Forty Minutes of Hell (17 page)

Brown's daughter is employed today with University of Arkansas's athletics department. “She played basketball and ran track,” Brown says, “and I all but told her and my son
not
to go to Arkansas. But I think they wanted to prove something, prove that they could make it.”

 

The bond that Brown
and Hargis forged kept them in touch for years. In the late 1980s, Brown teamed up with Hargis, but not on the football field. This time it was to play a little golf.

At that time, country clubs in Little Rock remained segregated. Hargis invited Brown and two other prominent black lawyers, Les Hollingsworth and Richard Mays, to play at the Pleasant Valley Country Club. Hargis says the three played without incident and, soon after, Richard Mays applied for membership at Pleasant Valley, bidding to become their only black member.

The Pleasant Valley doctor who conducted the application interview asked Mays why he wanted to join the club.

“I like to play golf,” Mays answered.

“But who would you play
with
?” the doctor asked.

 

Darrell Brown can still
get emotional when talking about his time as a football walk-on for Arkansas. He says he's had so few personal interactions with Broyles that he remembers them all clearly. “I saw Frank Broyles one time at a function, and I said to him, ‘You don't remember me, do you?'” Then Brown explained that he had been practice fodder, a human tackling dummy as a walk-on in 1965 and again briefly in 1966.

“That's right,” Broyles told Brown, “you were the first one!”

 

In
Horns, Hogs, and Nixon Coming
, Frei writes, “Broyles long has said the state board informally made it clear to him when he arrived at Arkansas that he could not recruit black athletes, but he felt integration was inevitable and right.” This claim ignores a number of issues, such as the way Darrell Brown was treated. Also, the fact that the basketball coach at Arkansas beat Broyles by three years in desegregating his team. And virtually every college in the state and SWC desegregated before Broyles.

Yet, according to Frei, “Broyles said he didn't ask the university or athletics administration for permission to begin recruiting blacks.”

Thus, in manipulating even the modern media, Broyles made himself simultaneously the victim and the hero of Arkansas's belated desegregation. The board wouldn't let Broyles
and
he ignored the board. Frei even states in the opening of one chapter that Broyles's having a single walk-on in 1969—who never played a minute or even suited up for the games—meant that the Arkansas team was “integrated.” Frei makes the same ludicrous assertion about Darrell Brown's time in 1965, saying that Brown had “…briefly integrated the program.”

“Don't confuse integration with desegregation,” Judge Wendell Griffen cautions. “They're not the same thing.”

“If you played football, you remember those awful days of sweaty football practice,” says Richard Pennington, whose
Breaking the Ice
remains the only book on the integration of the Southwest Conference. The coaches start drill, maybe a one-on-one or two-on-one drill. Every player is standing there, watching. The coach asks for a volunteer to go first. “Well, that volunteer is the guy you want on your team,” Pennington says. “He has guts and courage. You know who the wimps are? The cowards? They're at the back, hiding from the drill. That's what Frank Broyles and Darrell Royal were both doing in the 1960s, hiding in the back of the line!”

Pennington was never able to get access to Frank Broyles. The Arkansas coach was the only one who stonewalled him. “Royal and Frank Broyles—and, for that matter, ‘Bear' Bryant at Alabama and others—were cowards,” Pennington says. “They were simply afraid to lead and do what needed to be done, no matter how difficult, and preferred to let people like Hayden Fry take the heat.” Broyles finished 1-9 in his last ten games against Texas, which makes it harder to believe that he would not recruit blacks sooner for practical, if not ethical, reasons.

An unknown walk-on who never scored a touchdown or played a single minute of varsity football at Arkansas is in elite company. Jackie Robinson. Jerry LeVias. Darrell Brown. “What these men did
was so very important not just for black people but for whites, too,” Pennington says. “What all this shows is how incredibly narrow-minded and parochial white people were back then. If those in power let these black guys compete fairly, they were going to rise to the top. Hell yes, they were afraid.”

