Forty Minutes of Hell (28 page)

Corliss Williamson leaped into a basketball stance. “Hey, I want to win this!” he shouted to his team, pacing up and down his line, bending at the waist to attempt a chest bump with one kid.

Clint McDaniel took Williamson's cue and began pushing his young campers, too. “We're not going to let them beat us!” McDaniel said. Then Ken Biley and the rest of the Razorbacks jumped in the kids' faces, high-fiving, fist-bumping, and taunting the nearest competitors. When it was over, the winning line jumped up and down and exchanged hugs, as though they were champions as well. The clinic had undergone an astonishing transformation. Richardson hadn't said a word.

 

College basketball is a
business—that's a refrain repeated any time a coach is fired. If it is indeed true, then firing Nolan Richardson was a bad business decision. The Razorbacks have never been the same. Seven years after Richardson's removal, it's nearly impossible to conclude that Broyles's judgment was correct, since the Razorbacks have never come close to approaching his success.

With the current Arkansas team struggling, Nolan nostalgia gripped the state, and the reunion of the 1994 champs allowed Razorback fans a brief glimpse of their past glory—and an opportunity to reconsider what had transpired with their iconic coach.

“It was a sad day for the University of Arkansas,” former chancellor John White says, in retrospect. “Nolan Richardson is just an absolute icon. He's not only an asset for the University of Arkansas, he's an asset for this nation. I just hated that it came to that kind of conclusion.” White wasn't alone in his sentiments, and the weekend festivities would go a long way toward building trust between Richardson and the school.

There's also the “What if?” factor. Richardson's infamous press conference in 2002 began with the sports information director reading an encouraging letter from the parents of a recruit. The recruit was Andre Iguodala, who never enrolled at Arkansas because of Richardson's removal. Iguodala went to Arizona instead, then was the ninth pick in the NBA draft, made the All-Rookie team, and became an NBA All-Star. Joe Johnson was the only player of Richardson's ever to rise to that status in the NBA. Razorback fans could only speculate how good they might have been with Richardson coaching Iguodala.

The reunion banquet had the glitz and glamour of the Grammy Awards. The posh hall was packed with a crowd of nearly a thousand people who'd paid a hundred dollars each. Full-size color photos decorated the walls. Souvenirs from the title run were being hawked at the door. If Arkansas had at one time been viewed as backward, you wouldn't have known it this night. The expenditures would have made a Wall Street CEO blush.

Each player was given a minute to speak. Richardson was last, and praised some of the most obscure players effusively. Just before he was finished, he said, “I'm the only coach in America who was fired and still stayed in town.” It was his way of saying both that he still loved Arkansas and that his firing was unjust.

 

One of the first
things anyone entering Bud Walton Arena sees in the main lobby is a seven-foot cutout of Nolan Richardson, in a trophy case with a plaque that reads, “Arguably the most popular coach in any sport in Razorback history.”

Two entire trophy cases commemorate “The Nolan Richardson Era.” Another one is devoted to the 1994 NCAA title team. Just to the side is a miniature theater, where you can push a button and learn about the Razorbacks. Above the entrance, a sign proclaims:
THE NOLAN RICHARDSON THEATER
. On the side is a plaque dedicating the
theater to Yvonne Richardson. All of these displays were built before Richardson was dumped in 2002, and all of them have remained, even through the contentious lawsuit.

Ralph Brewster, Richardson's first great player from Bowie, has little remorse about his own career. Brewster's impulse—to go along with what was best for his coach, instead of what might have been best for himself—is an indicator of the charisma of his coach, he says. Today he is proud of his role in Richardson's life. “Nolan will stand the test of history,” Brewster says. “A lot of changes in the view of Nolan are going to come with time. He is an original who spoke the truth and stood on righteousness.”

The leading scorer in Arkansas history, Todd Day, concurs about the test of time. “Nolan Richardson is the greatest African-American coach in history,” he said days before Richardson came back to campus.

 

The 2009 SEC season
had been a disaster for second-year coach John Pelphrey. The only league game Arkansas won leading up to the reunion was the day after Richardson had privately addressed Pelphrey's Razorbacks.

The Georgia game was a return to the best days and a chance for the fans to remember. Richardson addressed the crowd of 19,724 at halftime, and their reaction was deafening. “If a Phantom fighter jet had flown through Bud Walton [Arena] right then,” Wally Hall wrote, “it would not have been seen or heard.” There was still plenty of history that Richardson could invoke that made Razorback fans happy.

The overflowing emotion found its way into the current team. Arkansas won, 89-67, a rare win for the 2009 team that would finish 2-14 in the SEC—dead-last place.

N
olan Richardson began
his career determined to be different from his college coach. Nobody could have predicted all the ways he'd wind up like Don Haskins.

