Still, he picked a very strange time and what appears to be a strange reason to play the race card. After 17 years in Fayetteville as head coach at the University of Arkansas, years of extraordinary success and conspicuous honors for Richardson, he now says he never got the respect due him. And that indeed everything comes harder to a black coach in both Arkansas and America. Because there is ample truth to what Richardson says, we must all tread carefully in addressing his grievances.
But the race card is such a powerful weapon, nuclear in terms of rhetoric, that it’s a shame Richardson didn’t utilize it on a more suitable occasion. Because what appears to have triggered his petulant outburst was not the historical inequities of the system but rather the harsh level of criticism aimed at him-in the press and from the fans-during a rare, subpar season.
And when Richardson was through grousing and insisting he’d be thrilled to be bought out of the remaining six years of his contract, the university took him at his word-and the coach, despite belated buyer’s regret, was suddenly out the door.
I haven’t been down there to read or hear the entire barrage so I can’t swear that it hasn’t been tinged with racial antipathy or at least nuance. What I do know is that there is a certain universality, a color-blindness even, to the ugly tradition of American sports fans turning on a storied coach when he falters in his later years. College coaching legends from University of North Carolina’s Dean Smith to Louisville’s Denny Crum to Penn State’s football czar Joe Paterno, NFL Hall of Famers from the late Tom Landry to Don Shula, haven’t been spared the blasts and the nagging questions. Do the fires still burn? Is the game passing him by?
We are unfailingly a “what have you done for me lately” nation-in our politics, in our popular tastes and, above all, in our sporting affections. And we demonstrate that each and every year. Ask the NHL’s Larry Robinson, ousted in New Jersey less than two seasons after his Stanley Cup triumph. Ask the NBA’s Scott Skiles, dumped after two seasons of winning at a .632 pace. Ask the NFL’s Tony Dungey, canned after a five-year playoff string. Ask Major League Baseball’s Buck Showalter, who guided the Arizona Diamondbacks from infancy to the cusp of a world championship.
So Richardson’s exodus, which occurred only after he publicly called for a buyout of his coaching contract (and comes with a $3 million cushion), is hardly unprecedented, even for a coach whose record is currently second to none in college basketball’s ranks. But unfortunately this flap opened up Arkansas’ program to an increased level of scrutiny in which the paramount question has become not Richardson’s record, but rather what kind of program has he run. An NCAA study of college players entering its 323 Division I schools from 1990-1994 reveals that Arkansas is one of only six where not a single black player from those five classes of recruits graduated within six years. That’s a record of shame, even more so because Richardson is so unapologetic about it.
The coach says it’s simply a byproduct of the pro-basketball aspirations of his players. “You know old Granny would say, ‘You can take the mule to the water, but he don’t have to drink’,” he told ESPN. And when asked by the network why other schools have managed to find black ballplayers who graduate, he mustered this embarrassing response: “I don’t know. Maybe they had players that wanted to get a degree.” What a sorry reflection on his program not to mention a total abdication of his responsibility to the players, regardless of their NBA dreams. Very few players Richardson recruited in those years are now making a living in the NBA.
Ironies abound in this discussion because another fabled coach is much in the news this week. Bobby Knight will be on TV twice Sunday night, once in the flesh and once in a cinematic version in which the coach’s red sweater will be donned by actor Brian Dennehy. In the first appearance, Knight will celebrate the exceptional job he did in his maiden season at Texas Tech, as the former basketball doormat joins college’s elite with its selection to the NCAA tournament. In the second, he will be portrayed, in a mid-career season at Indiana University, in a manner so profane that ESPN will run a obscenity-bleeped version simultaneously on ESPN2.
Knight was a brilliant floor coach, the best I’ve ever seen, who behaved too badly for too long and was rightfully dumped at Indiana. But it wasn’t because he didn’t care about graduating his players. That, in fact, was one of his priorities, and during those NCAA-study years his black recruits graduated at about a 30 percent rate, which was at least comparable to Indiana’s universitywide average for all black students.
Does that make him a better man or even a better coach than Richardson? Certainly not. What it does suggest, though, is that there are a complex array of standards to which a modern coach should be held accountable. Knight failed one miserably and got his rightful fate. Richardson failed another and deserves the door, too. There is surely a Texas Tech out there waiting to offer Richardson a job and, like Knight, a shot at redemption.
