NCAAbbs

On this date 30 years ago, the sports columnist at the Birmingham News, Alf Van Hoose and Clyde Bolton weighed in the announcement made the day before that UAB had hired Gene Bartow as their first basketball coach.

First, however, this editorial was printed in the editorial section:

Quote:The Birmingham News editorial, Wednesday, June 15, 1977.

UAB Hires A Winner

To build something first-class, you need a first-class builder. This precisely is what the University of Alabama in Birmingham has in Coach Gene Bartow, the fabulous UCLA basketball mentor who has signed on here as athletic director and head coach of the UAB basketball team.

Obviously Bartow’s reputation will go a long way in attracting the other personnel it will take to get UAB’s athletic program off to a running start. It won’t be surprising if UAB’s basketball team, to begin playing during the 1978-79 season, becomes a formidable contender within a few years.

Why big-time sports at UAB? Say what you will, sports serve as the common interest that gives a university campus a sense of unity and a feeling of community. You may be a medical student or a lab tech student or a major in business or engineering – but above all, you are a booster of the team. Sports also tend to involve the interests of the larger community into the affairs of the local university. The loyalty of the town is good for the campus.

Although football is not in the picture for UAB, residents of Birmingham have demonstrated by now that they would turn out for just about any sort of sporting event. University basketball on a regular basis here would add a bit to the list of things to attend and that’s good.

The Civic Center Coliseum is a magnificent facility which could be put to good use for regular college basketball games. The Civic Center Authority very likely is happy at the prospects of more business, and the UAB team will have a showplace for home games.

So let’s start making plans for next year. Coach Bartow and his cagers of ’78-79 will need a warm welcome, and this is just the town to give it to them.

Alf Van Hoose was the longtime executive sports editor at the Birmingham News. Most of the articles I remember by him were about Bear Bryant. In this column, he is almost incoherent in his attempt to praise something that is not about Alabama football.

Quote:The Birmingham News, Wednesday, June 15, 1977

No Wooden shadow for Bartow here

By Alf Van Hoose

Within 10 years, Alabama-Birmingham is projected as the largest university in the state, in the 20,000 student range.

UAB has about 13,000 scholars of varying degree now, a strong minority in its five medical schools – a couple of these with reputation enough to attract students nationwide, and beyond.

Whether UAB’s basketball renown will approach, say, its eminence in heart research is pure speculation now but its no-nickname, no-varsity athletic program did get wide publicity beginning a week ago.

Officially signing Gene Bartow as basketball coach among his athletic director responsibilities Tuesday further held continental attention.

Millions of sports fans are yet amazed, one imagines, that Bartow would leave UCLA basketball and Los Angeles for UAB and Birmingham. Why? Why? Why?

Bartow did an articulate job telling why at an even more-attended press conference here than Paul W. Bryant received when he returned to “Mama’s call” as Alabama football ocach in December 1957.

Bryant shocked millions of folk also, remember, leaving national championship-status Texas A&M for an Alabama situation which had slumped to four wins in three years.

UCLA report

Bartow’s general rationale about his decision makes sense to me. It has to be wisdom to choose Alabama to reside than southern California. L.A. has to be better than New York City living, but not much. Both rate low, low in my book.

But an old L.A. friend, sensible in just about everything else, added further background to Bartow’s defecting his city. This gentleman once played basketball, very well, for UCLA, and knows it’s inside story current.

“John Wooden,” he began, “was perhaps the greatest coach of all-time, any sport. His 10 national championships in 12 years, in basketball, is fantastic. No one is going to break that record, ever.

“John is a fine person, too, but he surely didn’t contribute, in one respect, to making it easier for his successor. John kept his office in UCLA headquarters. At least it remained there until recently, when he recognized it was adding greatly to pressure on Bartow. As long as Wooden was in sight, he was ‘Coach’.

“Wooden also had to give up UCLA basketball games. Everytime students spotted him arriving, there’d be a standing ovation.

“Wooden’s picture in the basketball program, selling shoes, or his camp, were always early-page stuff, before one could read about Bartow and his team.

“People in Alabama can learn something studying the Wooden-Bartow story. The guy following Bear Bryant should make a beeline for Gene Bartow to get all the advice on how to try to handle an impossible situation.

“Bartow won two conference championships in two years. But at UCLA nothing matters anymore except the big one, No. 1 in the NCAA.

“Wrong? Perhaps it is. But that’s the way it was, is, and is going to be.”

What’s ahead

There is no Wooden around Birmingham for Bartow. He’s the pioneer, and this fact apparently challenges a low-tone, intelligent, morally-sound gentleman with a fresh job.

