Dear Jayhawk Basketeers:
Friday morning I drove over to Kansas City to attend the funeral of Ted O’Sullivan at the Church of Visitation, fifty-first and Main Street. Ted was a great Missouri athlete in the early twenties. He worked hard and made not only a fine reputation for himself in football, basketball, and baseball while at Mizzou, but later studied law, and then worked hard as a basketball official. He used that as a favorable introduction for himself in his business as an insurance broker.
He suffered from cancer, and during his illness went to Mayo’s and they refused to operate, but someone in Kansas City did operate, although there was no chance for him from the beginning.
Only a month ago Reaves Peters took Ted’s basketball officiating schedule out to him. Ted, thinking all the while that though he couldn’t officiate football this fall, he certainly would be ready for basketball, come this winter.
I believe I’ll tell you of an incident in the life of Ted O’Sullivan. While he was a senior and captain at Manual Training High School in Kansas City, Ted was playing in a game against Central High. I happened to be the referee. Ted was a two-fisted, Irish fighter, and sometimes he played very aggressively.
Unknown to me, the Kansas City High School Interscholastic League had a ruling whereby if a fellow was put out of the game for unnecessary roughness, he could not participate in the League’s schedule for the remainder of that year. I put Ted out for rough play. After the game, in the dressing room, Ted came in to me with tears streaming down his face. He said, ‘Listen, Dr. Allen, I am going down to Missouri U. and I’m going to play on the team down there, and I’m going to beat you.’ And he said it in such a way that I knew that with every fiber of his body, he meant it.
I said, ‘Young man, I am sorry for what has happened, because had I known there was a ruling in the League to this effect, I would not have wanted to disbar you for a year.’ But that did not change him in the least in his determination. The next year he went to Missouri, and during the three years he played against Kansas, he did not win a single game of basketball, although I think we met more than six times. When he graduated from Missouri, he officiated in Kansas City. I was the first to give him a chance to officiate in our games. A fast friendship sprang up between Ted O’Sullivan and me, and I have always gone out of my way to accommodate him in any way that I could.
During the war he was stationed for a time at Fort Leavenworth. A very important move occurred, which involved the welfare of one of our greatest athletes, Ray Evans. I went to Ted O’Sullivan confidentially and told him of the situation, and Ted, with all the enthusiasm and earnestness that he possessed, did a very wonderful thing for Ray Evans. Had Ray been from Missouri, he could have done no greater favor, nor with a greater spirit, than the wonderful act he performed for our Kansas Great.
Learning that Reaves Peters had taken Ted’s basketball schedule out to the hospital and given it to him for this coming year, and knowing that Ted believed he was going to work this schedule, I wrote him a letter a few weeks ago, and reminded him of this wonderfully fine act that he had done for Ray Evans, and told him how very much I appreciated what he had done. I know that Ted cherished the fact that he had done something for Ray Evans, a Kansas man.
So boys, when you play against fellows from the universities of Missouri, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Colorado, and the agricultural colleges of Iowa State and Kansas State, remember that you may be making contacts that in later years will prove to be some of the most valuable ones that you will make all through your life. And when the game is the toughest and the fighting is the roughest, you may be striking flint which will prove to be the most beneficial of all your efforts.
Remember, ‘Upon the fields of friendly strife are sown the seeds that upon other fields in other years are born the fruits of victory.’
The war news is some better this morning. Those Northern Korean gooks will learn that tying our boys’ hands behind their backs and shooting them through the forehead, will not bluff our fighting Yanks a darn bit.
While at Bartlesville last week, I talked to President Kenneth Adams, of the Phillips Petroleum Company, who, the day previously, had visited with General ‘Ike’ Eisenhower at Denver, Colorado. I said, ‘Boots, how’s the war coming?’ and he said, ‘Well, I had a couple of hours conversation with General ‘Ike’ Eisenhower yesterday, and the general said, “I think we have enough firepower and enough men in there now to contain them, and then to take care of them.”‘ That was the most heartening statement that I had heard for quite a while.
I cannot but think of the difference in psychology of a man like ‘Ike’ Eisenhower and a man like Joe Stalin. Eisenhower played on the West Point baseball team, and was a great friend and admirer of the varsity football players at the Academy. Those West Point boys use their athletics as recreational games. They play the game up to the hilt, and fight like the very devil to win the ball game. But it is a ball game that they play, and when the game is over, that settles that one game. But the next one they play just as hard or even harder, if they happen to have lost the previous contest. And that is the athletic philosophy of our American youth and our American people. Not only is it a constructive thing psychologically and physically, but it is a body builder and a morale builder.
The Americans make money to improve the living conditions of everybody residing in this country of ours. They may not be altruistic enough to give the other fellow a house or automobile, but they improve living conditions, because when they improve their own condition, they improve the other fellow’s condition. The American wants to build large athletic fields where everybody may play; large field houses and auditoria where different groups can use it in the community; public swimming pools and baths where all may enjoy. And while they occupy themselves in playing games, they are recreating their bodies and minds.
But let’s look at this old devil, Joe Stalin and his bunch of forty-one robbers and thieves. This Band of Brigands are not content to steal from their fellows, but they want to spread their nefarious system to other lands, using lies, deception, and treachery to do the job.
It is not necessary for me to elaborate further, because you have the picture the same as I. There is only one other thing that I can prescribe: any time we find a monkey with fellow-traveller ideas, trying to spew them out in questionable, pseudo-courteous, or secretive ways, we should call that fellow’s hand and take a smash at him for good measure.
