Cincinnati and Xavier both were ranked at the time, and the game went into overtime, and the Musketeers won. But nobody really remembers a whole lot of that. The strongest memory of that game is that Bearcats coach Bob Huggins refused to shake the hand of Xavier coach Pete Gillen when the score went final.
“I’m not a phony,” Huggins said afterward.
“I was upset,” Gillen said. “If I’d have lost, I’d have shaken hands.”
“We should have put gloves on them and let them go at it for a couple of rounds,” Xavier player Steve Gentry said.
That moment in 1994 helped define a rivalry, but also served to underscore the absurdity of one of college basketball’s silliest conventions: the coaches’ postgame handshake. It can be a warm moment between two former colleagues, or it can blaze with competitive loathing as it did when Indiana’s Tom Crean confronted Michigan assistant Jeff Meyer following the Hoosiers’ clinching of the Big Ten title Sunday.
Whatever the case, it’s entirely unnecessary, and that’s a lesson that hasn’t been learned over nearly two decades. This cliched postgame ceremony serves no purpose. Sportsmanship? A made-for-TV handshake between two competitors who may or may not have cause for mutual distaste says nothing about sportsmanship. Sportsmanship is about playing by the rules of the game in all phases—recruiting, scouting, the actual contest—and doing nothing that would cause an opponent undue harm.
It takes an army of police officers who might otherwise serve a useful purpose, like keeping spectators off the playing field, to escort the coaches from two college football teams through an army of photographers for a handshake that lasts less time than it takes a field goal to sail wide right.
Baseball teams play 162 times during the regular season. How many of them end with a handshake between managers? They might exchange pleasantries at home plate beforehand, when trading lineup cards, but after the game the loser turns and heads up the dugout tunnel, while the winner either does the same or joins his team on the diamond for some ritual handslapping.
Sporting News awards:
In the NHL, opponents shake hands only following the completion of a Stanley Cup playoff series. It could be that the competitors are armed with sticks. Or maybe they JUST realize it's unnecessary.
They don’t bother with this nonsense in the NBA. Why? Because it’s nonsense.
College basketball coaches didn’t always shake hands in front of the scorer’s table immediately following the game. It’s hard to pinpoint when this practice began, but once it did it became epidemic because every coach feared being labeled the bad guy who wouldn’t shake hands on TV.
Crean saw how his brother-in-law, Jim Harbaugh of the San Francisco 49ers, was excoriated by the media for getting out of line in a postgame handshake situation a couple seasons back following a dramatic victory over the Detroit Lions. Crean should have known, but that didn't prevent his altercation with Meyer. It was no surprise a day later that Crean would find himself apologizing for how he handled the matter.
To say Crean never should have been in that situation is not to excuse his behavior. If it could be excused, no apology would have been necessary.
Automatic bids: Who's in the Field of 68?
Particularly with Twitter now ubiquitous, examinations of postgame handshakes have become a return to a junior-high ethos for some sports fans and journalists. They watch to see which coaches do the “dead-fish” or “blow-by” and squeal about it afterward. Might as well be saying, “Oooooh, they don’t like each other.”
These men are competitors. Some like each other. Some don’t. Some are sportsmanlike. Some are scoundrels. When they shake hands for the benefit of TV following a heated game, some are being genuine and some, truth be told, are being phony. Better to just turn and walk to the locker room when the game is done.