Posted on April 4, 2013
During this 75th anniversary celebration of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, Steve McKee’s memory blog, CENTAUR SEASONS, here on HoopsU.com is remembering not to forget John Wooden and the UCLA Bruins.
HOW? By listening here exclusively to the Coach talk about the game and his life (and his life in the game) in a free-ranging never-before-heard, two-hour audio conversation conducted 16 years after he retired in 1975.
A MARCH MADNESS special, exclusively at CENTAUR SEASONS. A multipart series now through the Final Four.
Today’s featured conversation: THAT GAME IN THE ASTRODOME.
To listen directly, click here … and then here … and then finally here.
“I think that television has hurt the game,” Coach Wooden says. “I’m talking now about the playing of the game. It has hurt the game by making players more interested in fancy play.”
Worse, perhaps, is that television has influenced the game, intruded upon it: “I thought that was true before I retired [in 1975],” he says. “I think the beginning of that was, uh, one of my teams was somewhat responsible for the beginning of that, and that was the game in the Astrodome against Houston [in 1968].”
This conversation ranges widely across three interview segments — one … two … three — and includes Coach Wooden talking about how he has no regrets that he never made more than “thirty-two-five” (that’s $32,500) a year. “Everything’s relative,” he says.
So Coach Wooden, in a way, made a little more than $3,000 per NCAA title. He earned his money: No team and no coach dominated these first 75 years of the NCAA tournament as completely as the UCLA Bruins and John Wooden.
Coincidentally (or maybe not) the Bruins’ championship run fits snugly around the years of this CENTAUR SEASONS blog. In those days you could not play college basketball, at any level, without just always knowing that UCLA and Wooden were at the top — setting the standard, defining the game, winning the titles.
And yet for all that it can be difficult now to appreciate how ridiculously overwhelming the Bruins and Coach Wooden were, in their time.
To hear more of Coach Wooden as he talks of that Astrodome game and the ensuing effects of TV on the game, click here … and then here … and then finally here.
Remember: Magic and Bird had yet to appear. So too Michael Jordan, Patrick Ewing, Christian Laetner, Carmello Anthony, Kemba Walker. There was no Jim Valvano, John Thompson, Rick Pitino, Coach K., John Calipari, Shaka Smart. ESPN? Phi Slamma Jamma? Forty Minutes of Hell? Runnin’ Rebels? Valparaiso? “Diaper Dandies, BABY!” Blue Devils? One-‘n’-Done? 8 vs. 9? Bracketology, for crying out loud? No one knew.
During the years of these CENTAUR SEASONS there was UCLA and there was John Wooden. That was all. That was everything. That was enough.
So here at CENTAUR SEASONS, during this month of madness (another one! “March Madness” wasn’t officially coined until 1982), we’d like to remember again for the first time the prominence and dominance that was UCLA and John Wooden. In a never-before-heard, two-hour audio interview conducted nearly 23 years ago, Coach Wooden talks here on CENTAUR SEASONS about a wide variety of on- and off-court college basketball topics: Lew Alcindor, Bill Walton, that game in the Astrodome, his most pleasurable victories, the N.C. State loss, his “Pyramid of Success,” growing up in Indiana, and much much more.
To hear more of Coach Wooden as he talks of that Astrodome game and the ensuing effects of TV on the game, click here … and then here … and then finally here.
To facilitate your listening, a word-for-word transcript of the conversation is provided.
I conducted this interview with Coach Wooden on Saturday, May 18, 1991, for what eventually became the book “COACH,” an oral history of the sideline profession. (Coach Wooden was one of about 150 coaches I interviewed.)
Here on CENTAUR SEASONS the full two-hour interview has been aportioned into 24 individual sections. This post, THAT GAME IN THE ASTRODOME, takes you directly to three different sements — one … two … and three — that speak to these topics. Keep in mind that in nearly every segment other topics were discussed as well.
Clicking on two previous CENTAUR SEASONS posts can also access the interview with Coach Wooden. This one: “AT THE END OF THE BENCH: What a Centaur-Turned-Coach Learned at Allentown and Shares with Coach Wooden.” Or this one: “U.C.L.A. CENTAURS; A.C. BRUINS: An Exclusive Interview with John Wooden.”
OR, click here to proceed directly to the CENTAUR SEASONS John Wooden Interview page.
However you get there, here’s hoping you enjoy listening to John Wooden here on CENTAUR SEASONS.
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