Author Archives: Kent Sterling

Great Moments in Kentucky Basketball History – #4

by Kent Sterling

The Kentucky basketball program was led for 41 years by a man they still call “The Baron”.  Adolph Rupp led Kentucky to a then record 876 wins despite only six of those seasons being comprised of more than 30 total games.

Here are some quotes attributed to Rupp.  Some mean-spirited, yet funny; some are racist; others are just nutty.  Read his words as remembered by colleagues, journalists, and players.

#4 – The entire canon of Rupp’s commentary is the fourth greatest moment in of disgrace in the history of Kentucky basketball.

To Ernest Sparkman during the 1944 NIT: “Sparkman, you see that center circle? I want you to go out there and shit. Then you can go back to Carr Creek and tell them at least you did something in Madison Square Garden.”

“Harry, that son of a bitch is ordering me to get some niggers in here. What am I going to do ? He’s the boss.”  Harry Lancaster, long-time assistant to Rupp, in his book.

“Once, I was on a flight with Rupp and sat with him in the first-class section. He had about six Kentucky bourbons in less than an hour and was about halfway to the wind. I told him that I was an attorney who represented some basketball players. Now, I had never met the man, and the first significant thing he said to me was, ‘The trouble with the ABA is that there are too many nigger boys in it now.’  I sat there just stunned. That just killed my image of Adolph Rupp the great coach. Maybe it was because he had too much to drink, but even so…” – Loose Balls by Terry Pluto, Simon & Schuster, 1990, pg. 241.

While in New York a writer ask Rupp if he could suggest any changes to the game and he answered, “Sure, put the center jump back, take the backboard and net off-just leave the hoop on-and raise the hoop five feet.” Later a Kentucky player asked him, “Coach, you don’t really mean that do you?” Rupp replied, “Hell no, but anything for a column.”

During 1944, UK led Arkansas State 34-4 at half time. The players felt good in the locker room and were sure Rupp couldn’t find anything to complain about. After looking at the scorebook, Rupp said, Who’s guarding #12?” Jack Parkinson said, “I am.” Rupp answered, “Well get on him because he’s running absolutely wild.” Arkansas State scored two points in the second half.

“He said, ‘You’ve got to beat those coons,’ He turned to (center)Thad Jaracz. ‘You go after that big coon.’ . . . He talked that way all the time. . . A chill went through me. I was standing in the back of the room, and I looked around at the players. They all kind of ducked their heads. They were embarrassed. This was clearly the type of thing that went over the line.”   Frank Deford, Sports Illustrated, reporting on Coach Adolph Rupp’s halftime exhortations in the UK Wildcat’s locker room.

To John Crigler: “John, a 150 years from now there will be no university, no fieldhouse. There will have been an atomic war and it will all be destroyed. Underneath the rubble will be a monument, on which is the inscription, Here lies John Crigler, the most stupid basketball player ever at Kentucky. Killed by Adolph Rupp.”

As with Calipari, not all is bad about Rupp.  He did recruit one black player who stayed in Lexington for one year, and then left for the pros.  His final team was all white.

Rupp coached at Freeport (IL) High School in the late 1920s prior to taking the Kentucky job, and coached a black student there.

In reading multiple books books and articles about Rupp, it seems he was one of those misguided souls who had a lot of reason to hate and be hated than simple racism, but it does not excuse his behavior or words.

To call Rupp a racist does a gross injustice to his other flaws, as well as traits of a leader who used shocking tools to coerce, intimidate, and cajole his players.

The #3 greatest moment in UK history will be yours to peruse Tomorrow morning.

Great Moments in Kentucky Basketball History – #5

by Kent Sterling

Kentucky has won more games than any college basketball team in history.

As a celebration of the price the Wildcats have paid for glory, we will take a look at the top five moral compromises made in earning many of those wins.

#5 – The 1952-1953 Kentucky team was suspended for the entire season by the SEC and then the NCAA for point-shaving violations and relationships with gamblers despite coach Adolph Rupp’s claim that gamblers “couldn’t reach my boys with a ten-foot pole.”

They did reach them, and after years of taking money under for beating teams by more or less than the point spread, the NCAA acted.

