It probably seems odd to say this, but the defending college basketball champion is in a decline.
I am speaking, of course, about Duke, the team that beat upstart Butler in the national championship game last year.
In the last two or three decades, Duke's basketball program has sort of filled the vacuum that was left at UCLA after John Wooden retired in the 1970s. Sure, UCLA has won a few national titles since then — but nothing close to what the Bruins were doing when Wooden was running the show.
In those days, UCLA was in the national championship game almost every year. The NCAA Tournament field was much more exclusive then — typically only the conference champions and a few independents — so just being in it was an achievement for just about any other program.
But UCLA always expected to win it — and win it UCLA did. UCLA won 10 tournaments in 12 years — seven in a row between 1967 and 1973.
The closest thing we've seen to that since Wooden's retirement has been the Duke program.
Most people would tell you — and they're probably right — that Duke's coach, Mike Krzyzewski, deserves the credit. He's been the coach there for more than 30 years. He's taken Duke to 11 Final Fours (second only to Wooden), and he's won four national titles.
When he wins three games next season, he will be the most successful coach (in terms of victories) in NCAA Division I history. Barring something that is totally unexpected at this point, it is a sure bet that he will reach that milestone — probably sometime before 2011 is over.
He could have achieved it much sooner, though. If his Blue Devils had gone to the NCAA Tournament championship game, he would have won enough games to earn that distinction.
During the late '80s and early '90s, Duke won half of the national titles it has claimed in the Coach K era — and made more than half of its Final Four appearances.
Those were the glory years for the Blue Devils.
Since the 1995–96 season, Duke has returned to the Final Four at a less imposing clip — roughly once every four years (and only twice in the last decade).
Far more frequently, Duke has made it to the regional semifinals (the "Sweet Sixteen"), where the Blue Devils have gone down half a dozen times since 2002. This year, it was to Arizona. In 2009, it was Villanova that eliminated Duke. In 2006, it was LSU. The year before that, Duke lost to Michigan State. In 2003, Kansas turned back Duke. The year before that, Duke lost to Indiana.
There was a time when Duke, like UCLA before, was an automatic pick for everyone's Final Four. But no more.
It is almost a cliche now to think of basketball as primarily a black sport.
That sounds racist, I know, but it is simply a statement of fact.
It is a recognition of the almost total transformation that basketball has experienced in the last half century, a transformation that may well have begun 45 years ago tonight when Texas Western University (now the University of Texas at El Paso), with an all–black starting lineup, won the national basketball championship over perennial contender Kentucky.
No other team, no individual coach or player has had the lasting influence on college basketball that that team had.
Black athletes were not new in America in 1966. They had been participating in professional sports for many years, and most schools outside the South had black players on their rosters, but until 45 years ago tonight, no team in any sport had fielded an all–black starting lineup in a championship game.
On that night in College Park, Md., Kentucky was making its fifth appearance in an NCAA final. The Wildcats had never lost an NCAA title game before.
The Miners of Texas Western, meanwhile, had never been in a championship game, and they were widely expected to lose that one. Many people acknowledged that Texas Western was good, but it was the first college in the South to integrate its athletic programs.
The Miners' coach, Don Haskins, made a point of recruiting black players — a fact that contributed to his inductions into both the Basketball Hall of Fame (1997) and the College Basketbal Hall of Fame (2006).
It was admired in the mid–1960s, too, but, in spite of ample evidence of black competence in all other endeavors, white athletes were still widely regarded as superior by most Southerners.
Black athletes were the great untapped natural resource in the South, but few people in the region realized the impact they would have on all sports. Even among more enlightened observers, there was a prevailing belief that an all–black lineup simply couldn't compete with an all–white lineup.
Nevertheless, the Miners won with an all–black starting lineup.
It is interesting, now, to look in the rearview mirror and see what people are saying about that time in history, that night and that team.
I was not yet old enough to be in elementary school — and my family did not own a TV set at the time — so I have no memory of it. But things were clearly changing in the South.
In my little hometown in Arkansas, for instance, segregated schooling was coming to an end that spring. Generations before me had gone through a segregated school system, but I never knew a time when blacks and whites did not attend school together.
March 19, 1966 "might just have been another day for millions upon millions," Bill Knight of the El Paso Times observes.
(That is a particularly intriguing comment for me because I mentioned this anniversary to my father at dinner the other night — but, although he is old enough to remember that night and my parents were passionate advocates of civil rights, he doesn't remember Texas Western's victory.)
