Forty years ago, Sooners nearly hired hoops icon
JohnThompson was a Washington, D.C., icon, and I don't mean the kind of icon found on Capitol Hill or Pennsylvania Avenue.
Thompson was a D.C. native who played basketball at Providence College and with the Boston Celtics before turning to his hometown to coach at St. Anthony High School and then at Georgetown University, and he quickly became a beloved and revered figure.
And that was before he turned Georgetown into an NCAA power.
Thompson died Sunday, three days before his 79th birthday, and his 27-year run with the Hoyas, with players like Sleepy Floyd, Patrick Ewing, Alonzo Mourning, Dikembe Mutombo and Allen Iverson, made the Hoyas a cultural sensation.
Thompson was all about discipline and dignity, about doing the right thing, but also about demanding the right thing from society. Thompson by that time already had the trademark deflated basketball sitting on his desk, symbolizing that the sport was fleeting but that a Georgetown education was lasting.
Ewing came along in 1981 and made Georgetown an NCAA title contender and eventual NCAA champion. But even before that, Thompson, called “Big John” because of his 6-foot-10 height and his commanding presence, was a D.C. staple.
All of which makes the last week of March 1980 so incredible. That's the week
OU, a mediocre program on the Plains, almost persuaded Thompson to leave D.C. and become a Sooner.
Dave Bliss had resigned as the OU coach on March
6 to take the Southern Methodist job. That's right. SMU. Bliss had coached the Sooners to the 1979 Sweet 16, but OU's victory over Texas in the round of 32 was the Sooners' only NCAA Tournament win since 1949.
OU was a national power in a variety of sports but hadn't so much as won a conference basketball title since 1949.
Meanwhile, Thompson had turned around Georgetown basketball.
The Hoyas made the regional finals in 1980, and Georgetown was 156-72 under Thompson, with four NCAA Tournament trips the previous six years, back when the NCAA field was smaller than the 64 teams for which it became known.
But Richard Bell, chairman of OU's board of regents, went to Indianapolis, site of the 1980 Final Four, and convinced Thompson to visit Norman for an interview. He went armed with a big-money offer.
The Washington Star reported the offer was for as much as $115,000 a year. The Washington Post said $120,000. Doesn't sound like much these days, but those were simpler times. Bliss had been making $70,000 a year. Thompson was making $50,000 a year at Georgetown, with a reported bump to $60,000, after Thompson rejected Florida overtures a few weeks earlier.
Thompson came to Norman on March 25, 1980, the day after the NCAA championship game.
He brought along his team's academic advisor, Mary Fenlon, who was becoming well-known as a symbol of Thompson's no-nonsense program.
Excitement around Norman was high. The idea that OU could attract the nation's hottest coach, that Thompson could become the first Black coach in Big Eight basketball history, made fans rethink the status of a sport that barely ranked above wrestling on campus.
Thompson returned to Washington, apparently with a job offer.
“There is definitely a lot of money involved,” he told the Washington Post. “I'll have to analyze it. I didn't realize basketball was that big time. I listened to them and I'll have to digest it. It would be foolish with the kind of money they're talking about not to evaluate it.”
The OU search committee interviewed nine coaches, including some interesting names, like Kansas coach Ted Owens, an OU grad, and DePaul assistant coach Joey Meyer, the son of legendary Blue Demons coach Ray Meyer. DePaul, like Georgetown, had become a national sensation.
But Thompson clearly was the committee's choice. For obvious reasons.
Oklahoman columnist Jim Lassiter wrote:
“Can mere green money turn the head of a 300pound man who still wears last year's suits, drives last decade's car and lives in the house that was home for his family when he was a parttime high school coach?
“The people who have sat on the fringes as John Thompson orchestrated the Georgetown Hoyas into national basketball prominence believe not. Instead, they feel his personal commitments, his pedestrian lifestyle and his ties to the nation's capital are so strong that not even a share of the Phillips Petroleum fortune can lure this iron-willed, strong-principled giant.
“They acknowledge the Oklahoma Sooners have come the closest of any suitor, but ultimately, John Thompson will realize he and Georgetown were meant to be together.”
Yes, that was the smart money. But as each day passed and Thompson didn't make a decision, concern grew in Washington that its 38-year-old coach indeed could leave the District.
Georgetown was playing in an old fieldhouse, the 4,400-seat McDonough Arena, which sat next to a new, $7.5M intramural complex. Thompson apparently privately wondered if the Hoyas could contend for an NCAA championship with such a facility.
OU's Lloyd Noble Center was only five years old in 1980 and, despite criticism now, was then considered a positive for recruiting.
Thompson visited Norman on a Tuesday. On Thursday, Georgetown staged its basketball banquet, and Thompson made no announcement about staying with the Hoyas.
As he left the banquet, a student walked past and asked, “Decided yet, Coach?”
Replied Thompson, “Nope, I can't make up my mind.”
The next day, a Friday, the Washington Post reported that Thompson was “very seriously considering” the job.
Lassiter called Celtics president Red Auerbach, who had coached Thompson on those great Boston teams of the mid-1960s.
“If they get him,” Auerbach said, “they've got a prize.”
Finally, on Saturday, the news broke. Thompson had called Bell to turn down the Sooners.
“I don't want to sound pious,” Thompson said. “I'm sorry as hell about the money.”
Bell told The Oklahoman that “I feel flattered he gave us the look he gave us. Most people didn't think he'd even come down to take a look.”
Owens had pulled his name out of the running. Many thought Meyer might be a short-termer at OU, waiting for his dad to retire at DePaul.
That left Tubbs, the Oklahoma native who was doing a good job at Lamar University. On April 1, 1980, the Sooners hired the wise-cracking Tubbs.
Tubbs said being second choice behind Thompson “didn't bother me. I was also my wife's second choice. And I've been with her for 25 years. Five years from now, I'll either write JT a thank you note or want to slash his tires."
You know the rest. A thankyou note was in order. While Thompson took Georgetown to three Final Fours in the 1980s and won the 1984 NCAA title, Tubbs was no less spectacular. He turned Sooner basketball into a high-wire act the likes of which haven't been seen. OU made the 1988 NCAA title game and played the most entertaining brand of ball we'll likely ever see.
But Tubbs was a consolation prize. OU dreamed big, and in 1980 college basketball, that meant Big John Thompson.