He’s getting the standing ovations now at his new school, new community.

That he’s an outstanding basket coach, Bartow proved long before he was flattered to be chosen to follow a legend in L.A. He’ll do all right, even in sure-to-be-spirited competition for everything against C.M. Newton of Alabama and Bob Davis of Auburn.

One cannot visualize Alabamas or Auburns being enthusiastic about a threat arising in the city which will continue to spawn basketball talent which once would have excited Adolph Rupp at Kentucky, or Phog Allen at Kansas.

Bartow, one just knows, will be active in that talent market. He’ll continue to attract attention.

And finally, Clyde Bolton weighed in with the following column which was basically a biographical look at who Gene Bartow is.

Quote:The Birmingham News, Thursday, June 15, 1977

Improbability becomes reality with Bartow’s leaving UCLA post for UAB

By Clyde Bolton

When Gene Bartow was a small college basketball player keeping the bench shiny, he never could have dreamed that one day he would be resigning as head coach at the No. 1 basketball school in the country to move 2,000 miles and accept the assignment of making a new athletic program shiny.

But that improbability became reality Tuesday. It was announced at a press conference that Bartow has resigned as head basketball coach at UCLA to become head basketball coach and athletic director at the University of Alabama in Birmingham. It’s a fresh job, as green as the bumper stickers someone produced at the press conference. UAB doesn’t have a basketball team and won’t until 1978-79. Heck, UAB doesn’t even have a nickname.

But hopes are high. The bumper stickers read: “UAB 1, UCLA 0.”

Who is Gene Bartow?

The 46-year-old coach spent the first 22 years of his life in Browning, Mo, a town of 500. “People know where Hannibal is,” he explained. “Browning is 100 miles east of Hannibal.

“I was a typical small town young person, I guess. My father was a livestock dealer. I played all sports in high school. Of course, we didn’t have football.”

40 miles from home
He had a couple of basketball offers from small colleges but he passed them up to attend Northeast Missouri State because it was 40 miles from home and he knew some of the people from having played summer baseball with them. A teammate was Harry Gallatin, who became an accomplished player with the Knicks, but most of Bartow’s playing career was spent on the bench. “I was too short and too skinny,” he said.

He was drafted after college and played a couple of years at Fort Bliss in Texas. He had majored in physical education and had planned to coach and carrying the “good foundation” he had received at Northeast Missouri and Bliss he became a high school coach upon leaving the Army.

Shelbina High went 30-6 and for the first time reached the state tournament.

Another rung on the ladder was there to be climbed. After a year at Shelbina, Bartow moved to St. Charles High in a St. Louis suburb. He stayed four years and won the state title his second season.

He headed west for graduate work and a year of assistant coaching at Santa Barbara in California. Then the ladder pointed to Central Missouri State and his first college head coaching job.

The next rung was Valparaiso. During his six-year stay, he took three clubs to the NCAA College Division tournament.

Decked by Walton
His first major college head coaching job was at Memphis State, and there he met UCLA firsthand. Bartow was at Memphis four years, producing two NIT teams and an NCAA finalist. The 1973 squad met UCLA in the NCAA finals and became the final victim in another John Wooden quest for a national title.

“The thing I remember most is Bill Walton taking 22 shots and making 21 of them,” Bartow said. “A lot of them were 15 foot jump shots, too.”

A terrible letdown to get that far and then lose? “Oh no. When you win your conference championship, everything else is frosting. You want to win the national championship, of course, but just think about what it means to reach the final four.”

Memphis State decided to withdraw from the Missouri Valley Conference, and Bartow thought that was a mistake. Illinois approached him, and he accepted the head job. He stayed a year before UCLA called.

“I would probably be in Illinois now if J.D. Morgan (athletic director) hadn’t come and said that John Wooden was leaving. I had to try it. I think most coaches would have had to.

Bartow completed two seasons at UCLA. His records were 28-4 and 24-5. He won the Pacific 8 title both years.

A chance came to promote and build from the coaching administrative ends in Birmingham. Bartow accepted, and he is headed our way.

There is one short article left to reprint this week. I will reprint it tomorrow. It is about the reaction of Alabama and Auburn to Bartow's hiring.

As always, great reading.

Regarding Alf Van Hoose: I had the opportunity to see him in his final days at The Birmingham News when I started working there in 1985. He was a shell of a man, sitting in a back corner of the newsroom, pounding out his columns on a typewriter (by that time, the entire newsroom was already using VDTs, everyone, that is, except Van Hoose). I remember the sports copy desk would spend an hour or more trying to decipher what he was trying to say, but no one had the heart to tell him it was time to go.