by Rus Bradburd
Frank Broyles testified that this was the only time in his entire life that he had uttered the word “nigger.”
While it seems that it would make a difference whether Broyles was quoting the irate and anonymous fan, or stating his own opinion, Judge Wilson did not think so. The judge felt certain that it was Broyles’s own feelings (redneck = nigger) that were being communicated, although Broyles insists he was quoting the all-important-yet-mysterious fan. In his summary, Wilson cited the conflicting testimony of two media representatives who were at the banquet: Paul Eels (who died later in a car wreck) and Mike Nail.
Paul Eels…heard it as a direct statement, rather than as a quote…I do not think that it makes any difference whether it was a direct statement or a quote, but everyone interested in the case knew that the distinction was very important to Coach Broyles. Nail testified that, in a private conversation prior to trial, Eels told him that it was a quote. This means that either Nail or Eels lied about this specific point. I am satisfied that Eels told the truth.
Judge Wilson’s findings determined that the University of Arkansas’s decision to dump Richardson was made on Sunday, February 24, 2002. Wilson relied on the testimony of thirteen witnesses (including all but the lone African-American member of the board of trustees, who was told the following Thursday). This meant Richardson was effectively fired the day after his Kentucky press conference (“They can have this job if they just pay me my money”), but before Richardson’s ramble on the following Monday—the televised, scattered lecture for which Richardson became nationally known.
In other words, Richardson’s final press conference was meaningless, a moot point—although that fateful Monday was used by fans and media to justify what had already been decided.
Did Richardson know the ax was about to fall, instinctively sense his time was up? He knew he was in trouble, and that Broyles had wanted to fire him in 1987, then again in 2000. Richardson’s romp through the 2000 SEC Tournament put out that fire. The coach understood he simply did not have the players to pull off another miracle that March—and save his job. In any case, a host of administrators and trustees knew Richardson was terminated on February 24; the school would wait until February 28 to actually inform Richardson. Judge Wilson wrote, “…the decision was not only unfair, but an administrative nightmare.”
On February 24, Chancellor White told media representatives that in his view, Richardson was just frustrated after a tough loss, despite the feeling he had after talking to Bud Walton Arena manager Fred Vorsanger. The Democrat-Gazette even wrote a piece on February 25, 2002, under the headline, “Chancellor Expects Nolan to Complete Contract,” despite the loss and comments at Kentucky. “He puts the most intense pressure on himself,” White said. “I fully expect to see him complete his contract at the University of Arkansas.”
Then on February 27, with Richardson’s fate sealed, White told a local television station that he had no knowledge of a buyout planned for Richardson.
Both of these statements came up at the trial and were commented on by Judge Wilson in his summary, although throwing the media “off the scent” is a common tactic among administrators. Regardless, either John White misled the media, or he was not involved in Broyles’s decision.
Richardson’s attorney tried to catch Frank Broyles in a similar trap, pointing out that the athletics director had written complimentary evaluations of Richardson, as well as publicly said that Richardson would make a fine athletics director someday. Neither the evaluation nor the statement, he admitted under oath, was true, only intended to be “friendly.”
Unless Richardson had miraculously swept through the SEC Tournament again—and even if he had spoken the usual clichés after the Kentucky loss—he would have been fired. But since testimony indicated the decision to dump Richardson came on the same day that White made his comments, it appeared somebody else besides the chancellor was making the decisions at the University of Arkansas.
Perhaps as disturbing as Frank Broyles’s attempts to rally racist comments from the media were the admissions under oath by university board of trustees members Gary George and Bill Clark that they occasionally told “nigger jokes.” Gary George was the chairman at that time.
University officials using racist slang, and the implications of such language, disturbed Judge Wilson. He wrote:
It seems to me…that when a person accepts an important position of trust with the entire University of Arkansas system, he would purge his vocabulary of such words—and work on his heart and mind in the same vein. Most troubling to me was that neither of these witnesses seemed abashed by their admissions.
Neither Clark nor George was asked to resign in the wake of those admissions.
The Democrat-Gazette’s Wally Hall wrote, “Richardson’s attorney, John Walker, was very successful at making Broyles look like an almost 80-year-old man with 50-year-old ideas and very outdated management skills. This suit revealed Broyles’s mishandling of several coaches, fading the truth whenever he deemed necessary, his reference to the ‘N word’ and even how he answers to no one.”
In the end, however, Judge Wilson wrote that the University of Arkansas’s claim—that Richardson was canned because of his statement after the Kentucky game (“If they go ahead and pay me my money, they can take the job tomorrow”)—was both sufficient and accurate. This simple judgment settled things in the University of Arkansas’s favor.
This comment…showed a lost interest and lack of commitment to UAF, undermined public confidence and support for the program and had a negative impact on recruiting for all UAF sports. With these explanations, UAF has met its burden of articulating a legitimate reason for termination.
