COLLEGE BASKETBALL / NCAA TOURNAMENTS : Are They Both President’s Men?

Bill Clinton, Razorback-in-chief, once gave a big sloppy hug inside the White House (relax, this is nothing scandalous) not to the basketball coach from his down-home University of Arkansas but instead to towering John Thompson, the coach from his undergraduate alma mater, Washington D.C.’s very own Georgetown. Then he turned to the First Lady of the United States of America to introduce her to the gentleman he was squeezing with the words, “This is my coach.”

Thompson enjoys telling this story, especially now that Georgetown Hoya alum Clinton also appears on the cover of a prominent magazine this week in its annual men’s jump-suit issue, modeling a red-and-white Arkansas basketball warm-up suit, holding a basketball and posed beside this not typically presidential headline: “WHOOOO, PIG, SOOEY! PRESIDENT CLINTON IS HIGH ON HIS HOGS.”

Well, now. Talk about playing the sax from both ends.

Decisions, decisions. The President faces one today, for whom to cheer, when Georgetown meets Arkansas in the second round of the NCAA tournament’s Midwest Regional. Lucky thing there is no Oxford-Yale game in another bracket, or his loyalties could be put even further to the test. As it is, this one ranks as difficult a decision to make as the one diners face at the Cattlemen’s Cafe, where the menu featuring the 17-ounce T-bones notes that George Bush eats nowhere else whenever he happens to be in Oklahoma City.

Rumors flew that the Clintons might be in the stands for today’s game. Somehow we doubt that either of them would join dozens of other Razorback rooters in wearing pink plastic pig masks.

Just the same, Nolan Richardson wants everyone to know that he would be proud as punch to have such powerful support from the gallery. The Arkansas coach says, “I guess his brother (Roger) is getting married down in Dallas, so maybe we can meet up there if we can get that far.”

Which is fine with Richardson’s old friend and foe, Thompson, so long as everyone is crystal clear on one thing. “He’s our President too,” Thompson says.

The college basketball season is bringing together two of the game’s best big men--the coaches. Richardson runs a club with a record of 26-3 that is the favorite in this regional. Thomapson’s team is 19-11 and more of a longshot than back in the Patrick Ewing championship days. Richardson is a golf nut who once fooled with the idea of turning pro. Thompson thinks golf is the greatest foolishness. Richardson says basketball is “just an occupation,” whereas Thompson, he says, is a 365-day-a-year workaholic. And Richardson often has a whole state on his back. Thompson answers to a much smaller district--or, as some would put it, people there answer to him.

Thompson is an innovator, too.

Upon mentioning this, Richardson busts out with that room-rattling laugh of his and says, “Meanwhile, I’ve never invented any -thing! But one thing I can do is copy. I can copy my butt off.”

These are among the many things these contemporaries do not have in common. Where they do bond is in age--each is 52, born three months apart--in mutual regard, certain philosophies and in the admiration they share in the eyes of impressionable coaches whose success came later, among them Orlando (Tubby) Smith, 42, of Tulsa, who holds these two men in the utmost esteem. Tubby, who could end up playing the winner should Tulsa defeat Oklahoma State today, says, “Really, they have been pioneers. They have paved the way for the young black coaches in the business like myself.”

Giving them a working relationship.

“Even a personal one,” Smith says. “John Thompson and I are from the same part of Maryland. His grandparents and my grandparents are related. We didn’t even know that until just recently.”

The ties between Thompson and Richardson have been ones that bind. When it became increasingly clear that a gifted high school recruit, Othella Harrington, was not interested in playing for Arkansas, it was the Razorback coach who steered him toward Georgetown, where he has become the team’s leading scorer. And when Richardson lost a daughter to leukemia, Thompson was there with a very high shoulder on which to lean.

They are adversaries today. Thompson will draw X’s on a chalkboard trying to get his guys around Richardson’s big O, 245-pound Corliss Williamson, who set a pick the other night that nearly bumped an opponent across the state line. Richardson will diagram plays designed to contain Georgetown’s George Butler, who played in the shadow of Glenn Robinson in high school, but has emerged in the tournament, scoring 27 points against Illinois.

Both sides will play to win. Both sides will play hard.

“What’s that T-shirt they wear today?” Richardson asks, chortling. “Play hard or die, or whatever it is?”

Whatever it is.

Thompson has a much more pleasant whatever it is, saying, “Sometimes you enjoy competition with your friends more than with your enemies. Because, this way, nobody loses.”

Richardson: “John’s a competitor. I love John. John’s one of the greatest men I’ve ever met in my life. We’ll fight, scratch, claw, do the best we can to beat one another, and when it’s over we’ll remain friends.”

But what about the President?

He’s high on the Hogs. Yet he gives Hoyas hugs.

How come Clinton hasn’t invited Richardson to the White House for a squeeze?

“Ha!” Richardson reacts with a roar. “Because he came down into our dressing room and did it!”

Thompson thinks this over with his eyeglasses pushed to the tip of his nose. He is as droll as Richardson is mirthful. He says, “Well, it’s like this. I’ve never had any ill feelings for the President for supporting someone else. He hugged me right there in the White House. He said to his wife, ‘This is my coach.’ Now I don’t know what he says to somebody else. Don’t forget, there are politics involved in what you say. Depends on whose company you’re in.

“Besides, I kind of like people who come right out and tell you who they’re for. I don’t like people who stay neutral. I’d rather have an enemy than a neutral friend.”