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Message: [QUOTE="Frozen, post: 2614771, member: 167"] [URL='http://www.espn.com/ncb/ncaatourney03/columnist?id=1532880&name=wojnarowski_adrian']Boeheim's paradise[/URL] Word had reached Rick Bay that Jim Boeheim wasn't just willing to talk to him about coaching Ohio State, but eager for the encounter. So Bay made the obligatory call to Syracuse athletic director Jake Crouthamel for permission, the telephone conversation that always inspires an awkward discussion. This time for Bay, the tension turned to bewilderment. Crouthamel started laughing and laughing, harder and harder. "I asked him, 'What's so funny?' " Bay remembered the other day. "And Jake said, 'You can talk to Jim Boeheim if you want, but he's never leaving Syracuse. Every once in a while he feels a little unappreciated, but he's never going to leave.' " As Bay and Boeheim met inside the coach's Syracuse home in March of 1986, it wasn't long before the nerdy, bespectacled Orangemen coach understood the truth too. "Ten minutes into the conversation I knew I wasn't to go," Boeheim said. He wasn't just talking about Ohio State, but everywhere else. Ever. Boeheim was an upstate New York lifer. Across 27 years as Orangemen coach, this was his first and final flirtation with another job, a half-hearted exercise that left Boeheim understanding that he was fooling no one, least of all himself. It isn't most intriguing that Boeheim never left Syracuse, but that Boeheim never threatened to leave. He's never hustled job offers to get himself a raise at Syracuse, insisting, "That's just not the way I work." Nevertheless, they know him too well there. Who'd buy his bluff, anyway? He still uses the barber that cut his hair as the freshman walk-on out of nearby Lyons, N.Y., still eats dinner in the restaurants that served him in his assistant coaching days. This is comforting to Boeheim. This is home. "There are a couple of jobs that I would really like to try, but you'd have to leave to do that," he said. "And I really never wanted to go anyplace else." [/QUOTE]

Verification: What is a Syracuse fan's favorite color?