The Laughs Stop When Coach Becomes Laden With Burnout

Frank Layden, the goofy old foof who handled postgame jam sessions and other arrangements for the Utah Jazz, has retired, a fifth of the way into an 82-game season, citing the savage stress and the shortage of dignity that accompanies anyone who makes a living as a coach. The poor old Frankster has first-degree burnout.

We will miss his snappy patter. We will miss Layden’s Lionel Barrymore face and his Pillsbury body and his impish wit and stale gags. Fat Frankie was the baggy-pants vaudevillian of basketball, a guy who should have coached his ballclub in checkered slacks and a rodeo clown’s floppy shoes. Frank Layden was the one coach we know who didn’t require a Gatorade bottle so much as a seltzer bottle. He was Bozo the coach.

No doubt some TV type will snap up Layden sometime soon, if he can take time off from his front-office duties, to supply a few desperately needed yuks to

professionalbasketball’s telecasts. But until that day comes, we will miss Layden’s roundball comic relief.

The rest of Fat Frankie’s personality we will not miss quite as much. All the goodwill he stockpiled with his assortment of juicy material and mad-libs was enough to make some people forget how petulant he could be after a lost game, as he demonstrated at the Forum last season during the playoff series against the Lakers, or how cruel and crude he could be under certain circumstances. Ask Kelly Tripucka, whose career Layden nearly buried, or Adrian Dantley, who couldn’t wait to get away from the guy, or Mel Turpin, whom Layden publicly ridiculed for his weight, which was sort of like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar criticizing Telly Savalas about his hair.

Speaking personally, about 10 years ago, on the occasion of Layden’s birthday, we joined Frank and his wife, along with Jazz executive Sam Battistone, broadcaster Hot Rod Hundley and a second sportswriter, Bob Logan of the Chicago Tribune, for a couple of rounds of drinks at a Salt Lake City private club called the Green Parrot, or Blue Parrot, or some such thing.

Layden, who was in the front office then, got a snootful and started getting belligerent, boasting he had more basketball expertise in his pinky than anybody else at the table had in their whole bodies. Then he and Hundley got into a loud, embarrassing (to everyone else) debate over which of them was the funnier after-dinner speaker. Both of them rose and gave us a sample of their wares as entertainers, Hundley boring the socks off of everybody with some account of how he once guarded Oscar Robertson so closely, he climbed right into his jockstrap, and Layden shouting out a series of jokes that might have been funny when Milton Berle worked every Tuesday.

This Frank Layden was no fun to be around. The one, though, who entertained in National Basketball Assn. clubhouses coast-to-coast was a laff riot, a regular coachmaster general. Even on Friday, when he surprised everybody, including his successor, Jerry Sloan, with his retirement, Layden was a howl a minute. The guy exited the way he entered--laughing.

He talked about the guy a few rows up who would sit there all night and holler, “Hey, Layden! Get a job!” Frank said maybe he would go up behind that heckler at the Salt Palace sometime soon and find out how he made a living.

Layden also spoke of fans who screamed at him and abused him and even spat at him. None of the job’s benefits, the fame, the fortune, could overcome all of that, as they once did. It ate away inside him, destroying a lot of the joy that came with seeing a club such as the Jazz go from the gutter of the NBA to a better view of those below. Layden soured in coaching. He wasn’t the same whistle-while-you-work guy anymore. He went from Happy to Grumpy.

Why Layden waited until the season was already under way, only he knows. Maybe he thought things would improve. Instead, they got worse. So, in time for Saturday night’s game against the Clippers, Layden turned over the job to Sloan, a decent fellow who did his share of suffering when he coached the Chicago Bulls, pre-Michael Jordan. Sloan will inspire none of the merriment Layden did, but none of the resentment, either. Few fans will want a piece of him, as they did Frank.

Burnout is a difficult thing to explain to men and women who either detest their work or cannot find any. Sympathy is hard to come by for somebody who raked in decent pay and associated with glamorous people, night after night.

We understand what Layden is saying, however, when he wonders why people would assemble an hour after a basketball game and wait for him to leave an arena, just so for 30 seconds they could shout nasty things at him. Anybody who has ever witnessed the gantlet from the players’ exit to the parking lot at Yankee Stadium has some idea of what it is like to have to stomach verbal abuse.

What really touched a nerve with us was Layden’s mentioning of the crud currently being heaped upon football coaches Tom Landry, Chuck Noll and Don Shula, just because their teams are no longer the powers they once were. As Layden put it, it is as though these coaches “get dumb in one summer.” Previous experience is unnecessary. No matter how many good years are behind you, somebody is always willing to put you out to pasture, as soon as your results seem disappointing to them. It is a harsh world out there.

How odd it would be come next June, if Utah unseats the Lakers as king of the NBA’s Western Conference, as is entirely possible, that Layden will not be the one holding court at the postgame news conferences, willingly playing the fool, jiggling his jowls, squirting water from the flower in his lapel. It might be his turn to play one of the Pagliacci , laughing on the outside, crying on the inside, if the Jazz wins its first championship, the very season when he stepped aside and permitted someone else to do the coaching.

Frankie, the laugh would be on you.

We hope you can keep your sense of humor. Meantime, we have thought of a few parting shots for you to take with you into retirement, gags you might have used yourself, if you had thought of them, and may feel free to use, for those after-dinner engagements to come:

Question: Why are the Utah Jazz so happy that Frank Layden retired?

Answer: Now they have more room on the bench.

Q: Why are Utah fans so happy that Layden retired?

A: Now they can see the game.

Q: Why wouldn’t mascots such as the Chicken ever work at Utah games?

A: Frank always looked hungry.

Q: What did Frank Layden and Jack Nicholson have in common?

A: Heartburn.

Q: What did Layden and Philadelphia have in common?

A: They both wore clothes with “76” written somewhere on them.

Q: With which Utah player did Layden have the most in common?

A: Eaton.

Q: What will Frank’s job with the Jazz be from now on?

A: Shooting background.