When is the right time to ask Calhoun questions?

There was Jim Calhoun, in front of his TV billboard advertising the UConn Huskies and Dunkin’ Donuts, becoming enraged because a reporter had the poor taste to ask about giving back some of his million-dollar salary and doing it in a setting normally devoted to the analysis of basketball games.

“Considering that you are the state’s highest paid employee, and there is a $2 billion budget deficit, do you think...â€

That’s as far as the questioner, Ken Krayeske, got. The coach — and many of those writers who cover him on a regular basis — was upset. You could hear the beat writers muttering as the question was asked. Who let this activist/blogger/freelance journalist into our sacred precinct? You talk basketball, take the game apart, do sports stuff here around the old Dunkin’ Donuts sign.

So what did the coach do when the outside agitator tried to ask him if he’d join other state employees in giving a few bucks back?

“Not a dime back,†he snarled and then launched into a two-minute tirade. As his anger mounted, the coach called the interviewer stupid, invited him to join him outside for further discussion or something else. He suggested the interviewer should check his facts before asking questions, overstated the money his team makes for the university by several million dollars and told his tormentor to shut up.

Before shutting up, Krayeske, who does seem to enjoy the attention, let it be known he was asking the question because it was the kind the attendees at these press conferences wouldn’t ask. That didn’t go over very well, either.

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The sportswriters were, in fact, shocked, dismayed and aghast. Imagine asking about something more profound than the fast break at a post-game press conference. Jeff Jacobs, The Hartford Courant’s fine sports columnist, who hasn’t been reluctant to report on Calhoun’s tendency to be a bully, was the exception. Although he called it a “legit question at the wrong time,†Jacobs admitted a loose cannon like the freelancer helped keep him and his colleagues honest. But he didn’t have much company in the sports writing fraternity.

“It seems as though every time the economy goes in the tank, sports figures are the guys that take the heat,†wrote Derek Gentile in The Berkshire Eagle.

Mike DiMauro of The Day thought the reporter’s question “reeked of egomaniacal grandstanding, ambushing Calhoun with the cameras rolling.†Of course, Calhoun was appearing voluntarily, standing in front of that billboard sold by UConn to the doughnut company, and ready to answer reporters’ questions. He was expecting the cameras to roll so that he could impart his message to the folks at home. Some ambush.

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Much was made of the fact that Krayeske asked the question in an inappropriate locale, as if the room in which Calhoun was posing before an advertising sign was some kind of Sanctum Sanctorum.

UConn President Michael Hogan, while acknowledging the question was “perfectly fair,†sniffed that “the reporter, as Coach Calhoun suggested, might have found a more appropriate and less provocative setting for his inquiry.†A Courant editorial said “the venue may have been inappropriate but the question was not.†But UConn women’s basketball Coach Geno Auriemma, the third highest paid state employee, had a different take. Asking a question like that “is unfair in any setting,†said Auriemma.

Several news accounts did, quite properly, point out that Calhoun and his wife are generous contributors to many causes, especially the UConn Hospital and its research facilities.

Of course the question was legitimate and timely and worth asking. With the state facing a deficit in the yet-to-be-determined billions, the governor, who is paid a tenth as much as the coach, has already asked state employees to take voluntary furloughs and other financial concessions are in the offing.

So why not ask Calhoun and the other coaches if it has occurred to them to get with the program and take a day off without pay or something equally arduous? Why not do it at a post-game press conference where the answer would get some attention, rather than out in the hall? And why not ask other embarrassing questions about things like graduation rates, disciplinary issues and, perish the thought, paying these athletes?

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After watching President Obama as he spoke the other night before a joint session of Congress, it occurred to me Connecticut’s coaches make three to 10 times more than nearly everyone who was there — more than the president, the representatives, the senators, the Cabinet, the justices of the Supreme Court, the generals and the admirals. Only the banker in the visitors’ gallery, who was invited there because he gave his million-dollar bonus to his employees, made Calhoun’s kind of money.

It also reminded me of a story about a sports hero from an earlier time who was a bit more adept than Calhoun when ambushed by reporters more interested in his salary than his home run production.

Not long after he signed for the then-record salary of $80,000 a year, a sportswriter asked Babe Ruth how he could justify getting that kind of money when President Hoover was only paid $75,000.

“I had a better year than Hoover,†said the Babe.

Dick Ahles is a retired journalist. E-mail him at dahles@hotmail.com.