Haskins and Richardson won historically important NCAA championships, and it's difficult to invoke the name of either man without an ensuing discussion of race. Both were attacked for their graduation rates of black players on those title teams. In the end, both men did better in this regard than originally perceived.

Richardson even drove a pickup truck, although he surely had his choice of any car in town. The Razorbacks innocently began referring to Richardson as “The Bear” in the 1990s.

Haskins remained at UTEP for nearly forty years and may have been the last of that breed of coach. Richardson never applied for another job while coaching the Razorbacks.

“Nolan fell in love with Arkansas,” longtime athletics trainer
Dave England says. “I know it hurt him those times when it seemed like Arkansas didn't love him back.”

Richardson has done more than win championships to earn that love. He has been involved in over thirty charities during his time in Fayetteville. Sometimes Richardson used his name in hosting fundraisers; sometimes he put up his own money. His annual golf tournament in El Paso honors his daughter while raising thousands of dollars for leukemia research. After Yvonne's death, his empathetic antenna for the downtrodden became even more sensitive; he'd hand out large sums of cash like Halloween candy if sick children were involved. Sid Simpson says, “That's the direction Nolan seems to be going. He'd pick up a load of crippled kids and take them to a game, but he'd never tell anyone.” Shortly after Yvonne died, Richardson learned there was a child in Paragould, Arkansas, who had cancer. “He wrote out a check for fifteen thousand, and had it delivered to the family,” Simpson says.

Yet another aspect of Richardson's life that mirrors Don Haskins is his selective memory. Even as detailed evidence of his humanitarian giving mounted, he claimed to have no recollection of specific stories of generosity. He either has terrible recall, is too humble, or he's helped so many people he really has lost track.

 

Arkansas was the punch
line of jokes and a source of national embarrassment at one time. Today, despite the recent raising of the Confederate flag and intimidation of the black repairmen after the ice storm, race relations are improved.

Elizabeth Jacoway, the author of two books about race and Arkansas, was born there in the 1940s. “My sense is that Arkansas has changed dramatically,” Jacoway says. “People who lived through the Civil Rights movement understand the very slow nature in which change can come about.”

Are Americans and Arkansans better off being reminded of that great distance and remembering that slow nature of change? Does discussing the racist history of the nation help us move forward or keep us stuck in the past? Does Richardson's outspokenness open wounds or help close them?

Anyone taking a close look at Nolan Richardson's life should understand how both memory and his sense of justice have haunted him. The austere woman who raised Richardson had an archive of stories about her own parents' enslavement. The poorest Mexican-Americans in segregated Texas could sit at lunch counters, splash in swimming pools, and lean back in air-conditioned movie theaters. He could not.

Standing toe-to-toe with American racism became unavoidable for Richardson.

By simply asking for a Coke, he had an inadvertent hand in ending Jim Crow laws in El Paso. At the time he began his career, there was not a single black man coaching major college basketball. Powerful people thought of him as the “nigger coach” upon his arrival in Snyder and Tulsa. In Arkansas he toiled at a campus where police dogs bared their teeth at black fraternity brothers and sisters. The most powerful man at the school spent a decade as the proud front man of segregation in Arkansas athletics, and later tried to prod a table full of journalists into using the word “nigger” in print. Being the first black at every outpost rubbed Richardson raw, especially in Arkansas, a state where sundown towns thrived, George Wallace triumphed, and, even into the new millennium, the state university board of trustees felt that “nigger jokes” were funny.

His refusal to keep quiet makes a lot more sense in that context; the long arc of his life puts that fateful 2002 press conference in perspective.

Richardson understood that Broyles wanted to fire him for years. Today, if the entire text of that 2002 news media gathering is read
aloud, a few things become apparent. One, it's clear that Richardson was mostly talking to and about Frank Broyles—although he allowed that he has to “answer to” Broyles and the UA administration. Knowing Broyles preferred that he fail in order to facilitate his firing became an unbearable strain. Also apparent is that Richardson, under the extreme pressure of coaching a fledgling college basketball team, reverted to his own history and memory by quoting Ol' Mama.

After winning the NCAA title in 1994, Richardson's cause and his passion changed, and he obsessed about equality for black coaches, himself included. He continued to talk about race because racism was not over. In the world of college sports, one has only to count the number of black athletics directors and head football coaches to deduce that something is still wrong. Richardson's error was to think that trotting the elephant of racism out in front of a room full of white reporters and television crews during a mediocre season was a good idea.

Did he always comport himself in the best manner for his cause during the five decades that he coached? Of course not. But if the world was going to change, somebody had to follow Ol' Mama's advice. Nolan Richardson kicked down the damn door.

