Basketball Coach Who Lied on His Resume: "This Generation is a Fraudulent Generation"

Manhattan men's basketball head coach Steve Masiello saw his Jaspers lose to Siena College last night, 81-68, pushing their record to 7-14; that's good/bad enough for 11th place in the MAAC. But, in a move popular among his peers in the angry white guys with power community, Masiello found a way to make that failure about other people. In this case, he opted to blame everything on Kids These Days And Their Googlegramming. Putting aside the absurdity of his tantrum's substance, and it's clear he's really going to regret some word choices in here. Let's dive in.

"We're a fraudulent society from top to bottom," Masiello said. "Our society's fraudulent. Everything about our society is edited. Everything about our society is prearranged, so this generation is a fraudulent generation. And what I mean by that is they put their Instagram picture up the way they want. They put their tweet out the way they want. Nothing is interactive. Nothing is real. So when things don't go the way people want them to, people really struggle with—if it's not 7o degrees and sunny and the stars aren't aligned, if it's not exactly 4 p.m., they didn't get exactly eight hours of beauty sleep and the pasta…you know…young people today struggle with it. Our society struggles with that, and for me—I can't speak for other coaches—I see it more than ever. When adversity comes in, people struggle. They're not bad kids…this might be one of my favorite groups I've ever had. They struggle with adversity. They struggle with—that's a byproduct of our society today, so I think we're a reflection of our culture a little bit, not to get too deep."

What's up, self awareness? How are you doing today?

OK, let's talk about fraud, and editing. What word would you use to describe lying on your resume and to prospective employers about your education level? Would that be fraudulent behavior? Or could it just be an error, a typo? A simple failure to properly proofread or [cough] edit, your own personal history? A resume, after all, is the picture you create for yourself in order to sell yourself to employers. There are rules, naturally; one example of these rules would be not lying about whether or not your graduated college. But generally you can put that picture up the way you want. It's your story, after all.

Switching gears for a moment, let's talk about adversity. All sorts of people experience all sort of adversity. Maybe you lost a game and have to go talk to a bunch of people shoving cameras and microphones in your face, asking why you lost. Or, maybe you were up for a pretty sweet gig and had it all locked up but for some minor formalities, only to find out that you were not going to get the job after all because of those very same formalities. That would be pretty adverse! But you would have to keep going. You'd just have to move past it.

Luckily, Steve Masiello can impart some wisdom to his fraudulent, adversity averse kids, based on personal experience. In the Spring of 2014, Masiello, who played for Rick Pitino at Kentucky and later served as an assistant under him at Louisville, was up for the head coach position at the University of South Florida. His credentials were pretty solid. We already mentioned his playing career and apprenticeship under Pitino, and he had also compiled a 60-39 record as head coach at Manhattan by that point. USF reached an agreement with Masiello in principle and just had to confirm the information on his resume before officially making him the school's newest men's basketball head coach.

As you've no doubt noticed by now, Steve Masiello is not the head coach of USF. He is in fact still Manhattan's head coach, because he lied on his resume about graduating from the University of Kentucky. He attended four years, but did not earn a degree. The job listing required, at minimum a bachelor's degree. Which he did not have, his resume to the contrary. Oops!

Months later, when he was back at Manhattan, Masiello finally commented on his moment of personal adversity and told the New York Post his message to young people was "don't do what I did."

Masiello, who is all of 39 years old, should probably revisit that advice today.