John Wooden never used profane language after the day his father gave him a ''licking'' for cursing. If any of the Wizard's UCLA players ever said something out of line, they were kicked out of practice.

Bob Knight was on the other end of the spectrum when it came to the expressions of coaching. He threw four-letter words around as recklessly as he did chairs.

Ricky Benitez considers his manner of speech to be somewhere in between -- in between Bobby Bowden's restrained ''dadgummits'' and Ozzie Guillen's spitting tirades.

But Benitez said something that offended someone. For that, he lost his job as basketball coach at Ave Maria University.

Coaches usually get fired for losing games. Benitez got fired for losing his temper.

He hadn't even coached a game yet. Ave Maria, a small, fledgling, Catholic school in the wilds of Southwest Florida, will start its first NAIA basketball season next month -- if the team doesn't quit in protest.

VOCAL IMPACT

What happened to Benitez seems absurd in 2008, when the late, great George Carlin's ''The Seven Words You Can Never Say on TV'' sounds quaint.

We can debate the reasons for the decline of western civilization, and whether vulgarity in everyday conversation and in entertainment is a primary one. Shakespeare might have been more artful than 2 Live Crew, and James Joyce more clever than South Park's writers, but the fact is that bawdy vocabulary has always been a part of speech.

''Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer,'' Mark Twain once said.

A RICKETY STANDARD

Especially in sports. Athletes and coaches are held to a lower standard. Why? We cite the ''emotion'' and ''immediacy'' of competition -- the classic ''heat of the moment.'' A linebacker is not expected to say ''excuse me'' when slamming into a running back, nor is a coach expected to say ''Can you do me a favor?'' when exhorting a player to pass the #$%&* ball!

It's a rickety excuse, sure. Teachers and bosses regularly motivate people without cussing at them. Mike Krzyzewski could probably be just as effective during a timeout as Wooden was without spewing invectives. He's not dealing with dummies at Duke.

Krzyzewski is not going to get fired over words. Then again, he's not working in Ave Maria Town, a community planned as a Catholic utopia.

Benitez knew he was taking a job at an unusual place, but he never dreamed he would be accused of having a dumpster mouth.

''I'm fiery and outspoken -- you can see that from a plane -- and that's how I was when I interviewed. I believe that's what you want in a coach,'' Benitez said Friday. ``But I do not believe in belittling or embarrassing players because all that does is shut them down and you lose their respect.

``I'm not a saint, but when it comes to language, I'm not a monster, either. If I was, then why are my players and their parents and my neighbors standing by me?''

According to a statement from the university, Benitez had made ''repeated'' use of profane language and was warned twice to cool it.

Benitez said he was never admonished, never warned.

''They are hypocrites,'' Benitez said. ``The first thing you learn in the Catholic faith is forgiveness. If a person makes a mistake, give him a chance to rectify it.''

Although he still is quite upset, Benitez did not come close to cursing once during our conversation. In fact, he called me ''ma'am'' about 50 times. He says he has never received a technical foul nor been ejected from a game.

He doesn't know exactly what the university claims he said, and the university isn't giving details.

''We were not offended by anything he said,'' said Plantation's David Haynes, a freshman guard. ``It was typical of what we've heard since middle school.''

Then again, he was coaching at Ave Maria University, the centerpiece of Ave Maria Town, a tiny development in the swampland of eastern Collier County, five miles south of Immokalee and

45 minutes from Naples.

The town founder and university chancellor is former Domino's Pizza baron Tom Monaghan, an ultraconservative Catholic whose vision is to build a place that, by 2077, will produce 4,000 priests, 2,500 nuns, 12,000 Catholic school teachers, 1,500 Catholic school principals and 40,000 ''holy, stable Catholic marriages,'' according to an interview in the Naples Daily News.

The school currently has 600 undergraduate students, and the town has about 250 homes. Monaghan has poured some of his $1 billion fortune into Ave Maria and the Ave Maria Law School in Michigan, which he wants to move to the Florida campus.

Among Monaghan's goals for the town was a pharmacy that would not dispense condoms or birth-control pills.

Benitez, who was associate head coach at Miami Dade College's Kendall campus for two years, sought to settle down and build a program after years roaming the globe as player, coach and scout. He managed to lure a dozen players to Monaghan's experiment. Now, they will have to play on without him, or transfer.

Unless they are cut for using the wrong words.

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