DeLoss Dodds, athletic director at the University of Texas, runs a very profitable operation. It generates $140 million a year—the number goes up annually—which is $20 million more than the next-biggest program, that at Ohio State. And make no mistake, OSU is a behemoth in its own right. Dodds has been the AD at Texas since 1981, and while he has his critics most people would agree that he does a good job of balancing the two most important goals: winning and hauling in massive amounts of revenue.
I liked Dodds. He had always been respectful and given me interviews when I asked for them, even though the demands on his time and attention were extreme. In 1995, when I offered to write a book about the history of basketball at UT, he was immediately interested. We made a deal wherein I would do the book in exchange for a certain amount of money. It was scarcely adequate to pay my bills during the project, but that is not the point here. One of the secondary issues on which I insisted was getting a pass to all of the Longhorns’ home games (both the men and the women) during the 1996, 1997 and 1998 seasons. Was it necessary? Not at all, but I claimed that it was. Since he was paying me in such a miserly way, I darn sure wanted that perk and I got it.
Shortly before the start of each of the aforementioned seasons, I was directed to the sports information department. There I received a series of variously colored paper tags, one per game. Each stated the opponent, the time and boilerplate text at the bottom. That gave me entree to the Erwin Center, but I did not sit among the hoi-polloi. No, sir. I had a place with my name on it on press row. Admittedly, I was not at center court and for really big games there were two levels of tables and chairs. That put me toward the end on the second level along with dozens of people from the Austin American-Statesman, Dallas Morning News, Houston Chronicle, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, San Antonio Express and other publications. There were also designated places for announcers (TV and radio), pro scouts and other assorted big shots.
Most of these guys and gals were intensely focused on the game, with stories to write and deadlines to meet. Furthermore, they had to be knowledgeable about every aspect of the team, the current season and college basketball as a whole. That was not the case for me since I was working on a single project due to be published in 1998. I came to the games and enjoyed myself, without the slightest pressure. Some of my colleagues, if I may call them that, probably wondered why I had a valued spot on press row. I saw at least one of the writers from the AmStat—Mark Rosner, Kirk Bohls, John Maher, Randy Riggs, Rick Cantu or Suzanne Halliburton—at every game.
If tipoff was at 7:30 p.m., I came an hour early. Since I had a parking pass, I parked my car in the Erwin Center lot and went right in through a special door. My first stop was a well-lighted room under the stands where food and drink were there for the taking. This I liked very much. More could be had at halftime if one were so inclined, and I often was. In contrast to my student days (the early 1970s) at Gregory Gymnasium, the pre-game introductions were an elaborate and somewhat contrived affair. But the game was the thing. Let me tell you, sitting courtside for a big-time college basketball game was exciting. I was able to see the players up close, and watch them interact among themselves, and with the coaches and referees, even as 16,000 fans were in full-throated roar.
I also got an up-close look at the cheerleaders who came out on the court during breaks in the action. Cheerleading is a high-risk activity, especially for those girls who get tossed high in the air and do a 360-degree twist before coming down for a soft landing in the arms of a couple of husky guys. The pom-pom girls added another layer of pulchritude, which, of course, was in no shortage at the women's games. The Longhorn Band was close by, playing with gusto and sometimes a degree of levity.
The coaches’ antics were amusing—in particular, those who got ejected and had to walk, cursing and grumbling, to the locker room. I especially recall the time Texas coach Tom Penders was displeased with what he saw and determined that a technical foul would inspire his team. So he walked right out on the court while the game was being played; sure enough, the refs T'ed him up.
(Penders, an insufferable Connecticut Yankee, was always angling for a raise from Dodds. One time, I was interviewing him in his Bellmont Hall office and he began to tell me that Texas had no basketball history to speak of prior to his arrival. I found this both offensive and wholly incorrect. What, I should have asked him, about the Longhorn teams from 1913 to 1917 who won 44 straight games, a college record that would last for 50 years? Or Doc Stewart's undefeated 1924 squad? Or the great 1947 team that reached the Final Four and came within a whisker of winning it all? Or the 1963 Horns or the 1974 Horns, both of whom won the conference title and a couple of games in the NCAA tournament? Had he never heard of Clyde Littlefield, Holly Brock, Jack Gray, Bobby Moers, Slater Martin, Larry Robinson, LaSalle Thompson and other former stars who had worn orange and white? Learn a little history, coach! And get some humility while you're at it.)
As stated, I did not truly need to be in attendance at those games. If the score was not close, I had no qualms about leaving early. In fact, I left before halftime once or twice—albeit probably to go home and work on my book. Sometimes I stayed and saw dramatic endings. If I wanted, I could go to the media room and wait for players and coaches of both teams to come in, sit before the press and answer questions. What I noticed about these encounters was how artificial they seemed. When you read a quote in the newspaper, you may imagine that it was given spontaneously in a packed locker room. But my impression from such post-game confabs was that regardless of the questions presented by the writers and TV men, the answers invariably sounded canned if not rehearsed.
The three seasons I sat courtside were not wasted, and I found a few nuggets to use in my book. For the most part, I was there to sit back, observe and ponder. For example, it always struck me how the UT women—who started playing varsity basketball about 70 years after the men—tried to compensate by the overuse of banners hanging from the rafters of the Erwin Center. The men put multiple Southwest Conference championships or NCAA tourney appearances on each banner on the west end, but the women devoted an entire banner to just one of those on the east. Here I thought Jody Conradt, who called all the shots in distaff hoops at UT (she was also the women's AD from 1992 to 2001), was fudging it.
I was irked by the presence of so much advertising inside the arena. Everywhere you looked there were colorful signs paid for by banks, soft-drink manufacturers, telecommunication companies, you name it. There was none of that stuff in the Gregory Gym days.
Finally, I remember the time I was seated next to an SWC official whose job it was to grade the referees. After seeing the refs repeatedly refuse to blow the whistle on traveling even when it was quite egregious, I asked her why that was so seldom called. Her answer was rather brusque as she intimated that I would not know traveling if it came up and bit me on the backside.
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