CLEANING UP : Jody Conradt, Women’s Basketball Coach at Texas, Has Everything in Order

It is another seemingly perfect day in the kingdom of Jody Conradt, women’s basketball coach at the University of Texas:

--The sun is out in springtime.

--The Final Four, starring the top-ranked Longhorns, is just days away.

--And the closets and equipment rooms are clean.

In order of importance here, one ranks as high as the other.

Just outside Memorial Stadium, the on-campus football field, almost every car bears a bumper sticker. The long-horned mug of Bevo, the school’s bovine mascot, dominates, but no one appears to be steering him toward higher office.

Not so for Conradt, who will coach the U.S. women’s basketball team in the Pan American Games in Indianapolis, beginning Saturday.

“Jody Conradt for President,” proclaim several bumper endorsements.

Conradt does not want to be President, just the best coach and associate athletic director in the country. But in a last-minute draft, who knows? The great state of Texas would push for her. Texas would do anything for her.

“Jody is to Texas what Darrell Royal was to Texas a few years ago,” Donna Lopiano, the women’s athletic director, said in the hectic days of March, just before the Final Four. “I kid you not. Wherever she goes, she is looked upon with the same respect. Both (Conradt and Royal) were Texas products. Every Texan wants to see in their kids and coaches the same thing they see in Jody.”

Jody Conradt, the refined former small-town tomboy, for President? The people here could see it now.

The White House would never be cleaner.

The Longhorns inched their way through the welcome-home crowd, nearly 1,000 strong, at Robert Mueller Airport one Saturday night in March after narrowly defeating Rutgers in the East Regional final in Fayetteville, N.C. They were surrounded for autographs and handshakes, by now a common occurrence around town.

Conradt had just about made it to the door when a female concessionaire at the airport stepped forward.

“You and this team make me so proud to be a woman,” she said.

It’s all true, Jody Conradt says. Every word.

Yes, the paper clips are, at times, lined up with the big ends all going in the same direction. And, in times of tension, Jody Conradt does, indeed, clean entire equipment rooms. And, of course, a trip to the closet in her two-bedroom condominium in town will show that the clothes are assigned specific hangers.

“That closet is the most incredibly organized thing I’ve seen in my whole life,” Lopiano said. “All the hangers are color coordinated. All the slacks go with blue, I think. And they’re not just run-of-the-mill hangers. All are plastic, beautiful hangers. Wire hangers would never be allowed in that closet because they might bend, and then things would be disorganized.”

Jody Conradt--leader of the best women’s basketball program in the country over the last two years, with an NCAA championship in 1985-1986 and a trip to the semifinals last season, and the person in charge of budgets for the best women’s athletic department in the country--are you for real?

It’s all true, she says. Every word.

Three months after her 46th birthday, she is as successful and respected and personable and interesting as she is organized. The question now is whether the legend of clean living is growing faster than her reputation as a coach and administrator.

“There are a lot of things I don’t tell people because they give me such a hard time about it,” Conradt said, laughing.

So the role of being the ultimate organizer isn’t as big as it seems?

“Probably more,” she said, noting that her biggest fear is an “unfinished job.”

Consider:

--Pens. In the desk drawer, the blues go in front and the reds in back. It’s practically written in stone.

“The only way she won’t know if I borrowed a pen is to just not return it,” said Colleen Matsuhara, an assistant under Conradt for two years and a former assistant athletic director at UCLA.

--Spring cleaning. Not long after basketball season, Conradt rallied her co-workers for a GI party throughout the women’s athletic department. They needed only to bring old clothes to wear. She took care of the rest.

--The program. The coach oversees everything from proper etiquette--in her office bookcase Emily Post is next to “Practical Modern Basketball”--to seating arrangements for season-ticket holders at the 16,000-seat Erwin Center.

“I’ve never seen anyone so attentive to what happens around her,” Lopiano said. “She never makes a social mistake. She never makes a political mistake.

“And I’ve never seen Jody frustrated. She doesn’t engage in extremes like frustration at all. She’s too organized for that.”

Said Matsuhara: “She’s so organized that if she ever had an unorganized thought, she would file it.”

Oh, how they love Jody C in Texas. Except, of course, in the other Southwest Conference cities.

