is just happy to be there. Nolan Richardson. If you know him, you can see this is a man you do not want to back into a corner unless you like being bear food. This is a man you better not screw around with lightly, not unless Virgil Solozzo is about to pin one of his hands to the bar with a knife.

Nolie is also a man who once very methodically won a national championship in the NCAA tournament for Arkansas. He seems to be as interesting an Ahab character as, say, Bobby Knight, at least. Once, Frankie Deford over at the Illy wrote Nolie up pretty good in a profile disguised as a theatrical stage play. Somebody ought to make an ESPN movie out of that. It would be a change of pace, and give us something else to promote up in the Show, ESPN.

So. Nolie probably does resent it when the media minor-leaguers trying to get up to the Show speculate that maybe he is the one who is unproven, if not incompetent. That he is the one who should learn the three Rs -- Retire, Resign, be Relieved -- because his team goes .500 one year. Or that, as a favor to Nolan Richardson, they can buy out the remainder of his contract, so the University of Arkansas can then return to its pre-Nolie, pre-Reconstruction, rightful and historic place in the annals of D-I college hoop.

And we all know where that is. Don't we?

We do. Or we should. On the bubble, indeed.

Ralph Wiley spent nine years at Sports Illustrated and wrote 28 cover stories on celebrity athletes. He is the author of several books, including "Best Seat in the House," with Spike Lee, "Born to Play: The Eric Davis Story," and "Serenity, A Boxing Memoir."