T
he 1992–93 Razorback
basketball team went into the season with low expectations—after all, three of the best players in school history now were being fitted for NBA uniforms. However, a surprising group of newcomers, led by freshmen Corliss Williamson and Scotty Thurman, as well as junior college transfers Corey Beck and Dwight Stewart, made it to the NCAA Tournament's Sweet 16 before losing to eventual national champion North Carolina. Arkansas finished 22-9, including 10-6 in the SEC, and celebrated its last win in Barnhill Arena.

Richardson and Bud Walton, one of the founders of Wal-Mart, became better friends around this time, although they had met soon after Richardson arrived in Arkansas. Wal-Mart is based only a twenty-minute drive from the university, and Bud Walton, who loved the Razorbacks fast-break style, often made the drive to Fayetteville for lunch with the coach.

One October, Richardson had an idea for their annual exhibition
game. He usually divided the players into a red and a white team and let his assistants coach. Richardson would watch from the stands to evaluate. Since the university was continuously courting donors, Richardson suggested to Frank Broyles that Bud Walton be asked to coach one of the teams.

Broyles told Richardson he'd already invited Bud Walton, and that Bud declined. “But I didn't believe it,” Richardson says, “because coaching half the team, even in an intra-squad game, was an honor.”

Richardson ignored Broyles and asked Bud Walton himself. Walton accepted and coached that year against one of the Tyson Foods bosses. This invitation to coach brought Bud Walton and Richardson even closer, but pushed Richardson and Broyles farther apart. This incident was one of several occasions where Broyles's pride trumped his wisdom—anything that would have kept Bud Walton pleased with the university would have been worthwhile.

When the University of Arkansas decided it was time to build a new basketball arena, the Waltons were a natural choice to help. Bud Walton reportedly gave $15 million for the construction of the arena, which was ready for the 1993–94 season. When it came time to make decisions about the design of the arena, Bud Walton went directly to Richardson for input. What color tile for the locker room? What kind of seats for the biggest donors?

In building Bud Walton Arena, the university was rolling the dice, hoping Richardson's Razorbacks would double the size of their crowds. One important stipulation from Bud Walton was issued when the arena was built—only Razorback men's and women's basketball could use the facility. No concerts. No pro wrestling. No volleyball. No circus. The one exception could be the annual convention for Wal-Mart.

Bud Walton Arena, with a capacity of 19,200, opened in 1993. The Razorbacks led the nation in attendance in its inaugural season. The arena remains one of the ten biggest for college hoops in the
country. Richardson's squad would be ranked in the top ten in attendance eight of the nine years he competed there.

The team's success and its bond with one of the richest men in America may not have helped Richardson, ultimately. “Bud Walton loved Nolan,” says Sid Simpson, “but Broyles was afraid of that, resented it.”

 

Bud Walton Arena also
became home to Razorback supporter Fred Vorsanger.

Vorsanger had served as vice president of finance and administration, a role that meant all of athletics was under him, including then-football coach Frank Broyles.

In 1989, Vorsanger became mayor of Fayetteville. After his term as mayor was complete, he felt that he still had the energy for another job. But in Fayetteville, Arkansas, few jobs were more prestigious than mayor. In 1992, Broyles offered him the job of managing the new basketball facility. It seemed like a step up.

Vorsanger liked Richardson immediately. When the coach heard how Vorsanger was the son of German immigrants in Chicago, bullied as a boy for his accent, the two got to be friends. They joked and teased each other constantly. Once Richardson was walking outside Walton Arena with a visiting golf pro when he spotted Vorsanger coming out of his office. Richardson whispered to the golf pro, then waved to Vorsanger.

“Fred, I want you to show this golf pro your swing,” Richardson said.

The golf pro had his clubs with him and handed Vorsanger a driver. Vorsanger loosened up his shoulders, took his stance, reached back, and swung.

Richardson turned to the golf pro. “What do you think? Does he have any hope?”

“No,” said the pro. “There's no hope for this guy.”

Richardson grabbed the club and they walked away. Richardson and the golf pro stifled their laughter until they got outside.

Sometimes Richardson would joke with Vorsanger about his coaching situation. After hearing that an NBA coach was being paid lots of money not to coach his team any longer, Richardson said to him, “That's what we need, Federico. A long-term contract, then we screw up and they have to pay us anyway.”

