Herewith, the contents of Rick Majerus’ refrigerator...
Herewith, the contents of Rick Majerus’ refrigerator in a Santa Barbara hotel room last month:
Diet Snapple.
Nonfat milk.
Hard-boiled egg whites.
Annie’s Naturals low-fat, low-sodium raspberry vinaigrette dressing.
A suspect Styrofoam takeout box that reveals only half of a tuna-on-wheat.
Two kinds of plums, with three papayas ripening on top of the refrigerator.
Some garbanzo bean soup, and another small jar.
“I never thought I’d snack on artichoke hearts,” Majerus said, reaching for the jar.
This in no way resembles the typical contents of the refrigerator in the Salt Lake City hotel suite the brilliant but famously fat coach lived in for all of his 15 years as coach of the Utah Utes.
“Well, to start with, I had two refrigerators,” said Majerus, who returned to Utah this week to pack his belongings.
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It is March, and here is the seeming madness:
Utah plays Boston College in a first-round NCAA tournament game Friday in Milwaukee, and Majerus -- who happens to be from Milwaukee -- will not be on the bench or anywhere in the building. He said he has not watched the team on TV and would not watch Friday.
“It’s too hard,” he said.
Majerus, 56, quit abruptly as coach seven weeks ago, citing health issues after flying to Santa Barbara in a friend’s private plane the night of Jan. 27.
He did not say goodbye to his team, has spoken to only two players by phone, and said he would not return the calls of the parents and high school coaches of others until the season ends.
Yet there proved to be no immediate heart crisis for the coach who already has had a quintuple bypass -- nothing more than inflammation, a chronic condition that research suggests is a risk factor for heart attacks.
The debilitating pain he suffered was from diverticulitis, though if it had continued untreated it could have developed into peritonitis, an infection in the abdominal cavity that can be fatal without surgery.
“I was scared,” Majerus said. “I was sick.”
He spent only one night in Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital. But Jim Murray, the Santa Barbara cardiologist and friend whose counsel Majerus sought, told him he had to get his health under control, as did friends Jon Huntsman, a billionaire Utah booster, and Bob Henderson, his attorney.
“I was with one of my friends from Utah and he said, ‘God, you look terrible.’ And I said, ‘Why didn’t you say anything?’ And he said, ‘Because you never listen. You’re the king. You know it all. I got tired of it.’
“And pretty much my doctors have said that too. ‘We just get tired of it.’ So Murray has really sat me down here. I just really have to try.”
Majerus has health problems. This is not a news bulletin. But why didn’t he return to finish the season, at least tell his players in person that he was leaving?
The answer is as complex as the man. Among the factors are physical and probably emotional burnout and the baggage accumulated in those nearly 15 years at Utah.
The crises of the past two years include an NCAA infractions case that found academic fraud in the football program and numerous minor violations in the basketball program -- widely treated as a lark because many of them had to do with food.
There also were charges by Lance Allred, a partially deaf former player who transferred to Weber State, that Majerus demeaned his handicap during practice, calling him a “disgrace to cripples.” (An investigation by the University of Utah’s Office of Equal Opportunity found no violations and Majerus said his comments were misrepresented.)
No one present has confirmed the comments for the record, but few who have witnessed a Majerus practice doubt he said some approximation of what was reported, with one important distinction:
Majerus, they say, is an equal-opportunity verbal abuser.
“He treated all the players the same,” said senior guard Nick Jacobson, the player closest to Majerus, allowing that Majerus swore at players, “like most successful coaches.”
By the count of Patrick Kinahan, a Salt Lake Tribune reporter, more than 30 players chose to move on during Majerus’ time as coach, including Marc Jackson, a guard who quit abruptly after his sophomore season last year.
While playing for an exhibition squad called Northwest Sports last fall, Jackson called Majerus’ excessive practice time “abuse.” (Breaking the 20-hour weekly limit was one of the NCAA rules Majerus was cited for violating.)
“There’s more to life than basketball,” Jackson told the Tribune.
Majerus insists none of those situations is the reason he quit.
Friends believe he will coach again, though probably not next year and certainly not at Utah, a situation from which he said he has “divorced myself.”
Utah Athletic Director Chris Hill said he did not try to persuade Majerus to stay because it was presented to him as a fait accompli. (Majerus is not officially on medical leave, continues to use the office secretary for personal business and will be paid until his contract expires this year.)
“I take it for what it is,” Hill said. “I think he felt it was a good time for him to take time away, get healthy, close this chapter in his life and move on.
“I think everything has its beginning and its end. People have settled in and understand it on different levels. Everybody has to realize it’s a long time to be in one place.
“The reality is that he was at Utah a long time. His health was not good. He may have been really burned out. He made a decision, and we accepted.”
