They Have Answer for the Negativism, and It’s No Baloney

“Great balls of fire, Creighton basketball,” says the cheery yet businesslike woman answering the phone.

I ask to speak to the Creighton basketball coach, Tony Barone.

When connected, I ask Barone--whose last name rhymes with his first--why his secretary answers the phone that way.

“That’s our team’s theme this year,” Tony says in his native Chicago accent. “You shake my knees and you rattle my brain. Jerry Lee Lewis, one of the greatest. We’re trying to put a little life back in the world of athletics, a little excitement.”

Which is why I’m calling. I have heard that Coach Barone is going to have his players work in a poverty-area soup kitchen on Thanksgiving Day. I don’t know if that falls under the heading of excitement, but Tony seems excited about it.

He says he’s fed up with the jerks in college sports stealing all the headlines. Cheating, robbing, raping, fighting, snorting, lying, dying. The usual stuff.

“It’s getting to be an old scenario,” Tony says. “On Thanksgiving Day, our kids will go into the community, work in shelters, food kitchens, spend a couple hours trying to give something back, as opposed to taking.

“I know it sounds like I’m on some kind of high horse, but I’m sick of the negativism that surrounds the world of intercollegiate sports. Somewhere along the line they’re going to have to take hold of this image and clean it up.”

This will be Barone’s fourth season as basketball coach at Creighton, which is in Omaha. He succeeded Willis Reed. Tony thinks he will have a pretty good team this season, but he also thinks it won’t mean much unless his players learn more than just basketball.

“We have what we call the Creighton Basketball Pride Club,” Tony says. “You pay 5 bucks, you get 2 tickets for any game, and 1 buck goes to the homeless in Omaha. Your name goes on a huge plaque, which will be the hugest plaque in the history of plaques.

“We have Operation Bluejay, where we send our players to high schools and grade schools in the city, to talk about substance abuse, the value of education. We send out letters to the schools, and we’ve actually had schools tell us they can’t give us that 45 minutes because if they do, they’ll have to let in other groups selling magazines and stuff. I throw up when I hear that.”

These community activities, by the way, are not voluntary for Tony’s players, any more than wind sprints or defensive drills are voluntary. Tony believes in more or less taking the initiative when it comes to helping players find constructive ways to spend their time.

“Do our kids want to go to the soup kitchens?” Barone asks, rhetorically. “Of course they don’t. If you give ‘em a choice--’Do you want to lay around the dorm all Thanksgiving Day and watch football on TV, or do you want to go work in a soup kitchen?’--what would they choose? We just say ‘Do it,’ period. They do it and they enjoy it.

“Kids today expect so much. A scholarship to Creighton is worth $12,000 a year. I think for that, I have the right to tell ‘em what to do, and I do.

“People miss the point if they think we’re doing this just for the community. This is for the benefit of the kids, too. They’re going to experience something they’ve never experienced before. The reality is something I need to get across to these kids. They don’t understand sometimes what the real world is like. They get sick, they go to the team doctor.

“A soup kitchen’s not the greatest place in the world to hang around on Thanksgiving Day. But kids go to college, get a degree and are never exposed to the real world. I guarantee when they go out on Thanksgiving and look in the eyes of these poor people, who have no home or food, it makes a mark on these guys.

“We want to win ballgames, but 10 years from now, the more meaningful experience they have will come from what they’ve done in the community. They’ll remember.”

This isn’t going to be one of those sports-stars-visit-sick-kids photo opportunities. Tony is glad that many news people have shown an interest, because this is an idea worth spreading. But he won’t allow TV cameras to follow his players into the Omaha soup kitchens. That, he feels, would be an infringement upon the basic dignity of the diners.

Besides, it’s nothing heroic his kids will be doing. Tony’s wife will have the whole team over for a nice turkey dinner. Then the players will go downtown and work a couple of hours, and they’ll still have time to lie around the dorm and watch football on TV.

Tony says: “I just wanted something that would make people say, ‘Hey, the kids at Creighton aren’t idiots.’ ”