In October, the NCAA made bench decorum a point of emphasis for the 2007-08 season and warned coaches that technical fouls would be issued without warning for a variety of unsportsmanlike actions, including leaving the prescribed coaching box along the sidelines during games.,”The coach who once was suspended for an NCAA tournament game his team would never qualify for heard the news this fall, and to be honest, it scared him a little bit.

In October, the NCAA made bench decorum a point of emphasis for the 2007-'08 season and warned coaches that technical fouls would be issued without warning for a variety of unsportsmanlike actions, including leaving the prescribed coaching box along the sidelines during games.

The powers-that-be also mandated that referees who consistently enforced the rules would be given preferential consideration for conference and NCAA tournament assignments.

Mike Deane—and every other volatile coach in the nation—figured he was in for a long season, one filled with countless whistle shrills and early showers. You have to have passion to be a good coach at the Division I level, he says. It's not theater, he swears; it's just being true to your personality.

So the former Marquette head men's basketball coach, who now holds the same position at Wagner College in Staten Island, N.Y., decided to curb his excitable tendencies. He had a seatbelt attached to his chair, and he remained seated with the harness securely fastened during the first 17 games of the season.

"I thought it would be prudent to prevent myself from being subjected to that rule," Deane said Friday in a telephone interview. "It was not intended to be funny or to insult officials. It was to prevent me from wandering out of the box and hurting my team."

Just one problem: "If you watch a game, coaches are out of the box all the time," Deane said. "No one says a word."

So even though his team is 14-5 and in first place in the Northeast Conference standings, Deane decided before Thursday night's 74-70 win over Mount St. Mary's to unbuckle his seatbelt before the season had come to a full and complete stop, a move sure to infuriate flight attendants nationwide.

The way Deane saw it, the seatbelt had lost its purpose and was becoming more of an attention-grabber than anything else. Officials were not enforcing the bench decorum rules any more strictly than in previous seasons, and his method of self-containment was beginning to draw a national spotlight.

After ESPN Gameday ran a segment Jan. 20 featuring the coach and his seatbelt, Deane said he realized the restraining tool was garnering far more attention than it deserved. Now, he said, he just wants to put the whole seatbelt ordeal to bed.

Deane would rather people focus on his team, the one with his first recruiting class now in its senior year, the one that is not spectacular on offense but that defends and rebounds well, the one that "can't hit a free throw" but is big and powerful and has enough experience to win games, even if those wins come ugly.

In many ways, this Wagner squad is similar to the ones Deane crafted during his five seasons (1994-99) at Marquette. His 100-55 record at the helm of the Golden Eagles included the 1997 Conference USA Championship and NCAA tournament bids in 1996 and 1997. During his first four seasons at Marquette, his teams ranked in the top 10 in the NCAA in scoring defense and in field goal-percentage defense.

But he was just as excitable then as he is now. During the second half of Marquette's first round NCAA tournament game in 1997 against Providence College, Deane was issued two technical fouls for unsportsmanlike comments toward an official and was ejected from the game.

Rather than leave the court in a timely fashion—which NCAA rules require coaches to do under such circumstances— Deane charged and verbally abused the involved official, according to the NCAA's official news release regarding the situation.

Deane was suspended for the first round of the 1998 NCAA tournament, a suspension that would expire following that round regardless of whether Deane's team qualified for the tournament or not. Marquette finished the 1997-'98 season 20-11, good enough to qualify for the NIT post-season tournament but not strong enough to merit an NCAA tournament bid.

A decade later, Deane still feels the urge to make his feelings transparent, to let his players—and, if need be, the officials—know what he expects of them. He knows no other way. He's just being true to his personality.

Funny thing, though: After months of being fastened to his chair, Deane found himself going back to his seat more often during the Mount St. Mary's game and sitting for longer periods of time.

"I'm sitting in the same chair; I'm just not using the seatbelt," Deane said. "I'm picking and choosing my spots better (with officials)."

Maybe that little bit of fear he felt last fall didn't turn out to be such a bad thing after all.

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