The national image of Majerus is of a wisecracking coach whose ability with Xs and O’s is as prodigious as his girth. He reportedly weighed as much as 370 pounds before leaving the team, and says he has lost “a few,” perhaps 20.
But within the athletic department, Majerus’ personality and carte blanche to run the basketball program without keeping office hours or performing other basic duties had worn thin.
He sometimes even traveled separately from his team, particularly if the destination was a place such as Las Vegas or San Diego.
A former ski coach angry about what he considered a double standard was one of the instigators of the NCAA investigation.
Women’s basketball Coach Elaine Elliott chose her words carefully when asked about Majerus
“The main thing for you perhaps to understand would simply be I can’t comment on someone I have no relationship with,” said Elliott, who was at Utah all of Majerus’ 15 years. “There was just never a relationship of any kind, and that’s what seems fair to say.... You can’t develop relationships with someone who is not part of the department. He wasn’t. He didn’t have to be. He just ran his program.”
Majerus is not the first coach to suffer from burnout, physical or otherwise. Mike Krzyzewski left his Duke team after 12 games during the 1994-95 season and did not return that season, citing exhaustion. This season, Nevada Las Vegas Coach Charlie Spoonhour stepped down because of health problems partly related to stress.
Leaving during the season was nothing new for Majerus. It is the third time since he became coach at Utah in 1989 that he did not finish the year.
His first season, Majerus coached six games before undergoing quintuple-bypass surgery and missing the rest of the season.
In 2000, he coached one game before taking time off because of complications from knee surgery, then had stents placed in two coronary artery branches before taking the rest of the season off to spend time with his mother, who was fighting a successful battle against breast cancer.
Along the way he missed games because of a urinary tract infection, unspecified family matters, a nonsurgical procedure related to a coronary artery, and to attend the funeral of the stepfather of former Utah player Andre Miller.
“He’s had an unusual situation,” Hill said.
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Majerus is a complicated and emotional character, as excessive in other areas of his life as he is during the four- or five-hour meals he so enjoys, absorbed in basketball talk with such friends as NBA coaches Don Nelson and George Karl.
It is his appetite for basketball that seemingly knows no bounds.
He spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day breaking down Kansas Coach Bill Self’s high-low offense, simply to add it to his repertoire.
He often summoned his assistants to watch film in the wee hours, and the Salt Lake City hotel room that served as his home had four televisions.
“I had a TV for the offensive tape, a TV for the defensive tape, a TV for the game tape, and I’m actually embarrassed to admit this, but I realize now I had a TV outside my bathroom,” Majerus said.
“I would sit on the toilet and I would turn the tape on and sometimes I would just sit there for 45 minutes. I didn’t even realize it. The time just went.” When he swam for exercise, he sometimes called Scott Garson, an eager young coach who is the team’s video coordinator, to meet him.
“He’d get some laps in and when he’s taking a breath he’ll have some thoughts, and I’ll write those down,” said Garson, who considered it a privilege. “Basically, by the end of the hour swim session, you’ve got a whole list of notes compiled, at least five or six pages, if not more sometimes.”
There are times when self-recognition breaks through.
“This Scott Garson has been a real warrior,” Majerus said. “He’s been so great because he’s so young, he’s not married, he has no girlfriend. He reminds me of me. I made it his whole life.
“So I told him the other day, ‘Don’t end up a basket case like I am. Some obsessed mad-scientist coach.’ ”
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His obsession now has shifted to his health. Oddly, for someone who neglected himself physically, Majerus also seems to have the earmarks of a hypochondriac.
“I usually carry Cipro because it’s a good drug to have. My doctor told me a while back, ‘You shouldn’t self-medicate,’ ” he said.
The backseat of his vehicle recently was a jumble of workout gear and X-rays, including a mammogram.
“I had a lump in my breast. I had ignored that too. I didn’t think men could get breast cancer. It’s pretty big. It’s significant,” Majerus said. “None of these are life-threatening. But my doctor said, ‘Didn’t that lump bother you? Why didn’t you say something?’ I said, ‘Because it was the season.’ ”
During his month in Santa Barbara, his days were spent swimming for an hour or more, walking two miles on the beach, and seeing his doctor.
He is not only recuperating physically, he also is in detox from the stresses of coaching. He reveled in the idea that he could stop in on a Westmont College practice and not feel compelled to break down the offense, get a game film and take notes.
His wide interests suddenly have room to roam. He is absorbed by the New York Times political coverage and looks forward to reading Edmund Morris’ biography of Teddy Roosevelt. He talks about going to Wimbledon, and said he regretted he has not had a child.
“I’ve done everything, but I’ve never done anything,” he said.
Majerus said that since leaving Utah, he already has been offered a coaching job but turned it down.
