Cal Calamity Is a Tempest in Cold Teapot

And now, for the most overblown, over-publicized, over-analyzed, needlessly argued, groundlessly protested action of this or any college basketball season--the dismissal of a coach from the campus community of Berkeley, Cal., with the season still in progress.

I give you two words. Two words with regard to the replacement of a coach in midseason.

John Lucas.

Go on down to San Antonio and ask anyone within the city limits to protest the firing “without reason” of Jerry Tarkanian as coach of the NBA Spurs. Go on. I dare you. You will be laughed out of the room. A change of coaches is what turned the Spurs from a camp of overpaid underachievers into genuine challengers for the NBA championship. Well? Didn’t it? Come on, I’m asking you. True or false?

What’s that? You say college basketball is very different from the pro game? Oh, it is, is it? OK. Then, tell me--where was this National Assn. of Basketball Coaches when one of its brethren, Bill Frieder, had his entire University of Michigan team stripped away from him by a self-righteous faculty administrator a week before the NCAA tournament of 1989?

Had Frieder verbally or physically “abused” his players? He had not. Had he been convicted of violating NCAA regulations? No. Had there been a student uprising against him? No. Did his team have a losing record at the time he was dismissed? No.

So what was Frieder’s crime? His crime was to have accepted a similar position with another university--Arizona State--for the next season. This prompted Bo Schembechler, a pompous blowhard who has always felt entitled to bully others by virtue of his stature as a successful football coach, to act in his capacity as athletic director and defrock Frieder on the spot, uttering the unforgettable: “I want a Michigan man to coach Michigan.”

A Michigan man. Did Frieder’s assistant coach and successor, Steve Fisher, attend the University of Michigan? No, he is an alumnus of a college in another state. Did Schembechler attend the University of Michigan? No, he went to Miami of Ohio.

And Frieder? He holds both undergraduate and master’s degrees from Michigan. He grew up in Saginaw. He coached seven years of Michigan high school ball. He was a Wolverine assistant coach to Johnny Orr. Now, here was a Michigan man.

And yet the Michigan players who were personally recruited by Bill Frieder, a man who had spent years courting them and years on the court with them, were taken from him an incredible 31 games into the 1988-89 season, even after 24 victories, simply because he had made a choice to move to a warmer climate after having spent his entire life in the Midwest, devoting much of his adult life to his alma mater.

So where was the NABC then? Huh? Where were Bobby Knight and Bobby Cremins and Rick Pitino and, yes, Johnny Orr when one of their colleagues was treated so dishonorably back then? Could it be that they didn’t like Frieder? Is it possible they didn’t feel a kinship with him as they seem to with Campanelli, whose unexpected firing at Cal has set off enough oral fireworks to last us until the first week of July?

Campanelli’s record was 10-7 when he was let go. His record the previous season was 10-18. The season before that, 13-15. This is not exactly what I would call on a roll. The man has certainly had some success at Cal and even took the team to the NCAA tournament once--once in seven years--but we are not exactly talking about the second coming of Adolph Rupp.

Now, then. His recruits. Yes, Campanelli did, like Frieder, spend countless hours wooing and winning the likes of Lamond Murray and Jason Kidd, splendid young physical specimens. Murray is a point machine and Kidd a passing wizard. One is a sophomore, the other a freshman. Neither should have the power to pull the plug on a 54-year-old coach.

But they do have the right to tell the powers-that-be how unhappy they are. Which they did. And the coach’s superiors are entitled to look into the situation. Which they did. And what they found at Cal was a coach who was losing the respect and bruising the self-respect of his players. They heard and saw for themselves the way he “coached” them.

And, they began to regret the new contract this coach had recently been granted. They had neglected to check with the players before extending this contract. Players who, once committed, had come to see another side of their coach from the charming guy who came into their homes to recruit.

Coaches are aghast at Campanelli’s firing. To them, it’s the bears running the zoo.

But since when is changing tactics so terrible? Isn’t that what basketball is about? Did Pat Riley ruin the Lakers when he took over for Paul Westhead? Did Larry Brown destroy the Clippers? Didn’t Fisher win a championship for Michigan with Frieder’s players? Aren’t the Spurs thriving under Lucas? Hey, sometimes this is necessary. Coach Nixon once turned over Team USA to his assistant, Gerald Ford.

Cal changed coaches.

Big deal.