Forty Minutes of Hell (8 page)

 

A decade before Richardson
took over at Tulsa, Will Robinson was hired as the first black coach in major college basketball. Illinois
State, also of the Missouri Valley Conference, named Robinson the head coach in 1970, when he was fifty-eight.

Like Richardson, Robinson had begun coaching at the high school level, leading Detroit's Pershing High School to a state title. That team featured Spencer Haywood, who, with Robinson's help, would successfully challenge the NBA's ban on allowing underclassmen into the draft.

Robinson had been a talented high school football quarterback in Ohio and even came in second in the state's golf tournament—although he was not allowed to play on the golf course at the same time the white kids played.

His teams at ISU featured the skinny hotshot Doug Collins, who went on to a long NBA playing and coaching career. Robinson compiled a record of 78-51, and never had a losing season, but got dumped in 1975, his college career over after five quick years. Robinson then hooked on as a scout with the Detroit Pistons of the NBA, but declined an offer to be their head coach in the 1980s. Today, the Pistons locker room is called the “Will Robinson Locker Room of Champions.” He died in 2008 at the age of ninety-six.

 

Neither John McLendon nor
Big House Gaines was ever offered a chance to coach at a major white-majority state university. They were seen as Negro coaches at Negro schools and could not liberate themselves from that identity—or, rather, the administrators who hired new coaches at white universities could not free themselves from that prevailing mindset. Ben Jobe has managed to coach at both historically black colleges and majority white universities. Jobe served as the head coach at five historically black schools, the last of which was Southern University. In between those head coaching posts, Jobe was an assistant at two mostly white colleges, as well as the head coach of the University of Denver (then a Division II school).

In 1968, while Jobe was at the historically black South Carolina State University in Spartansburg, campus life was shattered when three young black men were shot in the back by police during a campus bonfire and protest. The incident echoed the killing of students at Kent State University by the Ohio National Guard.

Except that it didn't. Kent State got international media coverage and even inspired a rock 'n' roll anthem. South Carolina State's killings were largely ignored, and this left Jobe mystified and angry. The white media's blindness to State's on-campus slaughter would serve as a twisted metaphor for Jobe's successes. Despite his 524 college wins, he was ignored, too. He was never offered a head Division I job at a white-majority university.

Jobe enjoyed his most publicized success at Southern University, where, in 1993, he defeated an old employer, Georgia Tech, in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. His Southern teams qualified for the NCAA Tournament four times and earned one NIT bid (a rarity for a Southwestern Athletic Conference [SWAC] school).

He won 209 games at Southern, a remarkable total, considering he was forced to play almost ten “guarantee games” a year—games where Southern would travel to play for money, games that would never be “returned” to Baton Rouge, where Jobe's team could enjoy the home-court advantage. Despite this, Jobe never had a losing season at Southern.

An important reason coaches at historically black colleges don't advance to bigger state universities is because their overall won-lost records don't reflect their coaching ability. The Jobes with overall winning seasons are rare. Guarantee games are often necessary for a smaller school's survival. A big state university pays anywhere between $40,000 and $80,000 per game to the smaller historically black college. Never does the big school “return” the game and play on the smaller college's court. (It should be noted that not only the historically black colleges are subject to this prostitution; it might be Sam Houston State or Northeast Louisiana. All these smaller
schools very much depend on the guarantee money to keep their programs afloat.)

The big state schools learn that some of the historically black colleges should be avoided. Over the years, teams like Southern and Coppin State have made the big schools regret paying out enormous amounts of money only to get beat on their own court. Because of guarantee games, there will never be a time when, say, two SWAC teams are awarded NCAA bids, since no teams in the league have impressive enough overall records.

