The Baron of Bluegrass

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The NY Times - December 13, 1977, Page 59 

Credit...The New York Times Archives

On this particular day the pumps at this particular gas station in Lexington, Ky., were occupied. At one, the chairman of the department of mathematics at the University of Kentucky filed his Ford, at the other, Adolph Rupp, the university's basketball coach, filled his Cadillac.

“Coach Rupp.” the professor said, “I'm the chairman of the math department at one of the country's great academic institutions, and I drive a Ford. You're the basketball coach, and you drive a Cadillac. How can that be?”

“Professor,” Rupp said, “if you could Sports square the hypotenuse before 14,000 people a night, you'd be driving a Caddy, too.” of In locker rooms, in taverns, in airport terminals, wherever basketball coaches gather today, they are telling Adolph Rupp stories. The Baron has died, but his legend lives on, fueled by 879 lifetime victories and four national championships. In his 42 seasons as a coach Rupp won more games than any other college basketball coach. He may well have been the best coach in history; at the very least, he ranks with Clair Bee, Hank Iba, Nat Holman, Phog Allen, Joe Lapchick and John Wooden.

“He could've been Governor of Kentucky,” said Lou Carnesecca, the St. John's coach. “He was more than a Kentucky Colonel, he was the General, the Commander‐in-Chief. He could've been a czar, or a don. He sat on that bench like a chairman of the board. Hey, down in Kentucky, he's as famous as the Derby.”

Dave Gavitt, the Providence coach, remembered the time when he was lecturing at a boys’ basketball camp and Rupp agreed to speak to the boys. “Some little kid asked him. ‘Are you the greatest coach ever?’ Well, Adolph lowered his head a hit and said, ‘I don't know how you judge that. I do have 800 wins, and although I haven't given it the slightest thought, a man would have to start coaching at age 25, then win 20 games a season for the next 40 years. Adolph was really something; he never thought about it, sure,” Gavitt said, shaking his head and chuckling respectfully.

Another Side to Adolph Rupp

It is said that no coach ever prepared his team as well as Rupp did, that no coach ever got more from his players. On Saturday night, after he died, the tributes from his former players and coaches began pouring in like Kentucky moonshine, Bear Bryant called him, “a legend.” Nat Holman called him, “a wonderful man.” John Wooden called him, “an amazing man.” And Tommy Kron, one of his former players, said, “There will never be another like him.”

But there was another side to Adolph Rupp, just as there is another side to all men of great power and infuence. It is too easy to remember Rupp's brown suits and his victories and let it go at that. There was his rush to judgment during the basketball scandals of the early 1950's, his failure to recruit a black player until the late 1960's, his egotism, his iron fist. Great men are not immune to great mistakes.

When the point‐shaving scandals broke, Rupp was quick to identify the site of the crimes as New York City. He said he wasn't surprised’ that it happened here because “the newspapers …quote odds and play directly into the hands of the gamblers.”

Rupp went one step further, one step too many as it turned out. He said, “They couldn't touch my boys with a 10‐foot pole.”

When it came out that three starters on Rupp's 1948.49 national champions— Alex Groza, Ralph Beard and Dale Barnstable—had, indeed, shaved points, Rupp changed his stance. “The Chicago Black Sox threw games,” Rupp said, “but these kids only shaved points.” He did not say, “my boys.”

It wasn't until years later that Groza saw Rupp again. As Groza recalled it: “I offered Adolph my hand and he shook it. He was one of the most knowledgeable and finest coaches I've ever known. People said he didn't like blacks, or Jews, or Catholics, but I'm a Catholic and he never showed me any prejudice. He was a perfectionist, and that overshadows what a great sense of humor he had. In 1944 we came to the Garden to play, and we had a reserve center named Ernest Sparkman from Carr Creek, Ky. Well, Ernie was having a terrible practice, and Adolph called us all to the center of the court and said to Sparkman, ‘Ernie, you see that corner of the floor? I want you to go to that corner and spit. Then you can go hack to Carr Creek and tell the folks back home you did something in Madison Square Garden.’

So fondly. Nevil Shed, an assistant basketball coach at Wisconsin‐Milwaukee, is one. Shed played on the 1965‐66 Texas Western team that heat Kentucky, 72‐65, in a nationally televised championship game. Kentucky's players were all white: all of Texas Western's players that night were black. That game was the college basketball equivalent of the Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education segregation suit.

Some people, however, don't remember The Baron quite Kentucky's defeat changed the recruiting practices of college basketball forever.

A Product of His Time 

Within five years every team in the previously all‐white Southeastern and Atlantic Coast Conferences was fully integrated. Those last barriers fell like paper fences in a windstorm.

“We heard before the game that Mr. Rupp didn't believe that five blacks could beat his team,” Shed said. “Well, we showed him just how tough five niggers could be. Don't get me wrong, Mr, Rupp was a great coach; he knew his X's and O's, and we respected him for that. But after the game he didn't shake any of our hands, not a one of us, he didn't say a kind word about us. A couple of years later he started recruiting black players, he had to confess…I've walked past him plenty of times at coaching clinics, but I've never introduced myself. I've never said a word. Just to myself I said, ‘I'm glad I kicked your tail.’ “

Shed did not use the word, “racist.” That would be an unfair judgment. Adolph Rupp was a product of his time and environment. He was not the only coach to refrain from recruiting blacks, just the most prominent one. All accounts say that he wanted to recruit Wilt Chamberlain in the 1950's, but Rupp wasn't certain that he could safely take Chamberlain on road trips in the S.E.C. Those were vicious times in the Deep South, and Rupp shouldered more than his share of the blame for Kentucky's tardy integration. When he did start courting black players, the years of benign neglect hurt his effort. He retired in 1972 without reaching the championship game again.

“He didn't feel blacks could do it for him,” said Cecil Watkins, a black leader in New York City scholastic basketball circles. “By the time he went after them, what could he sell them?”

Adolph Rupp won 879 games. He casts a giant shadow. The irony is that his most famous loss may have done more for college basketball than any of his victories.

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