They’re Wondering in Westwood What Larry’ll Do for Love

My guess is that when Larry Brown pulls into a gas station in Lawrence, Kan., these days, he doesn’t have to get out of his car and clean his own windshield.

This kind of thought has to be scary to the people in the UCLA athletic department, who are recruiting Larry Brown as their next basketball coach.

The day after Larry’s Jayhawks won the national championship, 30,000 Lawrence locals turned out for a welcome-home pep rally. Sure, they came out to yell for the players, but mainly they came to show their appreciation and love for Larry and to beg him to stay at Kansas.

Lindbergh should have been greeted so warmly. The Bruin people know they’ll be hard-pressed to match this display when Larry visits the Westwood campus. The only way they could get 30,000 excited L.A. folks to greet Brown would be to announce a Larry Brown Batting Helmet and Tote Bag Night on the LAX tarmac.

The thought of Brown surrounded by all that Midwestern adoration makes the UCLA people break out in hives. There’s no telling what those Kansas crazies will do to keep their man. Right now the Lawrence City Council is probably voting on a resolution to change the name of the city to Larry.

The Bruins are worried that the same terrible fate will befall them that struck the Lakers recently. The Lakers lost a recruiting war to the city of San Antonio over the services of David Robinson, pro basketball’s next great center. A strong show of hospitality and warmth by the citizens and mayor of San Antonio swayed Robinson and cost the Lakers approximately one decade of NBA championships.

In the battle for Larry Brown, the stakes are equally high. In pro ball you build a dynasty with players, like Larry Bird or Magic Johnson. In college you build a dynasty with a coach.

And with TV coverage increasing, TV money increasing, the sport improving artistically and thus drawing more fans, college basketball has become a high priority to universities. Landing a Larry Brown can be like finding the back door to the Comstock Lode.

So the Bruins see Larry Brown as their Magic Johnson, and they’ll be willing to pay Larry well for his presence. When he coached at UCLA before, Brown made about $40,000 a year. If he comes back, he’ll make at least 10 times that.

The profession has come a long way in a hurry. One noted college coach, whom we’ll call Coach X, was in Kansas City, Mo., last weekend for the Final Four and he made some observations at the hotel that headquartered the nation’s top coaches.

“No one talked about basketball,” Coach X said. “(Jim) Valvano pulls up in a limousine and everyone is gawking at him. Dick Vitale (ESPN analyst) is running around like a (very eager dog), collecting coaching-job rumors. No one is talking basketball ! It’s, ‘Hey, how much are you making on your shoe contract?’

“It used to be you’d run into a John Wooden or a Dean Smith and say, ‘Hey, I really need a good underneath (the basket) out-of-bounds play,’ and they’d sit down and give you one. Now these coaches are on the all-lobby team, hanging around the lobby lobbying for jobs.”

It’s all kind of out of whack, this huge amount of energy and attention focused on the fate of a man who teaches college kids to dribble better. But Larry Brown didn’t create the situation, and he would be a fool not to weigh his options and cash in.

As the hottest college basketball coach in the world, Brown doesn’t have to sit in a lobby hoping for a job. Lobbies will come to him. His problem is making a decision.

Larry, obviously, is no coin-flipper. He is not an impulsive decision-maker. Speculation on his decision is meaningless, because Brown probably hasn’t made a decision. Larry is one of those people who will agonize 45 minutes over a menu. At McDonald’s.

Now he ponders.

Do you stay where you’re the superstar, or go to where you’re just a dot on the map of stars’ homes?

Do you stay where you’ve already accomplished everything, or move and take on a gigantic new challenge?

Having lost your superstar player, do you stay where you have to sell recruits on the beauty of a cornfield, or do you move to Bikiniville?

Do you stay and live down the reputation of basketball gypsy, or move on and prove you won’t let your life be ruled by petty criticism?

Do you stay in an area where your players are going to be imports, or move to L.A. and try to tap the deep, deep well of local talent?

It’s a tough decision, and nobody--not even Larry--knows what will finally swing it. But I would advise the UCLA people, when they meet Larry Brown at the airport, to show up with more than a basket of fruit and a Bruin T-shirt.