Hog Riled

You ramble in a rental car down the dead-end rural route leading to Nolan Richardson’s farmhouse, thinking, “This could be a metaphor for the guy’s life”-- rough, unpredictable, forked, interesting, out there.

Here, on 155 acres of play space for his horses, chickens, macaws and llamas, one year after his five-alarm firing as the undeniably successful basketball coach at the University of Arkansas, the 61-year-old Richardson hunkers down for his last, big, ugly fight.

“Forty Minutes of Hell,” the final act.

Anyone who thought Richardson would take his $6-million severance package and divvy out birdseed hasn’t followed his career arc.

Richardson, unlike water, seeks the path of most resistance.

There is a decent explanation for why Richardson chose to stay in Fayetteville, sue his former employer for alleged civil rights violations and bulldoze the reputation of Frank Broyles, the school’s beloved longtime athletic director.

Nolan Richardson simply can’t help himself.

Let bygones be bygones?

“Never been my game,” Richardson said as he stood outside his getaway cabin on a cool February day. “Never been a part of me. I can’t.”

Arkansas fired Richardson last March 1 at the circus conclusion to a bizarre chapter in school history. He left with a stellar 17-year record of 389-169, a national title in 1994, and anger to burn.

His exit was hastened Feb. 23 when, after a loss to Kentucky that dropped Arkansas to 13-13, an exasperated Richardson said, “If they go ahead and pay me my money, they can take the job tomorrow.”

Richardson, an African American, two days later vented at a news conference, “My great-great grandfather came over on the ship, not Nolan Richardson. I didn’t come over on that ship, so I expect to be treated a little bit different. Because I know for a fact that I do not play on the same level as the other coaches around this school play on. I know that. You know it. And people of my color know that.”

His comments outraged many fans and boosters and prompted a 90-minute meeting with Broyles and Chancellor John White, at which Richardson was offered a chance to resign.

Isn’t that what he’d asked for?

No, Richardson says now, he was just crying out for support.

“What I’m asking for is for you guys [Broyles and White] to step up and say, ‘Get off of Coach’s ass, he’s working his ass off,’ ” Richardson recalled of his mind-set at the time. “I was looking for that.”

When Richardson refused to quit, Arkansas invoked a clause that allowed the school to terminate his contract “for any reason at any time.”

What happened next was consistent with Richardson’s character.

On Dec. 19, in U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Arkansas, Richardson filed a federal lawsuit claiming racial discrimination and violation of free speech.

White and University of Arkansas System President B. Allen Suggs were named as defendants, but the meat of the complaint was directed at Broyles, an Arkansas icon and the man responsible for making Richardson, in 1985, the first black head coach in the history of the Southwest Conference.

The lawsuit charges that, in firing Richardson, Broyles was motivated by “racial animus” and adds the firing “would not have occurred in the absence of the Defendant Broyles pressing the matter.”

Broyles, on advice from university attorneys, said he could not discuss the case.

Richardson, meanwhile, has publicly called his firing a “high-tech lynching” and accuses Broyles of being “somewhat” of a racist.

Pretty strong language.

“You know what’s strong is the way I was treated,” Richardson said. “That’s how I would answer that right now.”

Darrell Royal, the legendary former Texas football coach and one of Broyles’ closest and oldest friends, said he could not identify the man described in court papers.

“That’s not the Frank I know,” Royal said by phone from Austin. “I never saw it, never heard him say anything derogatory about race in any shape, form and fashion. You play golf for years with a guy and you get to know him.”

Richardson seeks his reinstatement as Arkansas coach -- even though no one thinks there’s a chance that’s going to happen -- and damages for “lost compensation, harm to reputation, mental and emotional distress, and other out-of-pocket losses, in an amount shown to be appropriate after trial.”

Richardson’s buyout included $3 million in salary and another $3-million annuity funded by the Razorback Foundation, the athletic department’s fund-raising arm.

“He had a pretty sweet deal there at Arkansas, I don’t know what else you could want,” Danny Ford, the former Arkansas football coach, said when asked about Richardson’s lawsuit.

Fred H. Harrison, the university’s general counsel, released a statement saying the school “does not intend to conduct a public dialogue on the case” and added that the lawsuit would be “shown to be groundless and without merit.”

