No Reason to Frown Over Loss of Larry Brown

If I were UCLA today, I’d throw a party that I didn’t get Larry Brown.

I don’t care if he’s a combination of Knute Rockne and Napoleon. If a guy’s that much of a headache to keep to his word overnight, what’s he going to be over a season or two?

Larry’s going to go through life double-parked. We’ve all known people like that. They can’t stay in one place long. They get restless, bored. The kind of people who join the circus. Society’s runaways.

It’s a good thing some people are like that. Otherwise the West would not have been settled, never mind won. Columbus would have never left the Mediterranean.

They call a man fickle when he does that. They call a woman a coquette. Those types like to say they need new challenges, but what they really need are new audiences. They need new acceptance, the psychologists tell us, constant reassurance. They’re not 9-to-5 lunch-pail guys. They head for the horizon. Sometimes, they don’t even leave a note. Often times, all they leave is a mess. They hear a train whistle and they get faraway looks in their eyes.

Of course, I’m not sure that is the way Brown is. He may stay at Kansas the rest of this century. But that’s not the way to bet.

Of course, I’d want to leave Kansas when Danny Manning did, too. Any direction would do. Somehow, Larry Brown doesn’t strike me as the type who’s going to wait around patiently for another Danny Manning to show up in Lawrence and to spend a lot of time teaching lesser kids what the low post is. Not as long as the buses run.

So, UCLA doesn’t want a coach whose continued presence depends on posting guards at the exits and keeping plane schedules out of sight. Bear in mind that the Bruins had Larry once before, and he went over the wall in a cloud of dust. No one ever figured out why, and he left Chancellor Charles Young standing there wondering, “Was it something I said?”

I mean, we’re talking major league indecision here. Here’s a guy who can’t say yes. From all the evidence, the guy wants the job. The job wants him. He’s right for it, and it’s right for him.

Your great coaches are not nomads. They build dynasties. You usually get one shot in this life, you get one identification. Otherwise, you’re just another Hessian, a hired gun. Have ball, will travel. You ride off into history as a kind of America’s guest host.

You got to throw the anchor out some time. You got to stake out your place in the sun. Pick any proverb you want and it tells you what happens to rolling stones or itinerant pool players. It’s all right to present a moving target if you’re a bank robber or a spy, but if you’re semi-legit, you ought to stand still long enough to be recognized.

Which brings me to the guy UCLA did sign. Jim Harrick is like that character in Somerset Maugham’s “Of Human Bondage.” He’s in love with UCLA and has been all his life and no matter how badly she treats him, he’ll always wait. I mean, the school had a clear shot at him once before. That was before Larry Brown--the first time--and Larry Farmer and Walt Hazzard. Harrick was an assistant under Gary Cunningham, who posted a 50-8 record in two seasons, better than Brown or anyone who came later. Presumably, Harrick could have been persuaded to stay.

This time, UCLA kept him standing on tippy-toe for weeks while it negotiated with a whole bunch of guys who were just out for a good time. When Brown left the Bruins standing on the altar with a bouquet and veil, good old Jim was still standing there smiling bravely through his tears.

You picture the jilted bride turning to him, sobbing into a lace handkerchief and saying, “You probably don’t want me anymore” and Harrick saying, “There, there, of course I do. All you have to do is whistle.”

The first thing any employer should want is a guy who wants the job. Loves the job. Thinks he’s lucky to have it.

I hope UCLA doesn’t sit in the window and pine for the glamour boys who got away. From what I can see, she’s got a good man who will stick. It doesn’t bother him that he wasn’t first choice. It’s like the old movie shtick where the girl says, “But I don’t love you,” and the Jim Harrick character says, “You’ll learn to.”

Anyway, if I were UCLA, I’d take out an insurance policy against Larry Brown ever changing his mind again and coming to UCLA. Let Kansas have a nervous breakdown every time he goes out for a pack of cigarettes and have to shriek hysterically, “Wait a minute, Larry, where are you going?”