The Chaney Pod

There was really only one place for us to start. If the two of us are going to spend the next few years trying to tell the story of John Chaney through the people who knew him best, then beginning with family seems pretty obvious. So, for our first full episode, we sat down with John Chaney Jr. and his wife, Maria, to talk about Coach Chaney not just as the basketball coach so many of us remember, but as a father, father-in-law, grandfather, husband, friend, cook, card player and, yes, occasionally, the guy who could make life a little difficult if you didn’t get home on time.

The conversation went in a lot of directions. John Jr. talked about growing up with a father who was demanding but always there for him, watching him play sports, pushing education, and teaching lessons that went well beyond basketball. We heard stories about family barbecues, the famous cooking, pinochle games that sometimes lasted until morning, the ties Coach would give away after losses, and the parade of basketball people who seemed to wander through the Chaney household. Maria talked about meeting John Jr. without having the slightest idea who John Chaney was, then becoming part of the family and developing a relationship with her father-in-law that was clearly very much her own.

Of course, we talked plenty of basketball too: favorite Temple memories, that unforgettable win at North Carolina, painful tournament losses, and Coach Chaney’s relationships with other coaching giants. But some of our favorite moments had almost nothing to do with wins and losses. They were the stories about food, family, his retirement, the things he loved, and eventually the very emotional memories John and Maria shared about the final days of his life.

That, more than anything, is why we wanted to begin here. We all know pieces of the public John Chaney. This project is about collecting the other pieces too, the ones that live in stories and memories and sometimes in something as simple as a pot of cabbage or a box of crabs. John Jr. and Maria gave us a wonderful place to start, and we hope you enjoy the conversation as much as we did.

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The Chaney Pod starts with two conversations recorded nearly a year apart.

First, we look ahead at some of the voices you’ll hear in upcoming episodes, including John Chaney Jr. and Maria Chaney, as well as former players, coaches, journalists, broadcasters, and others whose lives intersected with Coach Chaney. We’ve already recorded conversations with Nate Blackwell, Mike Vreeswyk, Lynard Stewart, John Baum, Larry Rosen, Mike Felici, Mike Kern, Mike Jensen, Kevin Negandhi, Fran Dunphy, Alan Rubin, and Dick Weiss — with many, many others to come!

Then we go back to the conversation that started it all: why John Chaney mattered so much to each of us, how our relationships with Temple basketball shaped us, and why an oral history felt like the right way to preserve the stories of a man whose influence reached far beyond wins and losses.

This project is built around a simple idea: everybody has a John Chaney story, and one story leads to the next. We want to hear as many of them as we can — the famous ones, the forgotten ones, the funny ones, the complicated ones, and the ones that have never been told publicly before.

If you knew Coach Chaney, have a story we should hear, or know someone we should talk to, reach out through The Chaney Pod. We want the whole picture.

Get full access to The Chaney Pod at https://www.thechaneypod.com/subscribe