Harrison declined an interview request, saying, “We’re sticking with the statement.”

The case pits Richardson against Broyles, two of the state’s most influential figures; one black, one white, set against the backdrop of Southern history, politics and civil rights.

According to a Broyles memo, released by the university under the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act, Richardson said his firing would have major repercussions.

“You haven’t seen anything yet,” Broyles quotes Richardson as saying. “Just wait. We will take this state back to 1957. You’ll have to have tanks in the parking lots.”

There have been no tanks yet, but plenty of discourse.

Arkansas’ Black Alumni Society filed a letter of complaint to Chancellor White regarding Richardson’s firing.

Gerald Jordan, a black professor of journalism at Arkansas and a former newspaper reporter for the Kansas City Star and Philadelphia Inquirer, said the Richardson story had resonated throughout the state.

“When the story broke, there was so much intensity about it, I was getting calls from alumni, virtually implying they were lynching black folks on lampposts on Dickson Street,” Jordan said. “That certainly wasn’t the case.”

Fayetteville’s record on civil rights is not as sullied as Little Rock’s pockmarked past. The University of Arkansas, in 1948, was the first Southern public university to admit a black student, and Fayetteville, located in the state’s northwest corner, was one of the first Southern towns to integrate public schools after the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. the Board of Education.

Yet, Jordan says the Richardson case raises questions about a subtle form of discrimination.

“Something is wrong,” he said. “We’re not quite sure what it is, but something’s wrong. Here’s somebody that has a legitimate complaint, I’d say, that the way he left here was not fair. That he was owed more than that.”

*

The King and I

Richardson versus Broyles is a story of power, race, ego and retribution. It’s about black versus white and basketball versus football in a football state.

“You say, ‘Why would you fight an icon?’ ” Richardson said when asked about taking on Broyles. “What’s important to me is whether I can lay down and go to sleep and not be disturbed by the fact I wouldn’t fight because he’s an icon.”

Memos made public reveal that the Richardson-Broyles feud had been percolating for years behind the scenes. The men quarreled over shoe contracts, disparity in coaches’ salaries and administrative control.

Richardson bristles as he recalls the time early in his tenure when he says Broyles asked him to visit Indiana Coach Bob Knight to learn more about defense.

“I played for Don Haskins,” Richardson said of his mentor, the retired Hall of Fame coach at Texas El Paso. “My style of play is totally different. To me, that was a terrible mark.”

Broyles described his problems with Richardson in one particular memo.

“Nolan’s occasionally irrational behavior is becoming more frequent and more severe,” Broyles wrote, adding, “My sincere fear is that in the near future, we could have a Woody Hayes or Bobby Knight episode in the making.”

The memo was dated Nov. 9, 1995.

Some contend Arkansas’ 1994 national basketball title shifted the power dynamic.

“I think he got too big,” Jackson State basketball Coach Andy Stoglin, an assistant under Richardson at Tulsa and Arkansas, said of his friend. “One of the big boosters once told Nolan and I both that Broyles was king in Arkansas. And you can’t wound a king. You either have to kill him or he’s going to get you.

“You can only have one king.”

Stoglin thinks, strangely and sadly, that the lawsuit is also about the death of a girl -- Richardson’s daughter, Yvonne.

Yvonne was a teenager and suffering from leukemia when Richardson left Tulsa to take the Arkansas job in 1985. Richardson wanted to stay at Tulsa, but Yvonne insisted that her illness not hold him back.

“If I had to do it all over again, I don’t think I would have ever come,” Richardson admits now. “She talked me into it.”

That first season was brutal. The Razorbacks finished 12-16. Stoglin had to take over the team as Richardson tended to his daughter.

Yvonne died Jan. 22, 1987.

Stoglin says Richardson didn’t think Arkansas fans, the media or the administration cut him enough slack in those first, painful seasons.

“He got all the way to the top,” Stoglin said, “but he never forgot the cruelness of a lot of people, not trusting him when his daughter was dying. When they should have been compassionate. This is where he’s at now.

“It’s not about money. It’s about the things that happened to him at the most crucial times in his life, when his baby was dying and he couldn’t do anything about it.”

