Posted on 06/04/2010 7:40:24 PM PDT by jazusamo
John Wooden, the UCLA basketball coach who became an icon of American sports while guiding the Bruins to an unprecedented 10 national championships in the 1960s and '70s and remained in the spotlight during retirement with his "Pyramid of Success" motivational program, has died. He was 99.
Though his fame extended beyond the sports world, it was Wooden's achievements during 27 seasons at UCLA that put him in the company of such legendary coaches as the Green Bay Packers' Vince Lombardi and Notre Dame's Knute Rockne.
Wooden's string of championships began with back-to-back victories in 1964 and '65. Starting in 1967, his team ran off seven consecutive NCAA titles -- going 38 tournament games without a loss -- a feat unmatched before or since in men's college basketball.
The Bruins won with such dominant big players as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Bill Walton. They also won with teams -- such as Wooden's last squad in 1974-75 -- that had no marquee stars.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
I live in Martinsville, so this whole town is saddened by the news, he certainly was the greatest man who came from here. WE wERE asked last week if the Highway Dept. could put up a nice sign on our property by the road because it is the John Wooden Memorial Parkway or something, we told them it would be an honor to have it there.
Sam Gilbert graduated from UCLA and never left LA. He decided to get involved in the basketball program in the early 1960’s. He was responsible for getting Walt Hazzard to UCLA.
Nope, his involvement came after the first two titles. And that “involvement” was restricted to things like giving players money for school books and hooking them up with good deals on apartments in L.A. Big freaking deal. Didn’t affect UCLA basketball success in the least.
However you bring up a good point is impact a critical ingredient in synchronicity (which I believe the patterning comes from the outside--an external source--rather than from within the person.)
Thus too if the exterior source is God, He must impact us with situations that have personal meaning to us (that he is speaking to) and stack them in synchronistic pattern. Definitely something to consider when defining the rule of three is the impact on the larger population, single individual, or group. Whatever the external source is trying to communicate too must entail meaning in the grouping communicated with. It is an unspoken rule within the rule of three itself and I believe you bring it up nicely in your post.
Coach Wooden was one of my heroes also, and the reason I wanted to attend UCLA.
(still haven't recovered from the loss to Notre Dame).
Always the classy gentleman! RIP Coach!
“It is just God’s honest truth.”
Now you’ve added blasphemy to low-class slander of the dead.
I think you’d better give up while you’re behind.
For something to be a "rule," it has to start with consistency. It has to be precise and definite, not open-ended and vauge. It sure can't apply differently in different localities. Or doesn't a plane load of top Polish government officials all dying at once count? Why does this so-called rule of three only apply to famous American celebrities? And what the heck impact does the deaths of these people have on my life or yours, other than to chit chat about them on a web forum?
lol..I hear ya, but the streak had to end sometime. ....and '73/'74 was an off season for them. Just didn't quite jell that season. I remember they lost a couple games to Ore and Ore. St. shortly thereafter. And of course the loss to N.C. St. in the Final Four.
I only attended one game at Pauley during the Wooden era, a 65 - 64 win over Maryland on Dec. 1, 1973. VERY close call -- the 76th win of the streak. Alas, when I attended UCLA in the early mid-'80s they stunk bigtime.
You winning the Pyramid of Success plaque is VERY impressive. Must've been quite an honor.
“However, Wooden would have never won a championship without Sam “Papa Sam” Gilbert.”
You are correct...but most people don’t want to hear or know the truth.
“He taught the team game and had only three hard-and-fast rules – no profanity, tardiness or criticizing fellow teammates. Layered beneath that seeming simplicity, though, were a slew of life lessons – primers on everything from how to put on your socks correctly to how to maintain poise: “Not being thrown off stride in how you behave or what you believe because of outside events.”
“Even with his staggering accomplishments, he remained humble and gracious. He said he tried to live by advice from his father: “Be true to yourself, help others, make each day your masterpiece, make friendship a fine art, drink deeply from good books — especially the Bible, build a shelter against a rainy day, give thanks for your blessings and pray for guidance every day.”
“Asked what he would like God to say when he arrived at the pearly gates, Wooden replied, “Well done.”
http://www.thenewstribune.com/2010/06/05/1213601/wooden-dies.html#ixzz0q15GP5Lj
Without a doubt Coach Wooden, you’ll get the nod from God.
“You are correct...but most people don’t want to hear or know the truth”
It isn’t the truth, and even if it was a man’s funeral celebration isn’t the right time to speak ill of him.
I always thought conservatives were supposed to be people who value traditional courtesy and manners. But it that seems some of our number are just as ill-mannered as liberals.
Those envious idiots will believe what they want to believe — truth means nothing to them.
I guess we all fall short now and then, but you're right, courtesy and manners are very important.
I'm sure coach Wooden wasn't perfect, but nobody can deny he was a great coach, and virtually all will agree he was a great man.
Speaking of the number 99 - specifically, the age 99:
Today, June 5, is the 6th anniversary of the passing of former President Ronald Wilson Reagan.
Had he lived, Mr. Reagan would have, in February of this year, turned...99.
As a matter of fact, not only was June 5 the day Reagan died, it was also on a Saturday. I was doing fine, getting through it though sad, until I heard Tammy Bruce on her Saturday afternoon radio show that day. Towards the end of her first segment, she started reading Reagan’s farewell letter from 1994, when he first announced his Alzheimer’s, and Tammy started crying. She stopped for a second, tried to compose herself, started back where she left off, and broke down...she had to take a break so she could compose herself.
That was the first of many times I lost it that week...including during Cheney and Hastert’s speeches at the Capitol, and during Bush 41 and 43’s speeches.
