Forty Minutes of Hell (20 page)

Getting “some of those” might have been exactly what Broyles was up to when he hired Nolan Richardson. The hottest coach in the nation at that time was John Thompson, who had won the NCAA title in 1984, becoming the first black coach to do so. In 1985, Villanova squeaked by Georgetown. With Villanova's coach Rollie Massimino no longer interested, Broyles began looking for another candidate. Thompson wouldn't leave Georgetown, but Broyles decided to nab the next-hottest African-American coach.

 

Regardless of Broyles's motivation,
his knack for hiring great coaches is nothing less than incredible, and in hiring football assistants, Broyles stands alone. His former assistant coaches have gone on to win five national championships, over forty conference titles and have combined for over two thousand victories in college. He has had forty assistants go on to be head coaches in college or the NFL.

The Rotary Club of Little Rock sponsors the only national award for assistant football coaches, the Broyles Award. The trophy depicts the coach kneeling in front of his former assistant, Wilson Matthews.

The Broyles Award reflects the lack of racial progress in college football. The selection committee members who choose the award winner are nine white men, including Broyles. No black man has ever been on the committee.

The award began in 1996. It took four years before a black man was even one of the five assistant coaches nominated. There has never been a time when more than one black man was a nominee. Sixty-seven assistants have been nominated overall. Six were black. That
comes out to 8 percent, while 33 percent of assistant coaches today are black. Only once in the twelve-year history of the award has the winner been a black man. Randy Shannon of Miami won in 2001.

At the time of this writing, Randy Shannon is the only black head football coach at a top sixty-four BCS university. Like the award's namesake in the 1960s, the Broyles Award Committee can't seem to locate qualified black men.

 

The most obvious sign
of Frank Broyles's impact on the Arkansas campus today is its incredible athletics facilities. Razorback Stadium is a breathtaking tribute to the power and place of sports at the University of Arkansas.

Next to Razorback Stadium sits the old Barnhill Arena, basketball's old home. Past that is Bud Walton Arena, the state-of-the-art basketball facility. Then the Smith Golf Center. Next is Walker Pavilion, an indoor football practice field. There is McDonnell Field for the track team, and also the Tyson Track Center for indoor races. Baum Stadium looks like a Major League baseball park.

Don't worry, many on campus assure. Athletics isn't taking a nickel away from academics, and it's not like the money would have been donated for education. “All of the facility improvements have been financed through private donations without a dollar of tax revenues,” an Arkansas media guide says. In the past thirty years, with Broyles as boss, the athletics program has spent nearly $250,000,000 on building or improving athletics facilities. Athletics has an annual budget around $40,000,000.

Over the years, Broyles has ingratiated himself to the biggest money people. He is a member of Augusta National in Georgia, one of America's most affluent and exclusive golf clubs. Membership to Augusta, which is on the site of an old plantation, is by invitation only; there is no application process. Only about three hundred people are members at any one time. Augusta admitted its first black member
in 1990, nearly seventy years after it opened, and no woman has ever been a member.

Yet money talks at Arkansas and in the world of college sports. After decades of covering college sports in the area, the
Tulsa World
's longtime sportswriter Bill Connors named Frank Broyles “Best Athletics Director” in his farewell column of 1995.

I
n 1999, the
University of Arkansas Press published
Bitters in the Honey
, a book about the Little Rock crisis of 1957 and the civil rights views of Arkansans. Beth Roy, the author, concluded, “One finding of my study in Little Rock is that white racist attitudes continue unabated, their forms and codes changed since the fifties, but not their intensity.”

Chancellor John White had plenty of work to do. “Fayetteville was stunning to me,” he says. “I started calling out the cheerleading squad and the pep band. There wasn't a single black student involved! I just kept hammering at it.”

White set out on what he saw as part of his mission, scoring some major victories in the hiring of African-Americans. The vice chancellor of student affairs. The dean of the library. The dean of the law school. All were African-American. Nevertheless, White knew his best recruiter and spokesman could be his boisterous basketball coach—not just for athletics, but as a representative for the entire school. “One
reason I felt so good about Nolan was having him here, and working with him to get across the message of how great an institution it was for everyone; it really didn't matter about your skin color.”

 

The Razorbacks jumped out
to an 8-0 start in the 1997–98 season. Their 11-5 record in the SEC scored them a return trip to the NCAA Tournament, where they topped Nebraska before losing to Utah. Arkansas finished the year 24-9. It was a satisfying year, although Richardson's team got beat by his old friend Rob Evans, who had taken over as the first black head coach at the University of Mississippi.