Richardson doesn’t raise elephants on his farm, but he has a memory like one.

“The first night, I’ll never forget, we had a bomb threat at the house,” Richardson recalled. “We have a sick daughter and I can’t even go in the house.”

Richardson still keeps parked at his farm the 1987 Chevy van he bought for Yvonne. The vehicle has only 83,000 miles on it; he rarely drives it anymore but also can’t part with it. Yvonne picked it out. It came equipped with a television.

It arrived Feb. 1, 1987, nine days after she’d died.

So the lawsuit is partly about Yvonne?

Richardson: “Absolutely.”

*

Nolan Richardson

Fighting was the only sport Richardson knew, growing up in El Paso.

“Old Mamma,” the grandmother who raised him, told Nolan never to give ground.

“She always told me, ‘You’re special. You’ll be in places that no one will think you will be. You will do things that no one will ever expect you to do. Because you’re not afraid.’ ”

Richardson’s mother died when Nolan was 3, his father of alcoholism when Nolan was 12.

Richardson didn’t just knock down barricades -- he went looking to knock them down. He insisted on attending Bowie High School, which was 95% Mexican American.

Richardson learned to speak fluent Spanish and eventually married a Latina.

In the early 1960s, Richardson became one of the first black players to play for Haskins at Texas Western, now Texas El Paso. In 1966, Haskins’ team started five black players and defeated Adolph Rupp’s all-white Kentucky team for the NCAA title.

Returning to Bowie High, Richardson became the first black coach at a desegregated school in Texas. He broke the color barrier again at Western Texas Junior College, then again at Tulsa as the first black coach at a major college in Oklahoma.

Richardson knocked down another door at Arkansas when he replaced Eddie Sutton and became the first black coach in the now-defunct Southwest Conference (Arkansas moved to the Southeastern Conference before the 1991-92 season).

At every stop, Richardson swung from the heels and won big. He is the only coach to have won a national junior college championship, the National Invitation Tournament (while at Tulsa) and the NCAA title.

He developed a brand of breakneck basketball known as “Forty Minutes of Hell” and would tell his players, “We don’t have to be boxers. Let’s get in a street fight.”

*

Frank Broyles

Broyles packs a punch too, and has spent the last 46 years making Arkansas his empire.

He was a Great Depression kid, raised in Decatur, Ga., the youngest of five children. When Frank was 10, his dad lost the family business and ended up selling cars to make ends meet.

Broyles starred in basketball and football at Georgia Tech during World War II and afterward pursued a career in football coaching.

He became the coach at Missouri in 1957 and recruited the school’s first two black scholarship players. Broyles landed the Arkansas job in 1958.

In 19 seasons, Broyles won 144 games, seven Southwest Conference titles and a share of the 1964 national title. To be accurate, Alabama won the Associated Press and United Press International coaches’ titles that year, but those polls were taken before the bowl games.

After Alabama lost to Texas in the Orange Bowl and Arkansas defeated Nebraska in the Cotton, the 11-0 Razorbacks claimed the Football Writers Assn. title and staked a legitimate claim to being the true No. 1 team.

Richardson’s eyes roll when asked about that 1964 “championship.”

Broyles retired from coaching after the 1976 season, yet, at 78, remains the school’s athletic director.

You could argue that his administrative feats have eclipsed his coaching accomplishments. Broyles has been a prodigious fund-raiser and facilities builder. The Broyles Athletic Center bears his name.

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette named Broyles the state’s most influential athletic figure of the 20th century. He always possessed a keen eye for hiring talented coaches, yet was not afraid to run talent out of town.

Broyles dismissed two Arkansas football coaches, Lou Holtz and Danny Ford, who won national championships at other schools, Holtz at Notre Dame, Ford at Clemson.

Broyles, as much as Richardson, hates to lose.

Broyles still hasn’t come to terms with a 15-14 loss to Texas in 1969, attended by President Nixon and billed as the “Game of the Century.”

Terry Frei, a Denver sportswriter, recently devoted an entire book to that Texas-Arkansas game.

Although Broyles could not comment on the pending lawsuit against him, he was clear on one subject.