“He was joking when he said it,” Vorsanger says. “He'd laugh and say, ‘I wish they'd just pay me my money and I could go away, Federico.' I never took him seriously.”

 

Richardson prepared the Razorbacks
for the 1993–94 season with his usual brutal regimen that forced the players to grow up or go home.

One player, Alex Dillard, nearly joined the Marines out of high school—few options were available for a 5'5" kid in the world of sports. Instead, Dillard took some time off, then enrolled at a local junior college, where he sprouted up to 5'9" and emerged as a hot-shooting guard. He signed with Arkansas and arrived in the fall of 1993, but wasn't fond of the coach at first.

“We're going to be the best-conditioned team in NCAA,” Richardson told the team, and Dillard wasn't emotionally prepared for what that entailed. By October of 1993, he was no longer planning on being a Razorback. Dillard instructed his father to call a list of coaches who had been recruiting him before he signed with Arkansas. He was planning on transferring at Christmas. Arkansas was like boot camp, Dillard says. “We ran and ran. The first month we had to be in the locker room at five fifteen in the morning.” That was difficult enough, Dillard says, but they had to return in the afternoon for more.

Strangely, Dillard continued to grow that fall, sprouting two more inches in a single semester. That coincided with his evolving attitude.
Dillard decided not to quit. “You had to be tough,” Dillard says. “He made Bobby Knight seem like a saint, he was so hard on us.”

Instilling confidence and fear simultaneously is a Richardson paradox, and Alex Dillard acclimated, then erupted into the most productive scorer-per-minute in school history. Dillard would later score 19 points in seventeen minutes in a single NCAA Tournament game.

The fear-confidence combo sparked a new nickname for the coach, something the team called Richardson behind his back, and an echo from his past. Dillard says, “For four hours a day, he was the meanest motherfucker—excuse my language—that ever walked. Then afterward he'd open his home to us. We called him ‘The Bear.'”

The Razorbacks were unaware that “The Bear” was Don Haskins's nickname.

 

Richardson had a fine
team in place going into the 1993–94 season, but he was focused on more than his full-court pressure. He spent an increasing amount of time advising the Black Coaches Association.

The NCAA had decided to phase in something they called Proposition 16, a stiffening of the standards set by Proposition 48. Under the proposed new rules, a freshman would need a 2.5 grade point average in thirteen core classes. The NCAA was also proposing a “sliding scale” for the college board exams, the SAT or ACT. For example, if a student scored as high as 900, he could be permitted to play with a high school GPA of 2.0. The standards were more challenging, but the NCAA felt that, over time, high school students would meet the raised bar.

The Black Coaches Association rejected the new proposals. The BCA released a statement claiming that the NCAA had “…turned its back on socially and economically disadvantaged people…” When the proposal was passed, many athletic teams would have higher entrance requirements than the rest of their respective universities.

A challenge was issued back in 1989, when John Thompson walked off the court at an opening tipoff. The NCAA backed down then, and the ruling was rewritten. This time, Richardson and Chaney vowed to appeal to civil rights organizations like the NAACP.

Would higher admissions standards improve the graduation rates of athletes, especially black basketball players? Almost certainly. Fewer top athletes were being declared ineligible over the years, and it appeared that kids were adapting slowly to the new higher standards.

However, the most experienced black coaches relied on their historical perspective. To Richardson, any rule change that would exclude black kids was a disturbing move backward.

 

The BCA began calling
for a boycott of the NCAA Tournament that spring. The target date for the discussed boycott was initially set for January 15, the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus met with the BCA in Washington, DC, and they were able to convince the coaches to delay a protest—the Black Caucus thought it was too strong a move. When the boycott didn't materialize, Richardson was quoted nationally as saying, “I've always been a pioneer myself, and growing up like I did, I learned a lot about surviving. There will be a boycott.” The NCAA Tournament was six weeks away.

The Black Caucus agreed to begin dialogue with the NCAA that would address the BCA's concerns. The reduction of total basketball scholarships from fifteen to thirteen over a decade was still a sore spot.