The May 12, 1952 issue of TIME Magazine quoted judge Saul Streit, who presided over the trial of players from Kentucky involved in fixing games for gamblers, “I found that intercollegiate basketball and football at Kentucky have become highly systematized, professionalized and commercialized enterprises. I found covert subsidization of players, ruthless exploitation of athletes, cribbing at examinations, ‘Illegal’ recruiting, a reckless disregard of their physical welfare, matriculation of unqualified students, demoralization of the athletes by the coach.. .”

That wasn’t all.  Streit also charged “that Rupp 1) wined and dined Curd at Manhattan’s Copacabana nightclub;* 2) with the knowledge of the players, was often in contact with Curd to get the gambler’s ‘line’ on Kentucky games; 3) once bawled out a player for missing a shot that ‘just cost my friend, Burgess Carey, $500.’ In addition, Streit charged that a player was crippled for a month when coaching authorities allowed him to play on an injured ankle shot full of novocaine. ‘In view of his conduct,’ Streit observed, ‘Mr. Rupp’s sanctimonious attitude . . . becomes ludicrous and comic.’

It gets worse for The Baron, as Rupp displays a narrow and strange attitude in Kentucky Greatest Moments #4 tonight.

Indiana Will Beat Kentucky Saturday Because Justice Demands It

by Kent Sterling

Praying won't help Calipari escape the judgment of the basketball gods.

Kentucky is evil.  They are wrong in the way they exploit idiotic NBA rules to build what is little more than a minor league franchise for the NBA.  Kentucky is a 10-month way station for kids who have to wait for one year after high school to enter the NBA Draft.

The Wildcats are led by a man who makes just short of $4-million per year because of his ability to gather kids with no interest in education.  Whether Brandon Knight, the all-world UK freshman, got a 4.3 GPA in high school (which he did) or a 1.8, he is at UK for one reason, and it has nothing to do with books and classrooms.

There is a philosophy in college sports that anything within the rules that allows for success is okay – and not just great but worth millions for the coach who manages not to be penalized by the NCAA for doing it.

Morality is dead at Kentucky, a program that only wants success without penalty.  So they hired a man who is all about that.  John Calipari has never been penalized personally by the NCAA, and somehow that’s meaningful to UK fans.  Two of his teams were forced to vacate Final Four trips, but Cal was far enough removed from the evil that he avoided sanctions.  That’s the defense used by Kentucky fans who want to win badly enough to check their values at the Rupp Arena door.

Indiana danced with that abandonment of values briefly when AD Rick Greenspan hired Kelvin Sampson – a guy whose desire to win sent his moral compass spinning like a propeller.  Sampson’s arrogance made catching him easy, and the punishment of a five-year show cause was probably light.

Hoosier fans were ecstatic during the Bob Knight years when they won at an elite level despite operating by the letter of their own rule book – one that made the NCAA look lax.  And that is what they are demanding now from AD Fred Glass and coach Tom Crean.

Winning is hollow without principle.  If the only goal of a basketball program is to win, that’s not that tough.  Go get players whose only goal is to win and play in the NBA.  To hell with education – the very purpose of the university the players represent.

That’s Kentucky basketball, and that’s why whatever success they achieve under Calipari will be short-lived.  He isn’t building a winning culture.  Cal is deconstructing a collegiate culture where education means anything.  That success is not sustainable, and it isn’t true success anyway.

Kentucky basketball may currently please fans thirsty for winning, but at some point the worth of victories without values will wane, and even Kentuckians whose lineage is filled with corruption, racism, and overall venality, will begin to feel the taint of winning this way.

Basketball is a game of balls going through hoops, and the winner isn’t always the group who does it the right way, but it sure is fun when that happens.  And it will on Saturday afternoon, not because of the morality in play at Cook Hall, but because the Wildcats – for all their compromises – just aren’t very deep.

Calipari’s rotation only goes six deep, and the scoring generally comes from Knight and Terrence Jones.  Both are typically special Kentucky players who fans should enjoy for the next three months, because they are going to the league after their freshman seasons.

Indiana rolls eight deep with between 14.5-to-29 minutes per game.  That will give them an advantage late in the game, and that’s when games are won.  The other advantage is that while Kentucky was shutting down Notre Dame in the second half last night, the Hoosiers were focused on preparing for UK.  Idle for a week, IU will be ready to battle Knight and Jones – and their supporting cast.