“I will not be reading that book,” he said.

Why not?

“We lost that game.”

*

End Game

Richardson’s lawsuit could be tied up in courts for months, if not years.

There are aspects of the case that call for clarification:

* How could Richardson sue if his contract stipulated he could be terminated “for any reason at any time?”

Richardson argues that this provision does not negate his First Amendment rights, as a high-profile coach and citizen, to discuss racial issues.

“You can’t take away my right to speak,” Richardson said.

Richardson asks this basic question of Broyles: “Why did you fire me? Because I said the playing field is not level? What’s wrong with that? If you’re the boss, why didn’t you come in and say, ‘Coach, what do you mean by that? Explain that to us so we’ll know how to fight it.’ ”

* Why would Richardson sue to get his job back at a place that allegedly discriminated against him?

Arkansas hired Stan Heath, also an African American, as Richardson’s successor.

Richardson conceded, “There’s no way I could work under the same conditions,” but said he would return if the defendants in the case were no longer employed.

“Follow me now?” Richardson said.

Some have suggested that Richardson, saddled with a struggling team, was looking for an excuse to get fired.

“Give me a break,” Richardson said. “I recruited my ... off that year. I was busting it, I was in homes, I was preaching. You think I’m going to jeopardize that? This would have been a new ‘Forty Minutes of Hell.’ ”

Richardson misses basketball, would like to coach again, preferably in the NBA, and doesn’t think his lawsuit will hurt his career.

“There are a lot of smart people in this world,” he said.

Some say there can be no winners in this case.

Stoglin is sticking by Richardson, even though he is torn over the debate and tried to talk his friend out of the lawsuit. Stoglin, an African American, says he considers Broyles a hero for hiring Richardson.

“Black basketball coaches in the NCAA have made more strides than any other profession,” he said. “Maybe broadcasting is the only other profession I see blacks with close to a fair share. And Frank Broyles’ hiring Nolan at Arkansas had a lot to do with that.”

Yet ...

“There was some other stuff there that was racial, I don’t care how you look at it,” Stoglin said. “You have to wait until it all comes out before you decide Nolan is wrong.”

Stoglin says Richardson’s amazing life story belongs in movie theaters, not in court.

“This is a tragedy,” Stoglin said. “Hispanic youngsters, black youngsters need heroes like Nolan Richardson. He beat the odds. His story needs to be told, but it needs a happy ending. I don’t think it will be happy in Arkansas.”

Ultimately, Stoglin says, whipping Frank Broyles is one fight Richardson can’t win.

“I admire his courage to fight,” Stoglin said. “I would not have fought that battle, personally.

“Even if it’s a draw in the end, he loses.”

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Decades of Dominance

Comparison of Nolan Richardson’s coaching career at Arkansas with that of his predecessor, Eddie Sutton:

*--* RICHARDSON 1985-2002 SUTTON 1974-1985 Seasons 17 11 W-L Record 389-169 260-75 Win .Pct 697 776 Wins Per Season 22.9 23.6 20-Win Seasons 12 9 Pct. 20-Win Seasons 70.5% 81.8% 30-Win Seasons 4 1 Losing Seasons 2 0 First in Conf./Div 7 5 Won Conf. Tourn 4 3 Conf. Tourn. W-L 25-13 13-7 Conf. Tourn. Pct 658 650 NCAA Appearances 13 9 Times in Final Four 3 1 NCAA Titles 1 0 NCAA W-L Record 26-12 9-9 NCAA Pct 684 500

*--*

Team Trademark or Memorable Nickname

Richardson: “Forty Minutes of Hell”

Sutton: “Three Basketeers” (Sidney Moncrief, Ron Brewer, Marvin Delph)

*

Five Prominent Players

Richardson: F Todd Day, C Oliver Miller, G Lee Mayberry, F Corliss Williamson, G Joe Johnson

Sutton: G S. Moncrief, G R. Brewer, G U.S. Reed, G Alvin Robertson, C Joe Kleine

*

Coach Played Under

Richardson: Don Haskins, Texas El Paso, 1961-63 (then known as Texas Western)

Sutton: Henry Iba, Oklahoma State, 1956-58