A Season Inside

by John Feinstein

  Kentucky was an important part of the TV package. No one wanted it on probation or ineligible for the tournament. The same was true of any other big-name school. So the NCAA cracked down on schools like Marist and Cleveland State and called Steve Kerr in to explain why his mother was flying free to see him play in the biggest game of his life.

  Kerr, of course, was flabbergasted when the “extra benefits” question was raised. He explained the situation and walked out of the room wondering what the NCAA people did with their spare time.

  The only arrival more heralded than that of the four teams was the arrival of Valvano. He and his wife Pam arrive at midafternoon and walk into the coaches’ lobby to find a cordon of media waiting for them. Valvano is playing it cool. “There is an appropriate time to comment and an inappropriate time,” he says. “When the time is appropriate, I will certainly comment.”

  Each time the question is asked in a different way, Valvano pulls an imaginary string on his neck and repeats his little speech. Somehow, though, the word is out. He is flying to Los Angeles in the morning, will meet with UCLA people on Friday and Saturday, look at possible places to live and then fly back to Kansas City Sunday. Sunday evening he is guest-hosting Bob Costas’s weekly radio show on NBC.

  Valvano is amazed that people know this. But he is saying no more. He goes off to do a taping with Al McGuire at a studio on the other side of town. McGuire does an annual show for NBC on Final Four Sunday and Valvano is always part of the show. The taping finished, Valvano is handed a bourbon in a plastic glass, then gets in a car to go back to the hotel. Driving along he spots a sign: “Welcome to Westwood.”

  It is a section of Kansas City. But Valvano is thrown. “Holy shit, is that an omen or what?” he yells. UCLA, of course, is in the Westwood section of Los Angeles.

  Valvano is genuinely interested in this job. And, he has already met with UCLA Chancellor Charles Young and Athletic Director Peter Dalis earlier in the week. “I was in San Diego for a speech and they asked me to stop in L.A. on the way back,” he says. “They wanted me to check into the hotel there under an assumed name. I said, ‘Fine, how about Biff?’ They undoubtedly thought I was crazy right away.”

  Valvano met with Young and Dalis for three hours. He and Young hit it off. Part of Valvano wanted the job. UCLA was still, after all, UCLA. He was very happy at N.C. State but there was only one UCLA. And, living near Hollywood intrigued him. He had taped a TV pilot the previous summer and enjoyed the experience. One could almost see Valvano fantasizing himself as Carson’s Monday night stand-in. “Heeeeeeeere’s Jimmy!”

  But there were problems. For one, Valvano’s middle daughter, sixteen-year-old Jamie, didn’t want to leave Raleigh. She was happy, she had a boyfriend, and she considered it home. “She told me, ‘Dad, I am a southerner,’ ” Valvano said. “If she can’t handle it, I don’t go. I just can’t do it.”

  There was also a buyout clause in Valvano’s new contract. If he left, he had to pay State a lot of money—close to half a million dollars. Even for Valvano, that was a lot of money. And yet, the idea of coaching in Pauley Pavilion excited him. “I wish,” he said quietly, “this had happened two years from now.”

  Vitale would lose his dinner bet. The deal was far from done.

  Two major events took place that night. One was the fiftieth anniversary dinner for the NCAA Tournament. To say that it was filled with luminaries was a vast understatement. Every coach who had ever won a national championship was invited. Most came.

  The room was filled with members of the Hall of Fame. The largest ovation of the night was reserved for John Wooden, the man who had won ten national titles and made UCLA such a tough job that five men had come and gone since he had retired in 1975. At seventy-five, Wooden still looked like he could coach the Bruins. Maybe he should have been offered the job.

  While the history of the Final Four was being relived, the coaches’ all-star game was taking place in the building that had hosted nine Final Fours, the old Memorial Auditorium. It was fifty-two years old now, an ancient barn of a building with ten thousand seats but still a good place to watch a game.