Her face isn’t too welcome around those parts, considering that the Longhorns haven’t lost a SWC game since January of 1978. She is especially unappreciated at Texas A&M;, about 125 miles northeast of here in College Station, since she takes particular pleasure in telling Aggie jokes.

Overall, Conradt has a 353-51 record--that’s an .874 winning percentage--in 11 seasons at Texas and is 470-114 in her 18-year career and has been named national coach of the year three times since 1980.

After posting a 34-0 record and winning the national title two years ago, the Longhorns began 1986-87 as No. 1 and held that spot most of the way, losing only to eventual champion Tennessee during the regular season and Louisiana Tech in the NCAA semifinals before a record-breaking crowd of 15,303.

At a school where the football coach was fired last November even though he had an average of almost nine victories a year, Conradt seems to be holding steady somewhere between sainthood and having a building named in her honor.

Still, she is not without pressure. Around town in March, the Longhorns were expected to make it back home to play in the Final Four. A second consecutive national championship was also being taken for granted by many before the Louisiana Tech game.

A loss in front of the hometown fans? Before the Final Four, it had happened twice in five seasons.

Conradt reportedly had a base salary of $47,500 for the 1985-86 season, along with a $15,000 shoe deal that also called for a $4,000 clothing allowance and a $5,000 bonus for winning the national championship. She got that and capped an undefeated season by beating USC in the final game at Lexington, Ky.

Interest had been developing, but after that, for sure, life would never be the same. The Longhorns--the Lady Longhorns--had grabbed Texas by the Panhandle and would take it by storm.

Conradt was named local chairwoman for Christmas Seals and the honorary chairwoman of the Multiple Sclerosis Readathon in Austin. She spoke to the American Lung Assn. She had an endowment presented to the school in her name. She has trouble getting through a meal in public without an autograph request. The team was host for an Arthritis Foundation benefit.

Conradt showed up at a Longhorn baseball game a couple of weeks after beating USC and was spotted by the public address announcer, who pointed her out to the crowd. The fans went crazy, stomping their feet and clapping and chanting, “Jody! Jody! Jody!” as the game was going on.

Lopiano, obviously knowing how to cash in on a good thing, has made it a point to start many of her speaking engagements by boasting: “I hired Jody Conradt.” And that is greeted with applause.

Conradt got the tape of the Longhorns’ welcome-home reception at the Erwin Center the night they returned from Lexington and liked it so much that she used it as an introduction for her answering machine.

“Thirty-four and oh,” the crowd chants, picking up more speed each time. “Thirty-four and oh . . . “ The announcer comes in. “The head coach of the national champion women’s basketball Division I team, I give you Jody Conradt.”

And just as she did then, Conradt still glows in the limelight. Interview requests are rarely denied, even if it means she will be a few minutes late to practice. It’s the same with autographs and guest introductions. All attention to women’s basketball is encouraged.

Don’t call the doctor just yet.

There is a method to this madness of tidying up equipment rooms the week of the Final Four and spending hours organizing a 20-foot-long closet in the hallway outside her office. A cleaning fetish is only part of it.

“The real reason I go into the closet is that it’s the only place I can get away from the phones,” Conradt said.

Not anymore, not since a new phone system was installed on campus in March. At 9 p.m. on one average working day, the unexpected ringing inside the closet could mean only one thing--an extension had been added.

A twist to another seemingly perfect day in the kingdom. And time to find a new hideaway.

JODY CONRADT’S COLLEGE COACHING RECORD

Season School Record 1986-87 Texas 31-2 1985-86 Texas 34-0* 1984-85 Texas 28-3 1983-84 Texas 32-3 1982-83 Texas 30-3 1981-82 Texas 35-4 1980-81 Texas 28-8 1979-80 Texas 33-4 1978-79 Texas 37-4 1977-78 Texas 29-10 1976-77 Texas 36-10 1975-76 Texas Arlington 23-11 1974-75 Texas Arlington 11-14 1973-74 Texas Arlington 9-14 1972-73 Sam Houston State 20-7 1971-72 Sam Houston State 19-6 1970-71 Sam Houston State 20-6 1969-70 Sam Houston State 15-4 TOTALS Texas 353-51** Overall 470-114**

*--NCAA championship; **--Pct. at Texas: .874; Pct. Overall: .805