Richardson was already a hero in his native El Paso. Before the next season, El Paso made it official when Nolan Richardson Middle School opened in northeast El Paso.

Some of the glow of the national championship was beginning to wear off in Arkansas, though. The 1998–99 Razorbacks went 23-11 and landed another NCAA Tournament appearance. Arkansas beat Siena in the first round but lost to Iowa. Richardson was now four years past his glorious Final Four runs.

The frustrations of high expectations sometimes became apparent in Richardson's day-to-day dealings. That May, on an airplane flight, Richardson vented to football coach Houston Nutt, calling Frank Broyles both untrustworthy and a “white-haired devil.”

 

In 1999, Head Coach
and Assistant Athletics Director Nolan Richardson received a letter citing statistics from the National Association of Basketball Coaches president Jim Haney.

Haney, who is white, was disturbed. “African-American employees are the academic advisors, equipment managers, facility managers, strength coaches, and compliance coordinators,” he wrote. “The athletics administration at the core management positions, adminis
trative jobs that have the most influence on the success of the athletics department, are for white men and women only!”

According to Haney's study, African-Americans filled only 6.5 percent of “core management jobs” in Division I schools. (Division II and III were even worse.) Part of Haney's concern was that African-American basketball players, who then made up over 60 percent of the participants, would conclude that their chances for important jobs after their playing days were nearly nonexistent.

At the time of the study, 30 percent of basketball coaches—assistant and head—were African-American. But did core management opportunities actually exist for them? Or was there a ceiling? Haney asked, “Can we name African-American basketball coaches who have had the opportunity to move into athletics administration in the last five years? I cannot.”

The only issue the BCA felt had been fairly addressed by the NCAA was that they had successfully sought out African-Americans for management jobs at their own headquarters. Little or nothing had been done at the university level.

Writing in his
Courtside
column for the NABC's newspaper, Haney was astounded. “Rightfully, you may ask where is the outrage? Where are the powerful voices within the NCAA structure that champion legislative changes on this matter? Where are those who would call the NCAA institutions into account for the abysmal hiring of African-Americans and people of color to core management positions?”

Richardson read Jim Haney's column and accompanying statistics, then brooded. With Christmas of 1999 only five days away, he composed a letter to Frank Broyles. In part, Richardson wrote:

Richardson wanted a clarification of his assigned role—or, rather, he wanted an authentic role, and not a token appointment. He was now considering whether or not to resign from this appointment, given its lack of substance. His letter continued:

Three days later, Broyles faxed a letter back to his basketball coach. “I have received your letter and I understand your feelings,” he wrote. “I will respond to you after the holidays.”

 

Another burr in Richardson's
boots was that Broyles undercut the shoe deal Richardson had with Converse, working out an agreement with Reebok to outfit all of the university's athletic teams. Shoe companies buying up entire athletics departments is common today, but at that time it was a new development. Richardson felt he had earned his shoe money; the lesser sports, which would benefit so
greatly, had not. Later, the university would buy out Richardson's Converse deal, which helped monetarily, but the coach could not help but feel sabotaged by Broyles again.

On January 15, 2000, still waiting on a response to his letter from Broyles, Richardson went public about his “token” status as an assistant athletics director. He simply did not want to be used as a statistic if there were no extra duties—or pay. Richardson's complaints were reported only in local newspapers.

Then, on January 17, 2000, Richardson again brought up his situation in the
Morning News
newspaper. When the journalist pointed out that other assistant ADs, the white ones, had been in similar circumstances, Richardson remained unconvinced. “Those guys can go ahead and stay that way because they've got guys their color doing things for them,” he said. “What about me? Who sits in that hallway up there to represent us? I don't. Do I help make decisions? No, sir. I've never been asked a question, I've never been in a meeting. So why use me as an assistant AD for affirmative action? I'm not an Uncle Tom.”

On January 25, 2000—now the wait for Broyles's written response was gnawing at him—Richardson wrote a second letter. The subject this time was the disparity in pay between basketball and football assistant coaches. Richardson had raised the issue in a 1997 letter, and Broyles had justified the pay differences then by citing experience. Broyles couldn't use that excuse this time. The pay differential had become even greater when Houston Nutt became football coach in 1998. Richardson's top assistant, Mike Anderson, had more experience than any of the football assistants, and had been coaching in Fayetteville for well over a decade.

Richardson copied the letter to both Chancellor John White and University of Arkansas system president Alan Sugg.

 

Richardson could not have
picked a less opportune time to challenge the Arkansas power structure. His 1999–2000 team struggled all year. They finished the regular SEC season at 7-9, Richardson's worst mark since joining the more competitive league.