"But, for the world of college basketball, it is a landmark," Knight writes. "For a basketball team, a band of brothers, it was the moment of a lifetime. And, for the city of El Paso, that day did, does and always will loom larger than the beautiful blue desert sky, will always cast a warm welcoming shadow grander than the Franklin Mountains over the city."
John Wallingford of the Tacoma (Wash.) News Tribune recalls that Texas Western came to Seattle two weeks before the championship game to play Seattle University in the regular–season finale. The undefeated Miners were ranked #2 in the nation and were assumed to be next in line for the top spot following Kentucky's loss to Tennessee earlier in the day.
But Seattle ended up handing the Miners their only loss of the season.
Hollywood didn't exactly give an honest portrayal of that "pothole" in its 2006 "Glory Road" movie retelling of Texas Western's triumph, Wallingford wrote.
That may be so, but the fact also remains that, with the Miners' victory 45 years ago today, "the complexion of the game changed for good," writes Wallingford. Whether you take a few modest liberties in telling that story (as "Miracle" did in its dramatization of the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team) doesn't change the bottom line or its inspirational quality.
In the Christian Science Monitor, Geoff Johnson and Rex Nelles have called the Miners' victory one of the NCAA's top 10 Cinderella stories of all time.
I guess you could call it a "statement game" — before anyone really knew what one was.
When they met the Wildcats 45 years ago tonight, University of Maryland junior Gary Williams was there, and he remembered that Kentucky fans treated the Miners "as if it was beneath their team to even play the Texas Western guys," wrote John Feinstein in the Washington Post when Haskins died in 2008.
Feinstein also wrote that Williams remembered that, after the game, he heard "Kentucky fans saying to one another, 'We need to get some of them.' It wasn't long afterwards that everyone began to recruit them."
The game that was played 45 years ago tonight changed everything about college basketball, Feinstein observed. "Basketball people now refer to Texas Western–Kentucky as the Brown v. Board of Education of college basketball."
I suppose it is appropriate that this 45th anniversary occurs during an NCAA Tournament that will crown its champion in the Lone Star State.
Other Texas schools have been in the Final Four, but Texas Western remains the only one to win a national championship.
And, other than a couple of U.S. Olympic teams, it is the only team enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame.
"To dream the impossible dream To fight the unbeatable foe To bear with unbearable sorrow To run where the brave dare not go."
Joe Darion "The Impossible Dream"
At Richmond and Morehead State today, they know about Cinderella stories in the NCAA Tournament.
And, while theirs may be short–lived, their victories over Vanderbilt and Louisville, respectively, entitle them to enjoy the sensation of having beaten the seemingly unbeatable foe. They may well come crashing back to earth tomorrow.
The NCAA Tournament has a reputation for upsets. It is one of the main reasons that sports fans tune in to the games in the early rounds. They want to know who will be Cinderella this season.
Upsets were sort of uncommon in the old days of the tournament. Of course, part of that was because the field was much smaller, primarily conference champions and one or two independent programs. Until comparatively recently, there weren't enough slots for every team in the Top 20 to participate. It's kind of hard to call a victory for any Top 20 team much of an upset, even if comes against a higher–ranked team.
Still, upsets did occur from time to time.
They became more frequent when the field began to expand. That was what diminished the NIT, but it certainly brought excitement, an air of mystery, to the NCAA Tournament.
I'm not really sure when the tournament began to develop its reputation for upsets. Maybe it was in 1983 when North Carolina State upset powerful Houston in the championship game. It might even go back to Texas Western's unexpected victory over Kentucky 45 years ago tomorrow.
I do know that it was a reputation that was already established by the time the tournament began 25 years ago this week.
I was working on the sports staff of the Arkansas Gazette in those days, and I had graduated from the University of Arkansas, where I had been part of many exuberant crowds at football and basketball games.
Razorback fans were spoiled in the late 1970s and early 1980s. They were accustomed to seeing their basketball team compete in the NCAA Tournament, sometimes doing quite well.
But in the mid–1980s, Eddie Sutton was gone, Nolan Richardson had been hired but was frequently distracted by his young daughter's battle with leukemia, and the basketball program sometimes had the appearance of a rudderless ship.
In March of 1986, Arkansas fans were looking elsewhere to fill the void left by the Razorbacks, and Arkansas–Little Rock stepped up.
