I owe
Tim Bross a huge thank you today.
Again.
Way back when, Tim and I wrote about sports in the same newsroom.
Bross, who now works at the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, is a former sportswriter at the old
Des Moines Tribune.
A couple of months ago, he was kind enough to send me a copy of Lute Olson's book, "Lute! The Seasons Of My Life." The trouble was, someone -- or maybe a lot of people -- wanted to read the book before it got to me.All I received in the mail was an empty envelope.
I put in a "missing book" report to the Post Office, but didn't hear a word on what happened to the book -- or on whose bookshelf it is now.
I hope all the mailmen and mailwomen enjoyed reading my copy of the book.
So Bross was nice enough to send me another copy of the book, as well as a copy of the book "Getting Open -- The Unknown Story Of Bill Garrett and the Integration Of College Basketball" [pictured at the left].I've written about the Garrett book in the past, and I'll write more on it later in this column.
Right now, I want to write again about Olson's book.
Lute, of course, is the former Iowa and Arizona basketball coach who regards me as his favorite sportswriter.
I know that's the case because, if he didn't, want would he have devoted most of an entire page to me in his book?
I also am fairly certain that Olson feels he is the best basketball coach of all time and that he should be called Mr. Wonderful by everyone who meets him.
In writing about his late wife, Bobbi, Lute mentioned one of several interviews she had with me, both in Iowa City and Tucson, Ariz.
[By the way, the photo at the right shows Lute and Bobbi]."Bobbi always tried to cooperate with the media," Olson wrote in rhw book. "She liked most of the people who covered our program, and I think they all appreciated her. Once, though, Ron Maly, a Des Moines Register columnist, asked her to reflect on the success of our program. She responded that the reaction had been overwhelming, and then, unfortunately, she added, 'Lute has created a monster here....'"As I recall, Bobbi was still talking about the "monster" Olson had created at Iowa and the fact that she and Lute were "living in a fishbowl" in Iowa City when I talked with her after Olson's opening press conference on the Arizona campus in Tucson.
Even after Olson had been in the Arizona job for many years, I continued getting phone calls from sportswriters in Arizona and other areas of the country, who wondered about my relationship with the thin-skinned Olson.
The
Maly-Olson Extravaganza took on a life of its own. Finally, I grew tired of writing about Olson and his family. No one was happier to see
George Raveling become Iowa's coach after Olson left than me.
Now, of course, things have gotten even more bizarre for Olson. After taking an unexlained leave of absence from the Arizona job last season, he abruptly resigned a couple of weeks ago.One of his doctors called a press conference to announce that Olson had suffered a stroke and was unable to make decisions.
Well, I guess.
Bobbi died a number of years ago from ovarian cancer. He later married the former
Christine Torretti, and now is divorced from her. The last I heard, he was engaged to
Kelly Pugnea a 47-year-old divorcee.
[That's Christine pictured at the top left. Kelly is at the top right. The photos are courtesy of former Iowan
Jay Christensen, publisher of a new blog titled
"The March To Madness." Jay also publishes the football blog,
"The Wizard Of Odds."].Maybe it's time for me to spend some time in Tucson and get all of this stuff straightened out for Olson. It looks like old Silver Top needs some help.
*
As for the book on
Bill Garrett, I wrote about it a while back when I was trying to unravel a huge screwup about it at the
Des Moines Register.
On May 10, 2007, I wrote that
Tom Graham, co-author of the book,
"Getting Open: The Unknown Story Of Bill Garrett and the Integration Of College Basketball," caught up on the Internet with a column I wrote about a story the Register published about Garrett, a former Indiana basketball player.
In a poorly-researched, poorly-written and poorly-edited story, the Register completely ignored
Dick Culberson, a University of Iowa athlete from Iowa City who was the first black basketball player in the Big Ten.
Culberson is pictured with his Hawkeye teammates in a photo of Iowa's conference title team of 1944-45 in the Iowa basketball media guide. Garrett didn't join the Indiana program until 1947.
At the time the Register story was published,
Bill Garrett's son,
Billy, was on
Steve Alford's staff at Iowa. He's now the head coach at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi
Here's what Graham wrote to me in an e-mail:
"Ron,"I just now came across the article about Bill Garrett in the Des Moines Register of last January, and the criticisms that raged for a few days over the comment that Garrett was the first black to play basketball in the Big Ten. I am the co-author, with my daughter, of 'Getting Open: The Unknown Story of Bill Garrett and the Integration of College Basketball'. Probably our book was a source for the Register's article, and I'd like to offer these belated comments.