On February 17, 2000, Broyles addressed Richardson's second letter, admitting to the obvious. Pay disparities existed between Arkansas's assistant football and basketball coaches. Since experience could not logically be cited, Broyles attempted to justify the difference by saying it was “required by the marketplace”—an odd logic indeed from the man who controlled the money within the entire multimillion-dollar business that was Arkansas athletics. There was yet to be a written response to Richardson's pre-Christmas letter.

Broyles also forwarded copies of his own letter to John White and Alan Sugg. But he included a cover letter to them, saying that matters of this nature should be resolved between Richardson and himself. Broyles said that by sending White and Sugg a copy of his letter, Richardson had followed “inappropriate protocol.” Richardson was not sent a copy of Broyles's cover letter to his superiors.

That same day, Richardson got into a heated discussion with Wally Hall, the sports editor of the
Democrat-Gazette
. Hall and Richardson often reverted to the usual complaints about each other: Hall wasn't fair; Richardson was too sensitive. Near the end of the argument, Richardson claims he called Hall a “redneck.” That is not how it was reported in the next day's news. Hall wrote that Richardson had called the Razorback
fans
“redneck SOBs.”

The following day, former football star and board of trustees fixture Jim Lindsey claimed he got a call from an irate fan demanding Richardson be fired for the statement. Lindsey, who was close with Broyles, phoned his former coach to express those concerns. The fan was never identified, but suddenly the feelings of the fans—which had mattered little in the firing of successful UA football coaches over the years—became paramount. Broyles never asked Richardson about
Wally Hall's column, or if the quotes were taken out of context.

The annual banquet for senior football players was that very evening. Broyles approached a table of media representatives—all white, of course—to grumble about Richardson's comments. Just a few days earlier, Broyles had complained to the chancellor and system president about Richardson voicing grievances through inappropriate channels. Now Broyles was about to do the unthinkable.

Broyles asked one of the writers at the table to publish an article that equated Richardson's use of the word “redneck” with a white person using the word “nigger.”

The media table was dumbfounded, both at Broyles's public use of the word “nigger” and at his bizarre request. One writer later said that Broyles was animated and raised his voice. Black football players were seated at the next table, and the writer reached for Broyles's arm, asking him to lower his voice. Later that night, Broyles cornered the writer again, saying that the article needed to be written.

Redneck = nigger.

Of course, he emphasized, the comparison should leave out the name “Frank Broyles.”

The writer later confided to Richardson that Broyles had tried to push him into doing that article. Richardson asked the writer to record his recollection on tape, and the writer agreed.

What would remain a source of debate in Arkansas was not that Broyles publicly used the word “nigger,” and wanted major Arkansas media sources to write about niggers and rednecks. Rather, the question centered on whether Broyles
himself
compared the two terms or if Broyles was
reporting
on the feelings of mysterious “fans.”

Paul Eells, the sports anchor for KATV and host of Richardson's weekly television show, later said he was shocked by Broyles's prodding of the journalists and believed the comments to be Broyles's own sentiments. Other media representatives understood the comments to mean Broyles was quoting someone else.

“Frank thought he was made of Teflon,” one of Arkansas's long-
time sportswriters says. Indeed, Broyles was. Not a single media member wrote about Broyles's bizarre request or criticized him in print.

 

On February 28, 2000,
Broyles wrote back to Richardson again, this time to answer Richardson's letter from over two months earlier. Several factors, Broyles wrote, contributed to this delayed response. “…[T]he holidays, the football postseason activity, blocked arteries…football stadium debates.” Broyles also wrote about “…the unexpected nature of your letter, both in timing and content.”

Broyles pointed out that Eddie Sutton and successful track coach John McDonnell held the role of assistant athletics director while they were coaching. “In each instance,” he wrote, “the title was assigned as a symbolic gesture of respect for contributions to our athletics programs…. This title designation…has never been and is not currently intended to change any job duties. Given these circumstances, please let me know your decision regarding the title.”

In regard to NABC boss Jim Haney's claims, Broyles said that “…each and every point is well taken and should be an area of concern.”

Broyles could not resist a final parting shot. “One of the virtues of Chancellor White's emphasis on increased graduation rates is the increased availability of qualified former athletes who have attained their degrees.”

Was Broyles taking a swipe at Richardson for the graduation rate among black players? Probably. In two years, Richardson's players' graduation rate during his championship years would become a national story. But for Broyles, the solution was simple and easy. If Richardson would simply
graduate
more players, then Broyles would
hire
them as associate athletics directors.