A Phone Call--and ‘I Just Thought I Had to Do it’

Larry Brown was packing. The plane was waiting to take him back to UCLA.

The sports information office at Kansas was busy sending biographical information to UCLA for its news release.

The athletic director was on his way to Brown’s house, where a letter of resignation awaited him.

And the phone rang.

The call--from Joe Glass, his godfather and caretaker of Brown’s financial life--set off a rapid, confusing and stunning sequence of activities Friday afternoon that resulted in the plane returning to UCLA without Brown, and in the Kansas campus again swirling with a frenzied, horn-tooting celebration.

What happened?

Brown declined Saturday morning to talk about the mystery phone call from the man who represented him in negotiations.

The only point of clarification Brown would make was that “ . . . Mr. Glass had nothing to do with my decision. He raised me, he knows me better than anybody and cares about me, but me not going wasn’t his fault.

“Nobody persuaded me. I just thought I had to do it.”

There was a misunderstanding on a point in the contract. UCLA changed the wording on a major issue, and it simply struck him wrong, Brown said. UCLA called a few minutes after Glass and corrected the point, but it was too late.

“UCLA was great to me in every way. There is nothing against the school,” Brown said.

“But the overriding fact was, it bothered me and I couldn’t do it.”

As noon approached Saturday, instead of sitting where he would be reintroduced as head basketball coach seven years and a national championship after he walked out on the same job, Brown headed out his door for a recruiting trip to Texas.

He was glum. “I wanted to be at UCLA,” he said, not attempting to hide his feelings. During appearances on national TV the night before, he displayed no smiles, no giddiness, no sense of relief.

“This should be the highest time of my life,” Brown said Saturday, “and I’m not feeling it.”

Another major influence on his decision, making it not nearly as impulsive as it appears on the surface, took root in his meeting Thursday with UCLA officials.

Has anybody ever turned down a job because the prospective employer offered too much ?

Brown, in part, did.

He described what he termed “the greatest meeting anybody could ever have” with UCLA’s chancellor, Charles Young, and athletic director, Peter Dalis, and others representing both sides.

“I had never sat in on negotiations before. I was embarrassed. Chancellor Young was phenomenal. But I got embarrassed at all the things they were doing for me.

“That kept hitting on me the whole time. I didn’t feel I’d done anything for UCLA to deserve it. At Kansas, they’ve given me so much, but it always was in appreciation for something I’d done for them.

“The bottom line, above everything else, is that I haven’t done anything for UCLA and they wanted to do so much for me, and something about that didn’t feel right.”

He had made similar comments to ESPN and CBS the night before, seemingly cryptic and disconnected.

The comments make sense only to those who know him well. Brown’s position on money offers an insight into his personality, developed from an upbringing with relatively low income in Brooklyn and Long Island by his mother.

Brown came to Kansas without knowing his salary or financial package. He never talked about money to Monte Johnson, then the athletic director.

He is very self-conscious talking about money, and he doesn’t play hardball. As Kansas Athletic Director Bob Frederick pointed out, contract talk never came up this week. “If money was the overriding issue, Larry would have gone back to the pros,” Frederick said.

Brown allowed as much, as he departed Saturday morning. “UCLA was too generous,” he said. “But it’s time to look forward. If we can sign a few recruits we’re after, we’ll have a great team for several years . . .”