 

Richardson's ranch is a
ten-minute drive west of Fayetteville, among the rolling hills that rest on the edge of northwest Arkansas. The town blends first into suburbs, then to farms. Just before the road turns to gravel, the land unfolds into a scenic panorama, calm and peaceful in every direction. At the end of the road there is an iron gate that reads
RICHARDSON RANCH
. The house is simple, understated, and rustic. It's much more a cabin than a castle.

The kitchen is also the dining room and the epicenter of all activity at the Richardson ranch. On any given weekend, and not just championship team reunions, their home is filled with ex-players, family, neighbors, and friends. His wife, Rosario, will be cooking; maybe
green chile caldillo
.
Richardson will man the taco station expertly, folding in diced tomatoes and shredded cheese.

And there are kids, kids everywhere. School groups and church groups. Nieces and nephews and grandkids. And especially the children of former players.

 

One recent Fourth of
July weekend, the five kids there just happened to be young girls, between two and ten years of age. The ex-Razorbacks at the ranch that holiday weren't very good players or even on great teams. That didn't matter to Richardson, who waited on them as if they were All-Americans.

While the adults were still feasting, the girls invented a game. They would run in a loop about the size of the center-jump circle. Then the lead one, the oldest, would turn a dramatic dance move into a split or somersault. The younger girls would imitate the first, then they'd all fall down, dissolving in laughter. Occasionally, they'd return to the table to trade bites and share bowls.

A hero of the Irish Civil Rights movement once said, “Our revenge will be the laughter of our children.” This is the philosophy of the Richardson ranch, where the sound of young kids' laughing resonates.

Rose Richardson moved to the couch to watch the dance routine digress into silliness. Nothing makes the Richardsons happier than having children around, and during the girls' chaotic tumbles a palpable happiness descended on everyone. Rose was having as much fun as they were, although she courteously declined to try the cartwheels and flips.

When the dishes were done, Richardson roared, “Who wants to see the animals?” and the girls erupted into pandemonium. They formed a line behind Richardson, who led them outside.

Richardson roams his ranch these days with his giant Great Dane, Billy, at his hip. One of the girls walked up to Billy and reached to
scratch his belly. The barn was nearby, but most of the horses were out in the pasture. So were the llamas. The youngest girl clung to Richardson's leg, and he hoisted her up. Then the coach bellowed, and his horses came running. She hugged his neck and hooted with joy.

The Horse Whisperer has nothing on Nolan Richardson. His thoroughbreds, Tennessee walkers, and quarter horses respond to anything he shouts. The kids were enthralled, shadowing Richardson as he directed the animals. Across the rolling hills, goats, lambs, and some pot-bellied pigs lazed about.

The animals have been a big part of Nolan and Rose Richardson's life since losing Yvonne in 1987. “Some people need someone or something to depend on them and she is one of those people,” Richardson told the
Tulsa World
about his wife, but he could have been talking about himself as well.

A wide wooden porch surrounds most of the house and affords the best view. As sunset approaches, the ranch becomes bathed in a light that a religious person might call heavenly. Around the “U” of the porch on the north side of the house is a garden about the size of half a basketball court. The garden is filled with statues of kids jumping in puddles, running, skipping rope. Laughing. It's as if the Richardsons have tried to distill and freeze childhood—and memory—to protect and preserve it after losing Yvonne.

Something became clear that holiday weekend. Richardson
did
love Arkansas too much. He should have packed his boxes and loaded up the moving vans soon after carving his place in history in 1994. But even outsiders eventually need a place to rest, a home. Something else became clear, too. Nobody could remind people of where they came from, cross borders, or inspire players to believe in a cause like Nolan Richardson. Those were his gifts; his career a type of bridge.

 

Richardson has let his
Afro grow gray and long, and he really does look like a historical figure—like Frederick Douglass with a goa
tee. Maybe that's fitting. Richardson attended a school named after the former slave who kept reminding America of its sins.

John McLendon never got the shot he'd earned at a big university. Neither did countless other black coaches. Other coaches of color of his era had terrific teams, but what distinguishes Nolan Richardson is the nature of his trailblazing career, as the first black coach to go into the old Confederacy—and the embers of racism—and have astonishing success. Richardson—outspoken, passionate, and righteous—is the most important African-American coach America has known.

Despite his garden full of statues of children at play, he could not freeze time. Memory, though. Memory endures, because Nolan Richardson, as relentless as forty minutes of hell's full-court pressure, won't let us forget. He has begun to fulfill his former chancellor's request to be happy, even if he's still an outsider, on the wrong side of the fence at the university where he won the championship. The basketball court where he finally returned belongs to him—although you won't find his name on it. Regardless, Richardson's shadow and history remind, admonish, and exhort Arkansas.