  Larry Brown brought his team in to watch to a huge ovation from the many Kansas fans in the crowd. Danny Manning and the rest of the Jayhawks happily munched on popcorn while the twenty-four senior all-stars ran up and down the court. Neither Boeheim nor Tarkanian made any attempt to coach, they just let the players play. David Rivers was the MVP, a nicer final memory than the opening-round loss to SMU and Kato Armstrong.

  Troy Lewis was one of the all-stars. Six days after Purdue’s loss, he still hadn’t recovered. “Every time I walk on the street and I see that building that has the huge copy of the draw on it, I get sick,” he said. “I keep thinking, ‘How can we not be here?’ ”

  Gene Keady, watching the game, was going through the same thing. “Every time I turn around, someone comes up to me and says, ‘Gee, Gene, we thought you’d be playing here,’ “he said. “Well, dammit, I thought we’d be here too. This is kind of hard to take.”

  John Thompson, the Olympic coach, was at the game, scouting. This made perfect sense. At his side was his academic coordinator, Mary Fenlon. This made no sense. Thompson and Fenlon had worked together since Thompson became Georgetown’s coach in 1972. They were, without question, basketball’s oddest couple.

  Thompson is 6–10 and black; Fenlon is perhaps 5–4 and white. She is an ex-nun, a squat, wide woman who considers the Georgetown players her surrogate children. She calls them all “Honey,” and all but snarls at anyone, especially members of the media, who get too close to them. If you want to incur Thompson’s wrath, say something bad about Fenlon.

  One rarely sees Thompson without Fenlon. Not just at games but in Las Vegas when he flies out there for fights or on scouting trips like this one. No one in college basketball thinks for a second that there is anything more between Thompson and Fenlon than a strong professional relationship and a warm friendship, but her omnipresence in his life baffles everyone.

  “It is the strangest relationship in sports since Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich,” Keith Drum, the national college basketball writer for UPI once said. Peterson and Kekich were New York Yankee pitchers who swapped families in the early ’70s.

  Thompson watches the game with Sonny Vaccaro. Thompson is Nike’s highest-paid coach, a pal of Vaccaro’s, and was no doubt aided in the recruitment of Alonzo Mourning by Vaccaro’s “friendship” with Mourning. That “friendship” included supplying Mourning’s team with Nikes and being in town the week before Mourning chose his college. Vaccaro claims this was coincidence.

  The coaches’ lobby is hopping after the dinner and the all-star game. Some of the coaches are going out on the town, others are looking for rumors. Tonight’s rumor du jour is a dandy: Rollie Massimino (who is skipping the convention to play golf in Florida) is going to the Miami Heat as coach of that NBA expansion team and Bob Staak, the Wake Forest coach, will take his place at Villanova.

  “I love that one,” Staak says. “Spread it, will you?”

  Joey Meyer, the DePaul coach, and his wife Barbara are standing near the elevators. “You never miss anything standing here,” Meyer says.

  Virginia Coach Terry Holland comes by. He has been besieged by people who want to know if his old boss, Driesell, is going to James Madison. He insists he knows nothing. Someone suggests to Holland that if Driesell goes to JMU he should help him out by agreeing to play at James Madison. “No way,” Holland says, grinning. “I like him, but I don’t want him to beat me.”

  Valvano, back from the NCAA dinner, whisks through the lobby, Pam on his arm, pulling on his imaginary string. He will fly to Los Angeles in the morning. By the time he arrives, there will actually be basketball at this Final Four. The teams will be practicing in Kemper Arena.

  DAY THREE : FRIDAY

  This is the day when everyone starts to get serious. The teams have finished celebrating their victories in the regionals and are thinking about
Saturday’s games. The coaches actually move out of the hotel lobby and begin to hold meetings as part of their convention. The media gets a chance to interview someone other than each other. And scalping prices skyrocket.

  The weather has not been cooperating so far; the parking lots at Kemper Arena are mud-caked as cars begin piling into them at around noon. The four one-hour practices begin at 1 P.M. and, with admission free and on a first-come-first-serve basis, the building will be jammed. None of the teams is going to do anything very sophisticated during the public workout, but this is a chance for those not privileged enough to buy tickets to see the players up close and sort of personal.