Ben Jobe is brilliant, politically conscious, and outspoken. He is also devoid of the verbal clichés required of basketball coaches. He despises the Basketball Hall of Fame, where he ought to be a member—although he claims he'd refuse induction. Jobe lambasts the hall of fame for inducting announcers like Dick Vitale and the inventor of the shot clock. (Jobe: “The man who invented the shot clock should be in the General Electric Hall of Fame, not the Basketball Hall of Fame.”) Jobe calls the NCAA a “fascist organization” and blames the NCAA for the destruction of black sports at black colleges.

 

Like Jobe, Frankie Allen
has coached at both historically black colleges and white-majority universities and has some insights in the problems black coaches have advancing. Allen became the first black head coach at a mostly white school in Virginia when he was named coach at Virginia Tech in 1988. He has also been the head coach at Tennessee State, Howard, and is now at Maryland–Eastern Shore.

Allen says that if you want to understand the problems at historically black colleges, follow the money. And not just the guarantee game money. “There is little money coming from the private sector at Tennessee State,” he says, “but the white schools enjoy tremendous help from donors.” He says that the guarantee games sometimes allow historically black schools to fund the entire athletics department but that the money rarely goes to the basketball programs.
“That all depends on the coach's relationship with his boss,” Allen says. “We played at Nebraska and got $75,000, and our AD is going to help us get new lockers.”

One of the costs of this bargaining—almost certain losses for guaranteed money—is the sacrificed coaching careers.

The head-coaching jobs in the SWAC or MEAC are mirages at best; graveyards of crushed careers at the worst. Each January, every SWAC and MEAC coach starts his conference season with a losing record after its devastating preseason schedule has been played out. If a coach wins the SWAC, he still might not be above .500 for the season.

Today, a common trend is for big universities to hire a hot coach from a “Cinderella” team that has miraculously made the NCAA Tournament. But no SWAC coach, and just one MEAC coach, has ever gotten that call. One of Nolan Richardson's longtime assistants, Andy Stoglin, got his first head-coaching job at the SWAC's Jackson State University. He made the NCAA Tournament there, but the guarantee games prevented him from having a sparkling record, and he never advanced.

Examining the history of the program at North Carolina A&T affords both a look at the futility of coaching in the MEAC and an insight into how college hoops has evolved ever so slightly.

The MEAC includes schools like South Carolina State, Coppin State, Bethune-Cookman, and the league's traditional power, North Carolina A&T.

Cal Irvin took over at A&T in 1954, and he amassed over three hundred victories at the Greensboro school. He never had a losing season in eighteen years, but never got a chance at the big time either.

During the 1980s, North Carolina A&T was coached by Don Corbett, who led A&T to
seven straight
NCAA bids. His overall record, despite a slew of guarantee games at A&T, was 249-133, including thirty-seven wins in a row at home. Yet no mostly white
school in basketball-crazed North Carolina, or anywhere else, would try to lure Don Corbett away—or play on his home court.

Jeff Capel Sr. is the exception that proves the rule. He coached North Carolina A&T for a single season, in 1993–94, and made the NCAA Tournament. He was named the head coach at Old Dominion the next season.

For every modern success story like Richardson's, there are forgotten men, brilliant coaches like Cal Irvin and Don Corbett, whose opportunities were limited by their skin color. Richardson still speaks with respect of his successful-yet-obscure predecessors: Ben Jobe, “Fang” Mitchell at Coppin State, and David Whitney at Alcorn State.

 

Black coaches, especially assistant
coaches, were perceived for years as recruiters who could relate to black players and little more. Recruiting is imperative, but most black coaches consider the label to be belittling at best, as there is a distinct division within the business between recruiters and strategists. The coach who relies on strategy must be smarter, the thinking went, and they were always white.

Reggie Minton remembers those labels well. He was an assistant at the Air Force Academy before becoming the head coach at Dartmouth, then Air Force. Minton attended Wooster College in Ohio, where he began to develop his political consciousness. “In college I had given a speech,” he recalls, “and I talked about not only wanting to ride in the front of the bus but wanting to drive and then
own
the bus.” It was a speech America's athletics directors and college presidents should have been required to attend.