The Hoosiers will win Saturday because they are the better team.  That they are also the team that does things right will just make it more fun.

It Was Thirty Years Ago Today…John Lennon’s Murder

by Kent Sterling

I was a miserable college freshman in Briscoe Quad on Indiana University’s campus on December 8, 1980.  My roommate, a drug-addled boob from Connersville (IN), built a loft in our dorm room to clear my bed and me from the floor so his drug-addled friends had more room for misusing and wasting the precious few operation brain cells at their disposal.  I lived on the loft, and they giggled, ate cold pizza, and smoked hash everywhere else.

It was like living in one of those drawer style Japanese hotel rooms Kramer crafted for his guests in his Karl Farbman.  The room was filled with morons buying, selling, and using pot, hash, and speed, and I was in my tiny space watching a 10-inch black & white TV (I could explain what those are to people under 30, but it makes people in their 40s sound like they are in their 90s) counting the minutes until the semester ended and I could get the hell out of there.

The Patriots were playing the Dolphins, and the game sucked.  Then, Howard Cosell told me about the tragic shooting of John Lennon.  The coolest Beatle was dead, immediately following a musical renaissance.  He was on the cover of Playboy that month because of the release of his first collection of original music in years.

“Double Fantasy” was an album that was half-Lennon and half Yoko – with the songs interspersed, so Yoko was impossible to avoid without getting up and moving the needle at the end of every Lennon song.  This needs explanation for music enthusiasts under the age of 30, but it will make everyone over 30 look like the Flintstones so I’m better off saving my time and effort.

I wondered what kind of nut would shoot a man who risked his residency in America as an advocate for peace, and then heard “Strawberry Fields Forever” from the hallway.  Needing no excuse to abandon the stuporous den of idiots in the room that surrounded my sleep chamber, I wandered out and found several of the guys on my floor crying.  I felt like Mr. Spock from “Star Trek” as I had no tears for the death of a man I had never met.

The guy at the center of the group was Jeff Stanton, the Indiana University student body president, and the unquestioned leader of whatever went down on Briscoe 3A.  Jeff was an iconoclast who bucked authority wherever and whenever he found it.

If I ever had a mentor, it was Jeff.  He was a blogger long before anyone knew what the internet was.  He used one of those dry erase memo boards to post his thoughts at least once a day.  His societal critiques were usually mean-spirited and hilarious.

Most of the guys on the floor joined Jeff every Sunday night at 10 to sing a song of Jeff’s choosing to end the week.  When people complained about the noise, Jeff decided that we should sing the National Anthem every week because no one would risk being branded anti-American is barring students from celebrating their Patriotism.

A year before, as the story was told, when Stanton ran for IUSA president, the Indiana Daily Student endorsed a competitor.  Stanton engaged a network of friends to drive to each distribution point for the paper and load every copy into their cars and then dispose of them off campus.  He was an unholy combination of Hunter S. Thompson and Richard Nixon, and I liked him very much.

As I watched Stanton take this senseless murder of an icon so hard, I decided to investigate what it was about Lennon that affected him so profoundly.  I began reading biographies, and reading interviews.  Lennon was a troubled man with too many weaknesses to list, but he consistently championed the concept of peace, which given the world we live in is a bit of a weakness in and of itself because it is so counter to reality.

Being a lone voice in the wilderness didn’t discourage Lennon from leading protests and writing a song like “Imagine”, which remains an anthemic call for man to love one another, and cast aside those beliefs that create our differences.

It was Lennon’s death that spawned my appreciation for his willingness to challenge the status quo, and it was the acerbic and soft-hearted Stanton’s death several years ago that made me truly sad.

Dan Dakich on Fatherhood

by Kent Sterling

Being a good dad is not always easy.  There is no blueprint.  Kids don’t come with a manual.  Dads decide what’s important and work like hell to instill those traits in their kids.  Some dads shrink from the challenge and work to feather their own nest.  Others micromanage their kids – hovering and determining the course of the kid’s life in every way.  Still others abandon the home because the pressure is too great.