  If there was any doubt about who the favorite son is in this tournament, it was erased when Duke walked out onto the floor to begin the first workout. As soon as the Blue Devils emerged from the tunnel, the boos started. Duke was not only Kansas’s opponent the next day, it was the team that had beaten the Jayhawks the last time the two had reached the Final Four in 1986.

  “Has to be the first time in history a team got booed for walking on the floor to practice,” Danny Ferry quipped.

  Practice is not exactly what Mike Krzyzewski had in mind. Robert Brickey has had an allergic reaction to penicillin and is too sick to practice. He should be fine by Saturday but it is not a good sign.

  There’s more: When Mickie Krzyzewski tries to get on the floor to give her husband a message, she is stopped by a policeman. Showing identification as a coach’s wife does her no good. The cop isn’t budging. She has to go off in search of help. Later in the day, Bobbi Olson will be unable to get into the building for a while during Arizona’s practice because the doors have been shut by the fire marshals.

  The Blue Devils are getting very superstitious. King is now wearing a good luck tie that he started wearing during the ACC Tournament and, since the ruling junta watched a movie the night before the semifinals in East Rutherford, it will watch a movie tonight.

  “We’re going to watch The Terminator,” Quin Snyder says. “That should get us ready.”

  If there is one thing the NCAA can do efficiently, it is run a basketball tournament. Everything is planned and organized down to the minute. When Duke leaves the floor at 2 P.M., Krzyzewski and three of his players are quickly whisked into the interview room. Kansas takes the floor at 2—to a standing ovation—and will be there until 3 when Arizona (which will arrive at 2:30 for interviews) will take its turn on the floor.

  Dave Cawood, one of the NCAA’s assistant executive directors, is in charge of this operation. Each year he brings in eight sports information directors from around the country to help him run the tournament. Each of the eight is equipped with a walkie-talkie and a code name. Cawood is Big Daddy. Roger Valdiserri, the longtime Notre Dame SID, is Double Dome—the references being to the golden dome and Valdiserri’s Rick Brewer of North Carolina is, predictably, Tar Heel. David Housel of Auburn is War Eagle. And so on.

  If you listen you will hear things like, “Tar Heel, this is War Eagle, I’ve got the Jayhawks en route to the interview room.” Tar Heel, who is the interview moderator, will then announce that Larry Brown and his players are on their way to the interview room so the press can begin scrambling for seats.

  The PA announcer at the Final Four for the last thirteen years has been Frank Fallon, a professor of radio and TV journalism at Southern Methodist. Cawood knows Fallon from his days at SMU and brought him in to do the PA in 1976 when the tournament was in the Philadelphia Spectrum. The NCAA was concerned that the legendary Dave Zinkoff, one of the most colorful PA men ever, might be a little wild for its oh-so-proper tournament. So Cawood brought Fallon in.

  It is a move that can hardly be criticized. Fallon has the perfect PA voice. When he says on Monday night, “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the game that will decide the national championship,” it sends chills down your spine.

  Rick Brewer, the North Carolina SID, has become another staple of the Final Four. He more or less fell into the job of interview-room moderator six years ago, and has retained it because most media members would riot in protest if he were replaced. Part of this is Brewer’s ability to keep the interviews moving when writers are fighting deadlines. Another part is his succinct way of repeating the questions. Because the Final Four interview room is so large, questions must be repeated for everyone to hear.

  Beyond that, though, is Brewer’s sense of humor. It isn’t really a Final Four until Brewer gets off a one-liner. In 1986, when someone asked Krzyzewski what the best thing about coaching at Duke was, Brewer interjected, “Well, it is only eight miles from Chapel Hill.”

  Today, when Billy Tubbs comments that Brewer sounds like Ed McMahon, Brewer answers, “That’s why I have this job. That and the fact that I never have anything better to do at this time of year.”

  It has been six years since Carolina reached the Final Four. No one is more aware of that than the listening media. When Brewer finishes the last interview, someone hands him a phone and says, “It’s Dean [Smith] and he sounds angry.”

  “Tell him I’m busy,” Brewer answers, tongue still firmly in cheek.