The Air Force Academy played a PAC-10 school one season when Minton was an assistant. After the game, the coaches went out for beers, but Minton, who doesn't drink, returned to his hotel room. When his boss, Hank Egan, returned, he told Minton what the PAC-10 coach had said.

“Why do you have
that
guy on your staff?” the PAC-10 coach said to Egan, referring to Minton. “Air Force doesn't even have any black guys.”

By the early 1980s, Minton was one of the most qualified assistant coaches in the game. That didn't exactly reap huge rewards. He landed the job at Dartmouth for $30,000 a year.

Today, Minton helps direct the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC). He thinks today's new generation of African-American coaches simply does not understand their place in history. “They come along and it is all there,” Minton says, “and they think of it as a right. In 1980, Nolan Richardson was one of a handful of black coaches outside of the historically black colleges. In 1983, there were eight of us. Eight! It was tight, a brotherhood.”

 

The long-term effects of
college basketball's segregated coaching ranks can still be charted. When UCLA icon John Wooden began his long string of championships in the 1960s, not a single black coach was competing for the national title. Today's recently retired coaching legends got their start in a segregated system. Bobby Knight, Don Haskins, Lou Henson, Eddie Sutton, Dean Smith, and Ray Meyer all began their careers well before a black coach could challenge them.

This segregated system has perpetuated itself, distorting the otherwise impressive “trees” of most of these coaches. For example, Bobby Knight had twenty-five assistant coaches who worked under him land head jobs. Only two have been black.

Since no black head coaches worked in powerful places, they were not calling the shots on who might get the
next
promotion, as Eddie Sutton and Lute Olsen did for decades. For a black assistant coach, the wait could be humiliating.

Rob Evans, who helped launch Nolan Richardson's career, worked as an assistant for Lou Henson on highly successful teams at
New Mexico State. Later, after his long tenure as an assistant at Texas Tech, he joined Eddie Sutton at Oklahoma State. All in all, he served as a major college assistant for twenty-four years before he got the call from Mississippi to run their program. Soon after, Evans led Ole Miss to two straight NCAA bids for the first time in school history and was named SEC Coach of the Year.

The system in college ball limited black coaches from even thinking about beginning a career. Imagine a typical black college graduate, who did not come from a middle-class background. Would he sign on as a low-paid assistant coach? Or would he take a job at, say, Marshall High School in Chicago for twice as much money? Since young black coaches did not often have the luxury of calling home for help with the rent, they were simply more likely not to be able to pay their dues. Or, rather, pay any
more
dues.

 

“Man, they hired that
nigger coach.”

That became the refrain heard around Tulsa the summer of 1980, and the complaint drove Ed Beshara to distraction. Unbeknown to Richardson, Beshara was able to talk Evans Dunne down, urging him to consider the woeful state of the basketball team, and to not withdraw his support. “Give the guy a chance, let's see how he does,” Beshara told anyone who would listen.

Soon after Richardson arrived in Tulsa, Beshara called the basketball office and invited Richardson to stop by for coffee.

Richardson was met at the store with Beshara's standard greeting. “Hoss,” said Beshara, “I just want to find out where you stand and who you are.” The two men took off for hamburgers.

Richardson and Beshara came back to the store two hours later, laughing like school kids on the playground.

Encouraged by Beshara's upbeat humor, Richardson began looking for fresh ideas to set his Tulsa team apart. He ordered flashy new uniforms, then decorated the dismal locker room. Next, he selected
a theme song to be played endlessly: “Ain't No Stoppin' Us.” When Richardson learned that some of the few fans would dump their trash in the mouth of the team's bloated mascot, he insisted on a sleeker one.

On Richardson's second trip to Ed Beshara's store, he figured he'd better buy some clothes. He beelined to the sale rack and held a polka-dot shirt to his chest. A row of polka-dot shirts that Beshara could hardly give away lined the wall. Beshara didn't want them ruining the new coach's image. “You don't want that stuff, Nolan,” Beshara called, waving him away.