"We point out in our book that Dick Culberson was the Big Ten's first African-American basketball player. ('It was an open secret [in 1947] that the basketball coaches of the Big Ten--the conference to which [Indiana] and other large midwestern schools belonged -- had a 'gentleman's agreement' not to recruit or play blacks. Only one black basketball player, Dick Culberson, had ever suited up in a Big Ten basketball uniform, and he had seen only limited action for Iowa in part of one season during World War II....') (p. 92)
"Culberson was the exception that proved the rule. I don't want to minimize his achievement nor the difficulties he faced, but Culberson's breakthrough was isolated--like those of the handful of blacks who played in the L.A. and New York areas, at the University of Toledo and at Pitt in the 1940's. It did not 'break' the gentleman's agreement, did not provide a dramatic example to other coaches, and was not followed quickly by a steady progression of black basketball players into the Big Ten or other midwestern conferences. On the contrary, for four years after Culberson's 1943-44 season with Iowa, the Big Ten gentleman's agreement continued as before.
"Technically, Bill Garrett was the first African-American to be a regular starter on a Big Ten basketball team--and that is (as far as I could tell from reading excerpts online) how The Register described him.
"But more important, it was Garrett who broke once and for all the Big Ten's gentleman's agreement, whose example on and off the court motivated coaches all around the midwest to look for 'Bill Garretts,' and who started the steady movement of black players into major college basketball. In our book, we were careful to describe Garrett's breakthrough that way, and it is in that sense that we called him 'the Jackie Robinson of college basketball.'
"I realize this is probably old hat now, but unfortunately I didn't see the online discussion in time to join it.
"I'll look forward to reading your online column more regularly in the future.
"Best wishes,"Tom Graham, co-author, with Rachel Graham Cody, of "Getting Open: The Unknown Story of Bill Garrett and Integration of College Basketball" (Atria Books: 2006)
In my comments to Graham, I wrote, "I'm glad you point out in your book, Tom, that Iowa's Dick Culberson was the Big Ten's first black basketball player. I agree with you that your book appears to be a source of the Register's story. That being the case, I can't understand how the newspaper's story on Garrett completely ignored Culberson, who was a reserve on an Iowa team in 1944-45 that had a 17-1 record and won the Big Ten championship.
"The minute the story appeared on the Register's website, readers were challenging it because they were aware that Culberson was the Big Ten's first black player -- regardless of whether he was a reserve or a starter. One of the first responses to the story on the website said, 'What else do you expect from the Register? This is a snippet from the link on the prior posting: It was an unspoken agreement among coaches. No one risked challenging it in the Big Ten until 1944, when the University of Iowa for the first time added to its roster a black, Richard T. Culberson....Dear Gannett, would you take the Register's editors and sports section off of life support and get someone who knows how to put together a sports stlory and/or sports column. This passes for journalism?'
"When I called Bob Schulz, a four-year letterwinner who was a freshman on Iowa's 1944-45 squad and a teammate of Culberson, he acknowledged that he was 'a bit shook up" to read in the paper that Garrett was called the first black player to compete in the Big Ten.' The day after the story appeared, the Register [in its print edition] carried this clarification: 'Former Indiana men's basketball player William Garrett was the first black to regularly play and consistently start in the Big Ten Conference. Ex-Iowa player Dick Culberson was the first to play in the Big Ten, a few seasons earlier. Information from the Univeristy of Iowa and other sources was incorrect in some cases, and contradictory and unclear in others.' The story was quickly removed from the newspaper's website. After exchanging e-mails with Graham about the matter, he wrote: '....please correct my spelling of Dick Culberson's name. I'm embarrassed to say we spelled it wrong [Culbertson] in our book also.'
"'I hope you'll see that the book is researched and end-noted thoroughly, but we still slipped up there. The focus of our book is the breaking of the Big Ten's gentleman's agreement, in the setting of how race relations were in the midwest of the '40's. I grew up in Garrett's hometown, with memories of the paradox of the town's segregation and its intense pride in Bill Garrett. The book is available on Amazon and similar websites, as well as on the Simon & Schuster website, 'Simonsays.com.' Atria is a Simon & Schuster imprint. In was published in March, 2006, and is also still available in some book stores....A stray related fact is that, among midwestern colleges, the University of Toledo stood out for taking black players early. The explanation I've heard is that Toledo didn't belong to a conference (hence no gentleman's agreement), and had a lot of East Coast schools on its schedule.'"
Thanks for writing, Tom, and I join many others in saying what a great job you and your daughter did in researching and writing the book. I corrected the spelling of Culberson's name five times in your e-mail comments to me, but unfortunately I couldn't do anything about taking that 't' out of his name in the book.]