  For the press, this is a good Final Four. Duke and Arizona are full of “good talkers”: Kansas has the father-son angle of the Mannings; Oklahoma has the renegade coach in Billy Tubbs, and, of course, there is Kerr. At an event like the Final Four, many of the credentialed reporters are columnists who have seen about three basketball games all year. Each is convinced that his column on Kerr or Tubbs will be the first one written on the subject.

  Tubbs is certainly cooperating with those doing columns on him for Saturday. When someone asks him about the uncanny resemblance between his voice and Jack Nicholson’s, Tubbs shrugs. “I just go along with that stuff because it makes Jack feel good. If he can get a little pub out of it, that’s just great.”

  Tubbs does most of the talking for his players. The Sooners—with the notable exception of Stacey King—are not a team full of great interviews. Their attitude toward the media was perhaps best summed up when Harvey Grant was asked to appear as a guest on an Oklahoma City TV show during the regionals. When Grant arrived, in a limousine sent for him, to do the interview, the show’s producer gave him a shirt with the show’s logo on it.

  Grant looked at the shirt and said to the producer, “Yo man, you got a cap?” Grant is happy today. He is wearing a CBS cap. CBS always has caps.

  The loosest of the four teams appears to be Arizona. The Wildcats spend a lot of their locker room time staging their own version of Wrestlemania; when someone asks them in the interview room about Final Four nerves, Kerr grabs the microphone and pretends his hand is shaking so much he can’t hold it still.

  Olson isn’t quite so loose. He is still upset about a flap in the Seattle papers the previous week that came about when Kerr, clearly joking, said, “We haven’t got any respect for North Carolina.” Sometimes, Kerr’s sense of humor goes over people’s heads. “Sometimes,” Olson says, “I wonder about the ethics of journalists.”

  Sitting in the curtained-off runway area next to the interview podium, waiting to go on, Danny Manning hisses, “Tell ’em, coach!” His mood is jocular too. Starting up the steps to the podium, he pretends to trip. “No headlines,” he says, “I’m okay.”

  There are never any headlines on Friday. If the NCAA was paid one dollar for each time a player or coach said, “We’re just glad to be here,” it wouldn’t need the money it gets from CBS. That is always Friday’s theme.

  One group that is truly glad to be here are the officials. This year, thirty-six officials worked the four regionals—nine at each site. From those thirty-six, nine and one alternate were selected for the Final Four. Who they are is a closely guarded secret, largely because the NCAA worries that bettors will be given some kind of edge if they know who is officiating a game.

  That may be so. But since the officials are not given their assignments until 10 A.M. Saturday morning, knowing which nine are in town won’t do a bettor much good
. Joe Forte is one of the final nine for the fifth time in seven years. But he will not know until Saturday if he will work his second straight final.

  Friday evening is another night for parties. The NCAA throws one in the Memorial Auditorium and it draws a crowd. If there is one thing coaches and the media have in common, it is an inability to turn down a freebie.

  Lefty Driesell has arrived in town and everyone has one question for him: Are you going to James Madison? “No comment,” Lefty says to everyone. Lefty has given out so many “no comments” that his son, Chuck, who will be his No. 1 assistant if he takes the job, sidles over to a reporter and says, “What’s the word, is the Lefthander taking the job?”

  Tonight’s rumor du jour has Gene Keady leaving Purdue to take the job at Texas. Keady has always said that the only thing he doesn’t like at Purdue is the weather, and the weather in Austin is certainly warmer than in West Lafayette. “Some of my friends say it’s a pretty good job,” Keady says. Clearly, he is intrigued.

  The Valvanos are in Los Angeles and everyone is waiting to see what the outcome of that meeting will be. “You watch,” Larry Brown tells friends, “one way or the other, no one has that job locked up yet.” Brown is still very interested in UCLA. Now, word leaks out that UCLA is very interested in Mike Krzyzewski.

  But Krzyzewski is not that interested in UCLA. When the school called him earlier in the season, he said he wouldn’t talk to them until after his season was over. Fine, said UCLA, we’ll call you then, what’s your home number?