1070 – the Fan and ESPN’s Dan Dakich has the advantage of having, as he describes him, the “greatest guy I know” as a Dad, and two kids who are very bright and athletic.  Who better to talk about fatherhood than Dan?

Dan’s dad is a smart guy – a really good people person, and very good at dispensing advice.  I spent a couple of hours with Mr. Dakich when he came into the studio to watch Dan host.  I shanghaied him, and peppered him for parental advice, which he was generous enough to share.  Who better to ask about how to deal with college athletes and their relationship with a coach than a guy who trusted his son’s future to Bob Knight for 16 years?  He was extremely helpful and honest.

Honesty is a trait that Dan clearly values.  Listeners to his show get three hours of honesty each day, and people Dan knows have a good idea what they are going to get when they ask Dan a question.  They might like or dislike what they hear, but they are going to get a dose of what Dan believes.

Here, Dan talks about what he has learned from his dad:

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The flipside of dealing with your dad is being a dad yourself, and Dan talks about what he hopes his kids learn from him:

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Being a dad is tough sledding.  The balance between giving kids structure but allowing for mistakes is a tough one to strike.  Honesty is a great place to start.  With honesty there is trust, and with trust comes respect.  Success comes in a lot of forms, but respect is right near the top of the list.

On the Road with Mark Boyle – End of the Road

by Kent Sterling

If anyone sees Ernest Borgnine driving down the road in his 45-foot motor home, follow him and when he stops take his keys and throw them into a pond.

On a Biography Channel piece about Borgnine, it showed him as the happy as a clam navigator of a giant RV.  It looked like a great way to spend the golden years of his life.  As it turns out, trying to keep one of these beasts out of the path of other vehicles is not a good way to spend a minute no matter how old the driver is (Borgnine is 93).

Through yesterday, I drove the motor home that is Indiana Pacers play-by-play man Mark Boyle’s base camp for his month-long walking tour of Indiana to raise money for the Indiana Children’s Wish Fund.  Mark is walking 500 miles in five weeks and a couple of days, and while he’s walking, someone needs to drive the bus to the next town.

I volunteered for two reasons – the Indiana Children’s Wish Fund is one of the outstanding grassroots charities in the country, and Mark is a very interesting guy with such unique perspectives that I felt getting to know him better was going to be fun.

When Krissy Myers sent a note telling me that the bus was 45-feet long and might be a little intimidating and maybe I might reconsider my commitment, I scoffed.  If the guy who played Quinton McHale in “McHale’s Navy” could roll all over America, how hard could that be?

Well, I’ll tell you how hard it is – on the open road, not so hard.  But at the end of every leg, the bus need to be parked.  Some people don’t like to parallel park a car.  Try it with a vehicle three times as long as a car.  Try piloting the beast through a town with tight streets and high curves.  Try getting in and out of a McDonald’s.  Hard?  Yep, and terrifying.

Disaster lurks around every corner.  Want to try taking a shortcut?  You won’t try that twice.  Shortcuts, and I like shortcuts under almost any circumstance, are death.

Yesterday on the final day of my career as an RV driver, I took the RV to the camping area where we had reservations for the night, I told Sandy – the owner of Lake Monroe Village that I wasn’t ready to park the bus.  I just came to make sure I knew where I was going.  She told me that she would like me to park, and then pick up Mark with her Toyota Prius.  I almost cried.

To know that I know had to park the behemoth once more was almost more than I could emotionally bear.  Fortunately, the culture of campers requires them to help an idiot like me, and several men served as flagmen as I clumsily backed the beast into slot 69 (insert your own 69 joke – I’m still too exhausted to engage in such frivolity).

Sandy asked Ralph, a camper seated in an adjacent site at a table filled with empty Coors Light bottles, if he would mind backing the bus in.  As much as I dreaded the thought of doing it myself, trusting a $200,000 bus to Soupy McRalph seemed an even worse idea and I soldiered up.  Ralph was not too lubed to guide me properly, and I repaid his work with yet another 12-pack of Coors Light.

So Mark takes today off and gets back at it tomorrow looking ahead to 14 more days of hoofing through the Hoosier State to raise money and awareness for a great cause.  Earlier in the week, he wrote in his excellent blog that because I fired him from 1070 The Fan a little over a year ago, that he was looking forward to firing me as his driver on Saturday.  He didn’t have to.  I happily retired.