In fact, this was the only reason given by the university for dismissing Richardson. Judge Wilson also noted that according to numerous witnesses, Richardson had made those comments often, beginning in 1995. Yet Richardson was never challenged or questioned by university administrators about this apparently common statement. Anyone who has been around coaches—especially older coaches—knows that this “Why the hell do I do this for a living?” sentiment is as common as a 2-3 zone. Saying it into a microphone at a press conference at the University of Kentucky, however, is not.
Sid Simpson believes the hiring of Richardson was tinted with racism, because the coach’s race was the only issue to Frank Broyles. However, he thinks race actually had less to do with Richardson’s firing. “Broyles’s ego got Nolan Richardson fired,” he says. “Nolan would have gotten fired even if he were white. Broyles had been wanting to get rid of him for years. Nolan had become bigger than Broyles. He’d won a real national championship, not a fictional one,” Simpson says, referring to Broyles’s disputed 1964 title. “Then Nolan damn near won the NCAA championship again.”
“The firing of Coach Richardson was not a black-or-white story,” Arkansas sportswriter Chip Souza says. “But if you don’t think race was involved, you’re sadly mistaken.”
Charles Prigmore, former Medical Center boss, says: “I don’t think the race issue had anything to do with it. Nolan was grasping at straws when he sued the university. If he’d been Chinese or German I think he still would have been gone.” Prigmore thinks the real problem was Richardson having a boss who thought he knew basketball. “I was the head football coach at three high schools, and I know you don’t want a principal who used to be a head coach,” he says. “Frank Broyles was an enemy of success, and Richardson had gotten too successful.”
Carrol Williams (no relation to Lonnie Williams) was Black Alumni Society president at Arkansas when Nolan Richardson was fired in 2002. “There was great discussion at that time about what had happened to Nolan Richardson,” Williams says, “especially when we heard about the testimony of the board of trustees.”
Specifically, it was the use of the “N word” in jokes and the realization that Frank Broyles might sit quietly and listen to those jokes. “At one time, we were going to go ahead and recommend, as a group, our BSA, that
Frank Broyles be fired. But then we thought, ‘We have to get real, John White is not going to fire Frank Broyles.’ So instead we asked Chancellor White to step up and make a commitment to the African-American faculty and staff.”
Bill Clark and Gary George, the members of the board of trustees at UA who used the word “nigger,” eventually left the board. Broyles remained as AD until his retirement in the spring of 2007. But the BSA was mortified that any board member would use that kind of language and not be instantly cut loose from the school.
Judge Wilson’s final summary makes it clear that he admires Richardson, not just for his obvious accomplishments but also for the coach’s against-all-odds journey. In the end, Wilson sided with the University of Arkansas, but not before admonishing the administration for their clumsy collective management styles.
Richardson should have been counseled about his sometimes intemperate remarks, and UAF administrators should have made more timely and direct responses to his complaints…I am inclined to believe that the firing could have been avoided, or postponed considerably, if there had been more and better communication by his supervisors.
Judge Wilson was troubled regarding what he clearly saw to be a difficult decision, and his sympathy for Richardson’s situation is obvious:
Although I have found against him on those points, his belief was clearly not unreasonable. In other words, while I do not believe that evidence of racial bias or impingement of free speech preponderates in favor of Plaintiff, the record is a long way from devoid of incidents which could cause him to hold these beliefs.
When Richardson’s career crashed, the media almost invariably backed the University of Arkansas. Nearly always, his poor graduation rate from 1990 to 1994 was trotted out. When Sports Illustrated interviewed SI basketball writer Seth Davis, the title of the article was “Richardson Brought It Upon Himself”—although in the piece, Davis did conclude, “…it’s clear from his behavior there was someone who didn’t want him around.”
John Smallwood of the Philadelphia Daily News wrote, “The University of Arkansas, Razorbacks fans and even the media that cover the athletics program didn’t deserve what Nolan Richardson did to them…he was wrong to transport the image of Arkansas back to that of the racially intolerant 1950s and 1960s.”
Without understanding the context, the history of the state, the university, and Frank Broyles, by taking Richardson’s comments from his confusing Monday press conference at face value, people like Smallwood might find Richardson an ungrateful millionaire.
The coach, who had spent his professional life in an often-lonely confrontation with college sports’ racist past, primarily was blamed for reminding the public about racism. “Why can’t Nolan just get over it?” was the typical take from college basketball insiders. Wasn’t America beyond racism, the reasoning went, if a black man was making a million bucks a year?
Yet was racism “over in America,” as Newt Gingrich declared in 1995, if the board of trustees at a state’s major university could put their feet up and ask, “Did you hear the one about the three niggers who went fishing?” How much of this racism was communicated, however subtly, to John White or Frank Broyles? Broyles claimed that in the 1960s, the board of trustees was the reason he was one of the last coaches in America to find qualified black players for his football team, and it’s no stretch to think that, at the very least, the board’s backwoods racism could influence Broyles again.
TWENTY-TWO
YOUR BLUES AIN’T LIKE MINE
In October of 2004, Frank Broyles lost his wife, Barbara, to complications from Alzheimer’s disease. The couple had been married for fifty-nine years. Broyles continued working tirelessly on fund-raising for Alzheimer’s research and began writing a book about the disease.