Now the next smash is toward our basketball effort. On you twenty-seven men who are listed on the 1950-1951 Kansas squad roster, will depend the success or failure of this year’s basketball effort. It’s going to be a tough go, and nobody knows it better than I. Everybody will be laying for us, especially our neighbors up the Kaw. While we may not officially dedicate their field house, we are going to do it, whether they plan it or not, and brother, now’s the time to start thinking about the job ahead.
This morning the tang of fall is in the air. The Blackbird is on the wing, and the thud of the pigskin is only a few days off, where down on McCook Field Coach J.V. Sikes and his fine squad of helpers will be trying to mold a gridiron machine that has great possibilities. Proportionate to what the gridiron gladiators put into their struggle, just that much will they get out of it. Their opposition is rugged and double-tough down at Missouri and Oklahoma, not to say a word about the Cornhuskers and the Cyclones on the north and east. We haven’t mentioned Colorado or Kansas State either. But unless we get away well against TCU, and against Denver, Oklahoma A & M, and Utah, then the drugstore quarterbacks will be crying as they always cry when Kansas loses any of her games.
But Coach Sikes is going to take it unto himself to do most of the worrying about his football business, and I am going to take it unto myself to worry about the basketball business.
Wait “till you boys see the pictures of the Bradley game, and see how many times you threw the ball game away when you had it won!
Then doubtless you will remember these words, when with seven minutes to go, we had time out and I said, ‘Boys, just as a big Mastiff chews up a bone, let that clock chew up these seconds, and don’t take a shot unless you are wide open. If it is close, pivot and pass out and don’t shoot.’ But wait until you see the picture! You won’t believe your eyes! You took shots that weren’t wide open, and shots that should not have been attempted. We pulled our offense right under the collective noses of Bradley’s defense, when we should have been way out and making them come to meet us. But I said wait until you see the picture, so we will wait. You can’t do anything about that game. It’s gone! But you can do something about your physical condition.
A couple of weeks ago I saw Clyde Lovellette, and he looked as if he had a watermelon stuffed into his abdomen. He weighed exactly 250 pounds, and thirty pounds of that was that watermelon. I am not sure whether Clyde lives to eat or eats to live.
Now this is enough time devoted to my picking on Clyde’s obesity (Clyde, look up the word ‘obesity’), but it will serve a purpose. If any of you fellows have any excess poundage, try to get it off before you get up here, because it’s going to be a rough fall.
We have got to learn to do the things we did last year, snappier. We have got to learn to execute more rapidly in the same space that we used last year. Last year we faltered4we took too much time. Now we must execute those fundamentals with a surer, more deft reaction. And all of these must be favorable. Many times last year, they were unfavorable, and they cost us the ball and the ball game.
We had a nine point lead with Colorado with seven minutes to go. We had a ten-point lead with Oklahoma and we lost it on account of our mistakes and their carnage. But I am convinced no two officials will ever work as poor a ball game, anywhere, and permit mayhem to be practiced in a single game as those two officials permitted at Norman last year.
And yet they will tell you that it was Bruce Drake’s strategy that won that ball game. I suggested to Paul Courty this summer at Bartlesville, that next year they arm the Sooners with a pair of cleavers. I want Oklahoma to use the same smart defense that they used at Norman, and I’ll guarantee that they won’t win.
Boys, we are going to have a get-together early in the year some evening with all of our basketball eligibles, the list of which I have enclosed with this letter. We are going to show the pictures of the Bradley game, the Kansas State game, the Colorado game, and the Purdue game4the only four that we have. We are also going to get a picture of a St. Johns game, because we play them in the Garden on December 12. We are going to point out all the things that we need to know, for the benefit of our players in this coming season.
So come full of enthusiasm, ambition, and fight, and we will turn the heat on the opponents at the proper time.
I wish that I could go into the details of each individual boy, as we have heard from a lot of the boys and seen a lot of the others, but this letter is already far too long, and I will close with a short statement regarding some of our fine freshmen who are going to enroll this fall:
B.H. Born – Medicine Lodge, Kansas
Watson Johnson – Newton, Kansas
Wesley Whitney – Newton, Kansas
John Keller – Garden City Junior College
Bob Godwin – Beloit, Kansas
Leon Cox – Cambridge, Massachusetts (Leon is the son of Jimmie Cox, former great athlete of ours, and now head trainer at Harvard.)
John Thompson – Grandview, Missouri
Don Thomas – Russell, Kansas (Don is going to return after having been out the second semester last year.)
We also have other boys that we feel we are pretty sure of their enrolling:
Everett Dye – Independence, Kansas
Dean Kelley’s brother, of McCune, Allen Kelley, is also seriously considering enrolling at the University of Kansas.
These, together with a few more that we are not ready to announce, should make up a great freshman list.
Your good friend, Uncle Dick Harp, is daily on the job ironing out the rough spots and making it easier for you when you return. He is not dieting to keep flat his equitorial diameter, but Don Pierce and he are having terrific games of handball and an occasional setto of tennis4that helps. You ask him who is champion.
Basketball prospects at Kansas were never brighter, and such statements as:
‘Doc Allen is going to retire.’,
‘There’s no need for you to go to K.U., Doc Allen won’t be there.’,
‘You shouldn’t go to K.U. because they have so many players that you will never get a chance to play.’, are all sheer bunk. These Joe Stalin fibs have been used by our contemporaries and our ‘well wishing’ friends. So believe none of that stuff and only hope that you are at K.U. as long as I am. By that time you can grow a beard.
With every good wish for a great summer, I am
Sincerely yours,
Forrest C. Allen Varsity Basketball Coach Professor Physical Education
fa/sr encl.