By the end of March, the threat of a BCA-sponsored boycott was a very real possibility—a boycott planned for the midst of the NCAA Tournament. Rudy Washington, the BCA's executive director, told the
Sporting News
, “We have the ability to stop work now…the NCAA kept saying, ‘Yes, we'll put a committee together. We'll study
it. We'll do this, yes, yes.' And then we say, ‘We're not going to play basketball anymore.'…Call it a crisis, a dramatic gesture, if you will…We were forced to do this. This isn't something we wanted to do.”

Washington was also critical of how long it took for African-American athletes and coaches to wake up. “Unfortunately, most of our people, meaning African-Americans, will die like they lived their lives: asleep. They never know what's going on around them. I just feel a real need to take a step and make some things work for us.”

Reactions to the boycott by some black coaches were not so supportive. Ben Jobe, then coaching at Southern University, was frustrated that some of the most visible African-American men in America found time to battle for basketball scholarships. Jobe rejected the notion of a boycott to the
Sporting News.
“This is not the Civil Rights movement,” he said. “This is not the war on poverty. This is not ethnic cleansing. This is not pro-life or abortion. This is not crime. This is not the killing of black youngsters by black youngsters. I'm not going to be wasting my energy…on fighting for a fourteenth scholarship for a kid who probably doesn't want to be going to school in the first place. If you have an important issue, call me. If not, don't bother me.”

 

The Black Coaches Association,
along with the NABC, began to hammer away at the NCAA in 1994 about four major concerns.

The first concern was the reduction in basketball scholarships. Second was the shocking absence of African-Americans in the NCAA's own headquarters. Third, there were few African-Americans serving in upper-management positions at colleges. Fourth, the BCA noted that more white males were coaching women's basketball than African-American females.

The Arkansas media jumped into the fray, and, as was often
the case, they irritated Richardson. John Robert Starr wrote in the
Democrat-Gazette
, “If the [Arkansas] players play, their chances of winning the tournament are considerably enhanced if Richardson, one of the poorest bench coaches in the land, is back in Fayetteville, sulking in his tent.”

 

The Razorbacks quickly established
themselves as a great team during the 1993–94 season. They lost only twice in the SEC season, by a total of three points. They were ranked #1 nationally for much of the year. The state-of-the-art Bud Walton Arena even attracted President Bill Clinton, an Arkansas native and former law school professor, who attended four regular season games that year.

Arkansas lost to Kentucky in the SEC Tournament and went into the NCAA playoffs ranked #2 in the nation. They beat historically black North Carolina A&T, then Georgetown, Tulsa, and Michigan to get to the Final Four.

When senior sub Roger Crawford got hurt, Richardson decided to honor Crawford by having #31 sewn onto the shoulder of every Razorback jersey—a sort of “No Hawg Left Behind” policy.

Three thousand Arkansas fans made the trip to Charlotte for the Final Four, where the Razorbacks would meet Arizona.

Richardson, an outsider all of his childhood and professional life, seemed unable to accept the accolades. Despite the national ranking and the notoriety the team had earned, the coach hammered the us-against-the-world story into their heads over and over. The team came to believe that they were not, in fact, getting the respect they deserved—despite being ranked #1 most of the season.

In the semifinals, Arkansas guards Clint McDaniel and Corey Beck harassed Arizona's backcourt, regarded as the best offensive duo in America, into making just two of twenty-two attempts from behind the three-point arc. Arkansas beat Arizona, 91-82.

Richardson held court after the Arizona game, lecturing the
media. In the
Sporting News
, he was quoted as saying “…if I would win games and some of the other black coaches would win, we would never win because of our brains and our techniques and our teachings…. it was always because ‘Well, they've got the best athletes' and ‘Man, look at those athletes that guy's got out there.' Wait a minute, I said, look at my team and look at Krzyzewski's team and put us on paper and just ask how many they want of their All-Americans as opposed to us—they don't know us, they don't know anything about us—and see whose team they're going to pick, whose players they're going to pick. That was the thing that used to bother me more than anything.” The Duke coach, Richardson believed, had his pick of the nation's top high school players, while Richardson relied on under-recruited sleepers.