Good article by Dan Wetzel on the UCLA “dynasty” that you guys are so romantic about:
INDIANAPOLIS – UCLA has the greatest, grandest tradition in college basketball: 11 national championships, 34 first-team All-America selections, an 88-game win streak and on and on. All run by perhaps the most wonderful gentleman the game has ever known, John Wooden.
But then it has this:
“I hate to say anything that may hurt UCLA, but I can’t be quiet when I see what the NCAA is doing (to other coaches) only because (they have) a reputation for giving a second chance to many black athletes other coaches have branded as troublemakers. The NCAA is working night and day trying to get (them), but no one from the NCAA ever questioned me during my four years at UCLA.”
That quote comes from none other than Bill Walton, maybe the greatest Bruin of them all, in a 1978 book “Bill Walton: On the Road with the Portland Trail Blazers,” which went on to detail how Sam Gilbert, a Los Angeles contractor the feds allege made millions laundering drug money, bought a decade worth of recruits for UCLA.
“It’s hard for me to have a proper perspective on financial matters, since I’ve always had whatever I wanted since I enrolled at UCLA,” Walton said.
That is the conundrum of UCLA and college sports as the Bruins go for their 12th NCAA title here Monday against Florida.
On one hand, UCLA has a tradition rich with success, class and glory. Good people, great stories, wonderful memories. On the other is the fact the Bruins eviscerated the rule book like no program before or after, but went largely unpunished by a NCAA that wanted no part of taking down its marquee team.
And the truth is, neither image is wrong. And neither one is right. This is college athletics, yesterday, today and probably forever, no matter how sweet the package, now matter how pretty the bow.
It is how Wooden, universally hailed for his remarkable grace and humility, has wound up seemingly beyond reproach. No matter how dirty his program, today he sells books, speeches and financial planning commercials based on his image of trust and honesty.
The question is always why would UCLA have to cheat, what with its tremendous academics, beautiful campus and proximity to talent. But it is telling that it took Wooden, arguably the greatest coach of all time, 15 seasons to win a national title. Before Gilbert got involved and the talent arrived, the Bruins weren’t the best. Which ought to tell you what the competition was up to.
Maybe it is Wooden’s class that has kept talk of tainted titles to a minimum. But none of this is a secret in basketball. In the late 1970s, after Wooden retired, the Los Angeles Times did an investigation of Gilbert and the NCAA was forced to sanction UCLA, but never vacated any championships. Then there is Walton’s book, which couldn’t be more damning.
The NCAA never bothered to investigate UCLA during Wooden’s time, part of its history of selective enforcement. During the 1960s and ‘70s, the organization, run by old white men, was too busy going after small, upstart programs that dared to play too many African-Americans, launching inquiries into Texas Western/UTEP, Western Kentucky, Centenary and Long Beach State.
Apparently a team capturing 10 titles in 12 years, putting together undefeated season after undefeated season, recruiting high school All-Americans from all over the country to sit on the bench, yet never having them transfer or declare hardship wasn’t enough for it to dawn on anyone at the NCAA that, gee, maybe they’re cheating?
But that is your NCAA.
And that is your college athletics, where corner cutting doesn’t make a guy a bad person; it makes him a successful coach.
In Wooden’s defense, some, including Walton, have argued that he wasn’t aware of Gilbert’s largesse, or at most just looked the other way. But other coaches in Southern California at the time, most notably Jerry Tarkanian, laugh at that, claiming Gilbert proudly boasted of his payouts. Tark claims Gilbert once offered to pay one of his Long Beach State stars, Robert Smith, just because he liked the way he played.
“You couldn’t be more obvious than Sam,” said Tarkanian. “He just laughed about it. Everyone in America knew.”
Moreover, in a striking 2004 interview with Basketball Times, Wooden described confronting players Sidney Wicks and Curtis Rowe in 1969 about expensive new clothes he suspected Gilbert had purchased. “Did you get this from Sam Gilbert,” he asked. “I don’t like this.”
“People want to say this is tainted,” Wooden told BT, before folding his arms in a rare bit of anger. “I don’t care. I don’t believe that.”
The truth of college athletics is that winning, let alone at the championship level, without rule breaking is nearly impossible. Fans and apologetic media don’t want to admit this about the icons of the games, but nothing about this has changed for decades. And it probably never will.
There are no angels in this business, no white hats and black hats as the NCAA would like people to believe with its public relations campaign of a rule book. Everything is a shade of grey. Everything is situational ethics. Everything is pick your poison.
Even the great UCLA legacy. Even the great John Wooden.
Dan Wetzel is Yahoo! Sports’ national columnist.
It is my opinion from reading other articles he has written that Dan Wetzel is a bad journalist who favors sensational charges over facts. Personally, I double-check anything Dan Wetzel alleges to be fact before accepting it.
And in regard to this matter, it is well to note that Wetzel is a close associate of Jerry Tarkanian, who is of course unfortunately well-known as a jealous detractor of the late John Wooden.
It is incontestable that UCLA won national championships in 1964 and 1965, and recruited Lew Alcindor, the foundation of future championships, before Sam Gilbert ever took an interest in their players. John Wooden earned his own great success, and never used Sam Gilbert to recruit players for him. Gilbert imposed himself on the UCLA basketball scene for his own reasons.
The Gilbert story does raise the question of what does a coach do to control a “booster” he isn’t even on speaking terms with? Sequester his team like a murder-trial jury? If John Wooden had ever encouraged Sam Gilbert in his activities, the charges against Wooden would make some sense. But there is not a shred of evidence that he ever did that.
So please take your anti-Wooden smears back to the sewers where they belong.
Rest in peace Coach Wooden, and thank you for teaching us all how to live like a champion.
nobody even comes close
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.