Atlanta ? He is the biggest name astride the whirling carousel, which each spring finds numerous coaches thrown from their horses or trading in their old nag for a new one.

So let us listen first to new Minnesota savior Tubby Smith, who said Thursday, “You have to be able to manage things, get the right type of PR out there. That’s what it’s all about.”

He went on from there, rambling some, then dissecting current mores, finally touching down on his decade-long stay at Kentucky, where he won one national championship, played in four regional finals, appeared in 10 straight NCAA tournaments and ran up a record of 263-83.

“You say how is that not good enough?” he said. “It’s not good enough because of how it’s being portrayed. So you have to have the right apparatus in place, and that’s where we had our problems.”

How was it being portrayed?

“You tell me how it was being portrayed,” he fairly snapped. “It was being portrayed as, ‘What have you done lately?’ That’s what I think. As simple as that.”

Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim says he understands.

“Kentucky’s a difficult place,” he added minutes later. “Anybody who goes there is going to have trouble staying there. Rick (Pitino) is the only guy who could really manage that, and there are not many guys like Rick. Over the next 20 years at Kentucky, they probably will have six coaches, five coaches.

“I wouldn’t be shocked at all because they’re in the age where they think they’re going to win every game and dominate. Nobody’s going to do that. Connecticut this year, they’ve been as good as anybody the last 10 years, they finished 12th (in the Big East). Duke was 8-8 (in the Atlantic Coast Conference). If it can happen to them, it can happen to anybody. … Unless the next guy wins three or four national championships in six years, you can’t last there.”

Kentucky, of course, is an extreme case, a place that considers success a birthright and anything less than a title contender a blight on the commonwealth. Yet the attitude that reigns there, the same attitude that hastened Smith’s move north, is present to some degree at any number of schools where patience is on the wane and results are expected now.

That makes Smith, quite simply, merely the tip of a modern iceberg, though his situation isn’t unprecedented.

Dean Smith was hung in effigy during his first year at North Carolina, and all he did was go on to win 879 games and two national championships. Mike Krzyzewski, similarly, was 10-17 and 11-17 in his second and third seasons, respectively, at Duke before he won three national championships and achieved legendary status.

Does Dean Smith think he wouldn’t have lasted in today’s environment?

“Oh, yeah. Yeah. That’s why I’m thankful,” he replied to that question last October.

Today he wouldn’t have gotten the opportunity to build his program slowly.

Not that Michigan’s jettisoning of Tommy Amaker was any surprise. He failed to take it to the NCAA Tournament in his six seasons at the school. The same is true of Steve Alford’s exit from Iowa after eight seasons. He had image problems and problems winning in the tournament, so he leaped at the chance to go to New Mexico.

But take a look at Stan Heath, who in his fifth season at Arkansas was 21-13 and invited to the NCAA tourney. As his reward, he was fired.