STORRS — The last thing, the very last thing, that any newspaper columnist, reporter, photographer or TV sports anchor wants to do is become part of the story.

Yet, here we are.

In the hours before No. 1 UConn and No. 9 Pittsburgh were about to play one damn important basketball game at Gampel Pavilion, a game UConn won 80-76, a lot of the talk — hell, all of the talk up and down the media work area — was the latest chapter in the Jim Calhoun-against-the-media brush fire. The fire's been burning since last summer when Marcus Williams and A.J. Price were arrested for stealing four laptops from fellow students and attempting to sell them at local pawnshops.

On Tuesday, the brushfire became an inferno when Jeff Jacobs of the Hartford Courant wrote a column severely criticizing Calhoun and several unflattering and very much "on-the-record" statements the coach has made in recent weeks toward Jacobs and other members of the state's media.

Now, is this news? Yes and no. Over his 20 years as coach, Calhoun has lashed out on more than one occasion at columnists or beat writers for something that he thought was critical. Including me. Especially me.

But this story hit the fan literally when WFAN's "Mike and the Mad Dog" had Jacobs on air — for a second time — Tuesday afternoon from Detroit to discuss this new story. Last week, before the UConn-St. John's game, Mike Francesca and Christoper "Mad Dog" Russo had Jacobs on the

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air to ask him about the Marcus Williams suspension. Jacobs said, like he did in his column the day the punishments came out, that he felt Williams should have been suspended for the entire season.

A few days later, in Louisville, a member of the UConn athletic communications staff met with Jacobs and told him that he was "unqualified" to discuss the Williams affair on the radio.

Unqualified?

Jacobs has covered Super Bowls. He's been to World Series. Olympics. He covered the Whalers and the Stanley Cup finals for what seems like forever. You name it, from the biggest to the smallest event, he's been there. And 999 times out of 1,000, he hits the nail right on the head.

Now, he didn't miss on Calhoun either, but like I said, the last thing we in the news business want to do is make ourselves the story.

Tuesday night, the Jacobs-Calhoun flap was the story. Not UConn vs. Pitt.

Joe D'Ambrosio, the play-by-play man for Husky basketball on WTIC-AM, said before the game that he was not going to bring up Jacobs' column during the broadcast.

"For us, the news of the day when we go on the air is the game," D'Ambrosio said. "Now afterwards, do I expect a lot of calls about the matter on (the post-game show) Husky Talk? Yes. And if they come, we'll discuss it."

OK, let's discuss. The matter erupted in early December when Calhoun ripped an absent Jacobs in front of the rest of the beat writers after a brief note appeared in one of his columns regarding an excerpt in Jerry Tarkanian's new book. Long story short, allegedly a member of UConn's staff, while recruiting Souleymane Wane in 1996, told Wane "(Tarkanian) is dying" of cancer and that Wane would be better off at UConn.

Jacobs said Tarkanian's accusation was hard to believe before he pointed out that such a "malignant recruiting trick" didn't belong in college sports. Calhoun's response was bitter. "Jerry Tarkanian. Malignant cancer," he said that day. "I really think that for a cancer survivor, that's a real nice thing to say. Don't worry. You don't have to print that because I'll tell (Jacobs) when I see him tomorrow. If he has enough (testicles) to come up, he better come up with a couple of armed guards, talking about malignant cancer."

To me, that sounds like a threat.

To Jim, however, that's just being Jim.

A long time ago, after an article I wrote that the coach didn't like, Calhoun called me at home and proceeded to call me every dirty name in the book. He went as far as telling me I would be banned from the locker room because he thought I was being too negative and hurting the basketball program.

Did he threaten me? You bet. Did anything happen? Nope.

You see, Jim is pretty much full of hot air. Always has been. And that won't change. At some point, he's going to put his foot into his mouth like he did when he said it looked like "a day care center and old folks home" after a women's basketball game.

But Jim says a lot of dumb things. What's news about that?

"What situation?" said Kyle Muncy, assistant director of athletics/communications when asked about the situation between Jacobs and Calhoun. "What I hope for is a really good game and that you can write a really good column off it."

On this night, sadly, the game wasn't the story.

Contact Chris Elsberry at celsberry@ctpost.com