It was a bitter winter day in the middle 1950s and the Kansas basketball entourage was gathering at the old Union Pacific rail station, now the convention and visitors bureau site. Some road trips once originated there.
One of the Jayhawks filing in was a rangy, shivering kid wearing a thin summer suit. Phog Allen and Dick Harp made their kids “dress” for trips and this was absolutely the only outfit he could muster.
Overcoat? Gloves? Hat? Lordy, no. This youngster was going hungry from time to time so he could send home to his folks at least a little money from that $15-a-month “incidentals” paid then. He was doing absolutely the best he could with what he could scrape up; where he managed to get a suit is hard to guess. You know he didn’t get it new because it fit him a little late.
The late Mary Borgen, she of onetime Dine-A-Mite Inn fame, used to gather with some other women loyalists, fans and such, to give the Jayhawks a sendoff. She and the others were shocked.
They hurriedly combined money, two of them leaped into a car and quicker than you can imagine returned with a coat and gloves for the grateful youngster. The happy ending is that the guy eventually gained a medical degree and became an accomplished specialized physician.
Too bashful and shocked to say much at the time, he later thanked the gracious gals profusely. They did it so as not to embarrass the kid. His surprised face reflected how deeply touched he was by the thoughtfulness. It was like Christmas to him.
But it had to stay hush-hush. You didn’t dare let the Big Seven or NCAA learn about such under-the-table skullduggery or they’d nail KU for something else. The head offices were in nearby Kansas City. Kansas State and Missouri fans were always pushing to criminalize KU for something; it was too damned easy for gumshoes to motor over, take a quick look, drop the hammer and be home for the cocktail hour.
Nowadays, of course, thousands of dollars are handed jocks in cases like that travesty at Michigan. KU has had its indiscretions and got penalized but its sins were never as egregious as superfoes alleged.
A classic example of how picky the Sherlocks could be came when a touted Kansas City basketball prospect decided to drive over for a visit. His car broke down in Tonganoxie, so he called coach Phog Allen and asked what he should do. Doc told him to sit tight and he’d be right out to get him. Which he did.
Two problems: (1) Doc never was too conversant with the nuances of recruiting rules and (2) his flamboyant personality was such that the slightest misfeasance would draw official fire. It did.
KU was scorched some way for something like “providing illegal transportation to a recruit.” As I recall, the good-hearted Doc also took the kid back to Tongie to pick up his repaired car. Death penalty, critics howled!
Basketball coach Larry Brown helped a potential player get an airline ticket to see to an ailing grandmother and Roy Williams inherited the penalties. Larry like Phog was a softhearted, easy touch for a sob story, but both should have been more aware of the rules and the penchant of some to bash Kansas.
Track coach Bob Timmons had a kooky decathlon kid show up for a road trip one time barefooted, honest. So Timmy hurriedly bought a $15 pair of shoes for the nitwit to make the trip. Since KU was so dominant in track in those days, there had to be punishment, kind-hearted and necessary as the move was.
Biggest payola I ever witnessed involved basketball great Clyde Lovellette and Mitt Allen, Phog’s attorney son. KU was to play LaSalle for seven spots on the 1952 Olympic basketball team. Mitt almost jokingly told Clyde that if he scored 40 points that night, he’d buy him a dozen tailor-made shirts in New York the next day. The game was in Gotham.
Darned if Clyde didn’t get the 40 in a thrilling KU victory. Off we went the next morning to a shirt shop. Mitt about dropped his teeth when the shirts Clyde picked cost a whopping $10 each, bulk price, yet. Man, that was big money then. Yet a promise was a promise; Clyde got measured and attired.
But couldn’t mention it. Sure, Lovellette had finished his college eligibility but he had to stay “amateur” for the Olympics. As much as Phog Allen and Olympic despots like Avery Brundage and Harry Henschel hated each other, the quadrennial transoceanic hitchhikers would have delighted in harpooning a Phog protege.
And Clyde still had to be theoretically an amateur to play for the Phillips Oilers the next year. Yet he sure enjoyed those shirts.
Consider relatively innocent “gifts” like these, compare them some of the graft and fraud that occur today and the Jayhawks come off pretty clean, even if they were penalized for help some alumni gave Wilt Chamberlain for that damned car.
l Not sure if you saw the salaries Roy Williams is paying his ex-Kansas basketball aides at North Carolina. They ain’t starvin’.
According to Barry Svrluga of the Charlotte News Observer, Joe Holladay is getting $155,000 per, Steve Robinson $132,000, Jerod Haase $90,000 and C.B. McGrath $60,000 — a total of $437,000. That figure is $100,000 bigger than what the comparable Matt Doherty assistants were drawing last season.
Roy stipulated his aides would get every bit of what they would have had they stayed at Kansas, where they were due raises. Williams demanded they not “go backward” in pay.
Officially, Roy’s base salary at UNC is $260,000, but by the time he collects from Nike, the media and his basketball camp, he’ll be pushing $1.5 mill, they say.
