If we’ve learned nothing else during the 1993-94 high school basketball season, it is that controversy sells.

It is a fact of life as old as time.

If that were not so, we would not still be debating whether Eve should have taken a bite of the apple if, in fact, she actually did.

When someone does something unconventional, it grabs our undivided attention.

Entertainers are masters of the unconvential. Politicians fall into the same category. Coaches are no different.

For every Madonna there is a Ross Perot and a Bobby Knight.

So why should be it any different right here at home?

Controversy sells. Just ask Bob Cimbollek.

The John Bapst boys basketball coach has his fans cheering and his detractors booing but, the bottom line is, he has everybody talking.

Anyone who knows anything about high school basketball is fully aware that Bob Cimbollek is the master of the unconventional, employing a style of play dubbed “stall-ball” where the final score, rather than being 100-80, is 10-8.

If you don’t understand the term, stall-ball is when you stand around and hold the ball trying to frustrate your opponent into making a mistake that you can use to your advantage. Frustrate your opponent enough, you win the game. In a nutshell: winning through intimidation.

I wonder what the 1,000 recently stranded airline visitors to our fair city – in the heart basketball land – thought if they read the 10-8 basketball score. A misprint, right? Wrong.

This is what we here in Maine call basketball, Cimbollek-style.

And that is what bothers me the most.

All the controversy, all the media fuss, all the fan attention surrounding John Bapst basketball is not focused where it should be – on the program and the team.

There is but one person at the center of this controversy, and that is Bob Cimbollek.

Who are we talking about? Who are we writing about?

Is it the kids? Is it the team? Is it the program?

Not on your life.

It is the unconventional, controversial coach who proudly proclaims, “I could care less what people think.”

What a shame.

Imagine what life would be if everyone shared that attitude.

I do care what people think.

I care that sports fans would rather read and hear about the boys who play ball for John Bapst than the man who coaches them.

I would rather be writing about Mark Baxter or Norman Loukes or Shannon Hall, but I can’t, because they’re not the ones making the news. Bob Cimbollek is.

He is the one being quoted. He is the one getting his picture in the paper and his face on television. He is the one commanding our attention.

The 1993-94 John Bapst Crusaders will forever carry with them a tarnished image.

Years from now, it will not be their hard work, their hustle, their heroics as a young, inexperienced team going up against the tougher, stronger, veteran opposition that people talk about.

Theirs will be a season remembered not for what it was, but for what it wasn’t.

A season remembered not for what it contained, but for what it lacked.

A season filled not with the promise and hope of youth, but with the frustration and resentment it heaped upon others.

Years from now, the 1993-94 John Bapst season will be remembered not for the team, but for the man: the year Cimbollek Stalled the Ball.

How sad.

Cimbollek has stated his strategy teaches discipline, teamwork and sacrifice for the good of the whole. I wonder.

When the season is over, Bob Cimbollek’s record will look a lot better than the boys he is coaching.

Only two numbers follow a coach’s name in the record book: wins and losses.

For the players, whether they admit it now or not, whether they even understand it yet, much more is at stake.

More than team wins and losses, individual statistics define the life of an athlete.

The Bapst boys are being denied the opportunity to fully record their individual accomplishments because there are few, if any, to record.

I find it unforgivable they are being denied the opportunity to earn one of life’s greatest gifts: our respect.