Even with the lawsuit over, Chancellor John White felt like the Sisyphus of college administrators. In 2004, UA instituted a program where employees—on a voluntary basis—might learn to be more accepting of diversity. The program was called “Our Campus: Building a More Inclusive University of Arkansas.”
Cynics pointed out that his training program in tolerance was instituted around the same time Richardson’s suit for racial discrimination was filed. Barbara Taylor told the Democrat-Gazette, “Chronologically, they certainly coincided. But before the Nolan Richardson controversy and conflict arose, the diversity task force had already made that recommendation.”
The university’s enrollment today is still only 5 percent African-American, while the overall population of the state remains 16 percent. The faculty at UA is only 3 percent African-American. Yet it’s undeniable that the school has attempted to diversify.
In January of 2005, the University of Arkansas hired an African-American woman named Carmen Coustaut as their first associate vice chancellor for diversity and education. In the spring of 2006, the University of Arkansas hired an African-American woman, Cynthia Nance, to be dean of the law school. Several key black university administrators and 43 percent of black faculty members have arrived since John White was hired in 1997. Of course, the ways in which an African-American championship basketball coach would have influenced that statistic are impossible to measure.
White said, when Richardson’s removal was announced, “I’m strongly committed and I’m very concerned that the African-American community within the state not think that this is in any way a step back with respect to our commitment to that agenda.” If not progress, there has been movement at University of Arkansas, and it’s movement in the right direction.
Val Gonzalez, who conducted the workshops for the National Conference for Community Justice, was much more direct. “Discrimination is a real problem, right here at the University of Arkansas. Some of what we learned is not very pretty.”
Nolan Richardson lost his appeal in the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court during May of 2006, in St. Louis. Judge Arlen Beam wrote, “The record amply supports a conclusion that Richardson’s statement had a detrimental impact on the effective functioning of the public employer’s enterprise—namely, the university’s total athletics program. This public interest clearly outweighs any First Amendment privilege Richardson may have allegedly had in the making of the comment.”
In February of 2007, Congressman Bobby Rush (D-Illinois) hosted hearings involving the NCAA, Congress, and experts on the struggles faced by African-American coaches. Rush called Nolan Richardson back to the battle.
Other witnesses who participated were NCAA President Myles Brand, Jesse Jackson, new BCA boss Floyd Keith, and Richard Lapchick from the Institute for Ethics and Diversity in Sports.
Bobby Rush stressed that legislation to correct the shocking lack of black football coaches would be appropriate. But NCAA President Myles Brand begged off any direct responsibility, saying, “The colleges and universities will not cede to the NCAA the authority to dictate who to interview or hire in athletics.”
Richard Lapchick, one of the nation’s foremost authorities on race and college sports, favors the NCAA using a policy similar to the “Rooney Rule,” which had been put in effect, to make certain that every NFL coaching search would include at least one candidate of color. In his written statement, Lapchick suggested that legislation and lawsuits should both be options. “It’s pretty clear that embarrassment hasn’t been enough,” he wrote.
The problem, Brand pointed out, was with the results of the searches.
Richardson cited the good ol’ boy club of boosters who would almost certainly favor white coaches. The influence of well-heeled boosters over athletics departments—and thus entire universities—is a given today. The head coaching jobs in college football may be the last place where boosters can cling to white leadership.
At the time, fewer than 3 percent of head football coaches at all NCAA institutions were black, although more than half of the athletes were. Men’s basketball, where over 60 percent of the players are black, was better, since nearly 30 percent of its head coaches were black.
Frankie Allen, now the
basketball coach at historically black Maryland–Eastern Shore, knows the biggest reason that college basketball is decades ahead of football. “Basketball coaches organized a lot sooner, with the BCA,” Allen says. “The guys at the top of the profession were all doing great—Thompson, Chaney, and Richardson. We had big-name people behind us, and they weren’t afraid to speak out.”
TWENTY-THREE
BROTHERS AND KEEPERS
Arkansas fired Stan Heath in the spring of 2007, and the timing was obvious. With the conclusion of the Nolan Richardson lawsuit, Heath was expendable. His teams struggled his first three seasons, but in his fourth and fifth years, Arkansas finally qualified for the NCAA Tournament again. Heath’s teams won over those five seasons, in order, nine, twelve, eighteen, twenty-two, then twenty-one games.
“Maybe I didn’t do enough to protect myself,” Heath says. “It was set up to be a pacifying situation after Nolan. [Frank Broyles said] ticket sales were down. But I can read. In 2006–07, we had more fans than the year before.” Indeed, in 2006, the Razorbacks were twelfth in the nation—out of over three hundred schools—in overall attendance. In 2007, Heath’s last season, they were ninth.
Arkansas would embarrass itself that spring by offering the job to a succession of five coaches—all white—who would consecutively turn down the job. Dana Altman left Creighton for a day before changing his mind and returning to Omaha. Finally, after the fifth rejection, Broyles found Arkansas their white coach in John Pelphrey, who had not led South Alabama to the NCAA Tournament. (Pelphrey quickly hired Rob Evans, Richardson’s longtime friend.)