The truth is that Mark’s firing was entirely due to my being unable to find a suitable position for his talents, and nothing to do with him.  His sending me out as a driver would have been entirely driven by my pronounced incompetence.  My only source of pride is that Mark’s first driver bailed after simply looking at the bus, and that Mark staunchly refuses to drive it at all.  I’m not sure that refusing to acknowledge a lack of skill should be a source of pride, but I’m clinging to anything at this point.

Regardless of my ineffectiveness as a bus pilot, I’m better off for spending that much time with such an honest and perceptive guy.  Mark’s view of media and life is uncorrupted by a need to compromise or say the right thing, so what you get in a conversation with Mark is an unvarnished look at politics, religion, or whatever else piques his interest at any given moment.  He doesn’t let pablum skate by without question.  Say something just to say it, and Mark will ask why a person believes what he just said.  It’s refreshing, and I only wish that I still programmed WIBC because I would find a place for him as a news/talk host, if he was interested in pursuing it.

My favorite moment of the week was in Nashville, Indiana, when we were trying to park the RV at a site run by a fascinating woman named Jackie, who told Mark that she has lived in every one of the 50 states for at least five months.  I was sloppily parking and trying to hook-up hoses.  She looked at me like a tourist looks at a baboon trying to stack blocks at the zoo, and I asked, “You feel sorry for me, don’t you?”  Her reply, “Should I?”  Perfect.

Despite enjoying the conversation, my career as Mark’s driver is over.  I would rather jump out of an RV while it’s moving than try to park one again.

Go to the website Mark is using to chronicle his trip to donate to the Indiana Children’s Wish Fund.  They do great work in giving kids with life-threatening diseases and their families something to look forward to in the most trying of times.

Cubs Fan Loses Beer in Bleachers

by Kent Sterling

San Diego Padre Adrian Gonzalez hit a home run this afternoon into the left field bleachers.  That’s nothing new, but when the ball was clearly headed into the bleachers, a fan wearing a shirt that reads, “Cardinals fans take it in their Pujols”, put his beer on the bleacher, which the ball promptly destroyed.  The look on the kid’s face is priceless.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAsln2Nypxk]

IU AD Fred Glass Outlines Changes for Football Saturdays

by Kent Sterling

It occurred to me yesterday as the Crossroads Classic was announced how lucky the State of Indiana is to have four exceptional athletic directors taking the initiative in doing the right thing in putting together such an event.

Today, at Indiana University for the football program’s media day, it was very clear that Athletic Director Fred Glass is not just a very competent administrator, but a kid in a candy store who grew up to own it.  Glass is as genuinely excited about seemingly silly game day contrivances as he is with the serious issues surrounding the team.

That is to his great credit.  There are way too many administrators who treat athletics as something that has no window for fun and creativity.  Based on the enthusiasm Glass displays as he talks about the latest fun bit of business he is implementing in the student section, you would think he might be a distant cousin of Bill Veeck.  No idea is a bad idea for Glass, and that’s a great attitude to have if you want to win big.  He is not exactly risk averse.  I’ve never seen what he describes below, but it will be a huge hit with the team and the students.

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The worst part of those who go to IU football games is traffic.  Coming in from Indianapolis or any point north on the Ruel W. Steele Memorial Highway to state Road 46 or the College Avenue exit is a nightmare, and there is no legitimate alternative.  Below, Glass explains what he’s doing to try to facilitate a smoother ride into the lot.

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Regardless of the bells, whistles, and horns in the stadium or whether Glass can provide a magic carpet for each and every IU football fan to ease traffic congestion, Glass knows that there is nothing like a winning team to bring fans into the stadium, but he wouldn’t specifically articulate exactly what his expectations are for the program either as a team or draw for increased attendance.

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IU football will have to prove its quality on the field, but given the rash of structural improvements and Glass’s desire to change the dynamic of the gameday experience and ticket structure for fans, there are expectations the team will need to meet for Glass to continue down the current road.  He knows that a part of the process of growth is the periodic stripping and rebuilding of any program, system, or event.

Being the best AD in a decade at Indiana isn’t like Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barrier, but Glass is not just the best in a long while, he is the right guy at the time to lead IU out of the second division muck where they are ensconced.