For years, he has talked about coaching in Southern California. (He wanted the UCLA job, and some believe USC is next in his sights.) He plans to live in Milwaukee next season and probably work for ESPN, then is considering moving to Santa Monica or Newport Beach.
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In Salt Lake City, they have moved on, but some complex fascination remains, along with a conviction Majerus’ departure was more complicated than his latest rededication to his health.
“A lot of it is speculation, but it’s speculation by people who normally know what they’re talking about,” said Gordon Monson, a Salt Lake Tribune columnist who was often critical of Majerus.
“It went from being Rick’s health, to his contract being part of the equation to the public-relations issues to trouble with people in the university and the community.
“Everyone appreciates what a great Xs-and-O’s guy he is. Even his harshest critics would agree he’s a great basketball coach. But some of his behavior had become increasingly odd, and in the eyes of some, intolerable.”
Majerus more or less shrugs: Disgruntled former players and testy writers are part of the business as far as he is concerned.
“People want to read into it. I had no dissatisfaction,” he said.
“What do I want to do next? I don’t know. What I want to do is I want to get really healthy. That’s got to be my No. 1 priority.”
Those who have been close to Majerus wish him the best, but they have seen these frenzies of resolve before.
“In a way, I’m really excited and hope the change will be a permanent one,” said UCLA Coach Ben Howland, a friend for many years. “Because I love Rick, I hope he can learn to consistently take care of himself. Maybe let’s send back that third order of pasta and not order every appetizer on the menu. He can change. He has the self-discipline. He’s had to, to be so successful.”
Kerry Rupp, the Utah assistant who was named interim coach, said Majerus put himself on the back burner.
“The assistants, we’re there long hours, but at some point you put it to bed and go home to your families,” he said. “With Coach, it seemed like it was 24/7 for him. If he wasn’t at practice, his mind was concerned about practice.
“I think he took everything too personally. So when the pressure of the NCAA came down or the pressure of something happening in the program, it seemed like he always had to take personal responsibility. That’s what a head coach does anyway, but that’s got to drain you.”
Though Majerus and Rupp talk, Majerus says he refrains from watching in part so he won’t offer coaching advice, and Rupp believes Majerus didn’t talk with the team because it would have been too emotional, and he wanted them to move on.
“It’s time for him to focus on himself,” Rupp said. “He’d do that for stints, but it’s going to have to be for the long haul.”
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(Begin Text of Infobox)
Dancing With Utes
Though more visible, nationally, during the Rick Majerus era, Utah had also been a frequent visitor to the NCAA tournament under three previous coaches, since winning its only national championship in 1944. The Utes’ record in the tournament, with Final Four appearances in gray:
*--* UNDER VADAL PETERSEN Year Rec. Result 1944 3-0 Defeated Dartmouth, 42-40, in overtime, to win national championship 1945 0-2 Lost to Oklahoma A&M;, 62-37, and Oregon, 69-66, to finish last in Western Regional UNDER JACK GARDNER 1955 1-1 Lost to San Francisco, 78-59, finished third in regional 1956 1-1 Lost to San Francisco, 92-77, in regional final 1959 0-2 Lost to California, 71-53, finished fourth in regional 1960 2-1 Lost to Oregon, 65-54, finished third in regional 1961 2-2 Lost in four overtimes, 127-120, to St. Joseph’s in national third-place game 1966 2-2 Lost to Texas Western and Duke at Final Four to finish fourth
UNDER JERRY PIMM 1977 1-1 Lost to UNLV, 88-83, in West Regional semifinals 1978 1-1 Lost to Notre Dame, 69-56, in Midwest Regional semifinals 1979 0-1 Lost to Pepperdine, 92-88 in overtime, in West Regional first round 1981 1-1 Lost to North Carolina, 61-56, in West Regional semifinals 1983 2-1 Lost to North Carolina State, 75-56, in West Regional final UNDER RICK MAJERUS 1991 2-1 Lost to UNLV, 83-66, in West Regional semifinals 1993 1-1 Lost to Kentucky, 83-62, in Southeast Regional second round 1995 1-1 Lost to Mississippi State, 78-64, in West Regional second round 1996 2-1 Lost to Kentucky, 101-70, in Midwest Regional semifinals 1997 3-1 Lost to Kentucky, 72-59, in West Regional final 1998 5-1 Lost to Kentucky, 78-69, in national championship game, after winning West Regional 1999 1-1 Lost to Miami (Ohio), 66-58, in Midwest Regional second round 2000 1-1 Lost to Michigan State, 73-61, in Midwest Regional second round 2002 0-1 Lost to Indiana, 75-56, in South Regional first round 2003 1-1 Lost to Kentucky, 74-54, in Midwest Regional second round
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