Dan Dakich – How to Clean Up College Hoops

by Kent Sterling

Dan Dakich as the head of the NCAA would please me, but likely throw a shock into the system into the carcass of the many college basketball coaches who enjoy skirting if not outright flouting the rules governing fair play.

The NCAA is a toothless hound like old Duke on “The Beverly Hillbillies”.  Without Granny threatening him with her shotgun, the dog never mustered the energy to get off the porch.  Dan’s idea would be a flame-thrower for the NCAA.

We aren’t sticklers for the one-minute time limit for the “Daily Video Minute”, and with Dan, we cheat plenty because he says interesting things in an interesting way.  He is blunt, funny, and is totally disinterested in pleasing any faction with politically correct tripe.

When he talks, people should listen.  It would be great if they listened here:

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IU Basketball – Tom Crean Building His Brand Brick by Brick

by Kent Sterling

When Ron Patterson from Broad Ripple High School committed yesterday to the Indiana Hoosiers, it represented another piece in the puzzle for a potential blockbuster 2012 class.  He joins seven-footer Peter Jurkin as the first two commitments in a class that could run deep for IU.

That’s when the worm could really turn.  Put Yogi Ferrell, Hanner Perea, and Gary Harris in that class to join Austin Etherington and Cody Zeller from the 2011 class, and the hard work will have paid off.  Coach Tom Crean has a long way to go to get all those pretty pieces to fit together, but the first step was to build a brand that kids wanted to be a part of.

Building a brand is hard work.  No one believes in it at first.  No one.  Not even those who profess to believe.  Everyone is cynical.  You can see it in their eyes, and feel it even in their praise.

When I built 1070 The Fan in Indianapolis, I had two great advocates – my boss Tom

"The Boss" Tom Severino

Severino and Michael Grady.  Both understood, and Tom was responsible for some of the architecture as well.  He was wildly encouraging, and wanted a great station – not some mediocre thing that would simply exist.  Michael was great in implementing what we tried to do, and then do it better when our ideas got better.

We had friends at ESPN as well, who pounded and pounded the idea into my head that the toughest part of the job would be managing expectations because at some point the energy that accompanies a launch would wane and we would need to beg borrow and steal our way to a second birthday.  If we had built the brand with skill and vision, and things went perfectly, it would take two years.  Even to build a show, it takes two years.

The patience for management does not run two years, but we kept hammering the idea of two years, and in our eighth ratings period we hit the goals set at the launch.  Thankfully, we built something that was true and good.  But in the beginning it was extremely difficult to get any buy in for the brand because a valuable brand is built and fortified inch-by-inch.  When progress is that slow, it’s almost impossible to see unless you are inside that process making lists and executing step-by-step plans.

It’s like walking from New York to Los Angeles.  If you make it to Columbus, Ohio, you see that you’ve come a hell of a long way from New York and are headed in the right direction.  Critics will look and wonder why you aren’t closer to L.A.

Tom Crean is moving one step at a time toward Los Angeles, and the kids in Indiana can feel it.  Cook Hall is a big part of that excitement, and so is the history of Indiana Basketball.  It’s not like Crean invented Indiana University Basketball, but for these kids in the Class of 2012, they were in kindergarten when Bob Knight was expelled based upon the management tool of the weak – zero tolerance.

Now, Crean is starting to reap some of the rewards for those tough nights when he lied awake trying to think of ways to work harder and smarter so that he could get it rolling sooner.  Getting Indiana kids excited about Indiana basketball took right around two years.  There were early adapters like Jordan Hulls and Derek Elston, but the momentum didn’t really take hold until this summer.

Continuing to believe is not easy when the alums and students are pissed off they can’t see the minor victories that will lead to the on-court wins.  The world can get small, but if Crean is anything, he’s relentless.  Patterson and Jurkin are tangible evidence of the work that is being done by Crean and everyone involved in the program – from athletic director Fred Glass down to the student managers who rebound for the players at all hours.

No one is going to be sure about what Crean is doing.  They won’t know that he’s got the train rolling until it pulls into the station.  Then they’ll say they knew it all the time.  Crean will know better because he’s seen the doubting eyes and head the cynicism.