In the first round of that tournament, two No. 14 seeds won their opening–round games against No. 3 seeds — Cleveland State beat Indiana and UALR defeated Notre Dame. The ride didn't end for Cleveland State right away. The Vikings got to the Sweet 16 before losing to David Robinson and Navy by a single point.
But, for coach Mike Newell's Trojans, that was it. They lost two days later to North Carolina State.
That first–round game sure was memorable, though.
We had no TV in the newsroom in those days so we had to listen to the game on the radio. My memory is that just about everyone on the sports staff was pulling for UALR. It was the only Arkansas team in the tournament and, besides, who wanted Notre Dame to win?
Well, there was one Catholic guy on the staff, and I think he might have been pulling for the Irish, but he wasn't vocal about it.
I remember the Gazette's sports staffers gathered around a radio in much the same way that families must have listened to radio broadcasts during the Depression. A couple of the youngest staff members sat on the floor. The older staff members sat in chairs and listened intently as UALR built and maintained its lead.
Before long, people from the news side had gravitated to the sports department to listen to the radio.
After Newell left UALR, he spoke of his gratitude to all the people who came to the games and pulled for the Trojans in the days before their five–year postseason run that included three appearances in the NCAA Tournament. That, he said, was when he had been "selling a dream."
And, for one evening, UALR's students and fans permitted themselves to dream the impossible dream of being the ones who would cut down the nets and hoist the trophy in Dallas' Reunion Arena.
It didn't happen that way for UALR. It may never happen for UALR.
But, for that one evening, the Trojans could dream of it.
There was a time in my life when the NCAA Tournament dominated all my waking moments.
I worked on sports copy desks for many years, and I can assure you that "March Madness" truly is insane. Think it's only crazy from the spectator's side? Wrong! I was never so exhausted — mentally as well as physically — as I was after working a night shift during the NCAA Tournament.
And, no matter who won the tournament, I was always glad when it was over.
After I left sports copy desks, I sort of left the madness behind, too. But I continued to pull for my alma mater, the University of Arkansas so I continued to be interested in the Razorbacks' fortunes. As their influence has waned, so has my interest — to the point where I no longer pay much attention to basketball — and, therefore, rarely pay much attention to th NCAA Tournament brackets.
However, for whatever reason, I have filled out a bracket this year. And I thought about posting it here — but it was just too big.
So I decided to simply summarize my predictions for you. Here goes:
East: A lot of people have No. 1 seed Ohio State winning it all, but I don't. Maybe it's a bias on my part — a little payback, perhaps, for Ohio State's victory over Arkansas in the Sugar Bowl. Anyway, I picked No. 4 seed Kentucky to beat the Buckeyes in the Sweet 16.
I don't believe, though, that Kentucky's relatively young lineup will get past No. 2 seed North Carolina in the regional final.
Southwest: When I was younger, I didn't like to pick a No. 1 seed to make it to the Final Four. I guess it seemed too much like picking the favorite at the race track (a place I visited from time to time when I was in college and for awhile after graduation).
Sure, there's always a reason — at least one and it's usually a good one, too — why the favorite is the favorite.
There are a couple of regionals in this year's tournament in which I have concluded that the top seed really is the likely winner. I know that upsets happen in the tournament every year — and I have, actually, picked some upsets in this year's field — but I'm picking all the higher seeds in the Southwest to prevail.
I think No. 4 seed Louisville might be a tough out in the Sweet 16 and No. 2 seed Notre Dame might cause some problems in the Elite Eight, but, when the dust settles, I think No. 1 seed Kansas will win the region.
Southeast: As I say, I have picked two No. 1 seeds to advance to this year's Final Four, and I have identified Kansas as one.
But the winner of the Southeast won't be the other.
I do pick No. 1 seed Pittsburgh to advance to the Elite Eight, although I was torn over whether to pick Pitt or No. 5 seed Kansas State in the Sweet 16. And I think Pitt could be tested in the second round against No. 8 seed Butler.
No, I think Pitt will fall in the regional final against No. 2 seed Florida. The Gators may struggle at times. They will probably face No. 7 seed UCLA in the second round, and UCLA might be playing with a lot of emotion since this will be the Bruins' first NCAA Tournament since legendary coach John Wooden died last summer. But that emotion stuff is likely to be more effective against No. 10 seed Michigan State than it will be against Florida.
The Gators might also be tested in the Sweet 16, where I think they will face No. 3 seed BYU. Some folks think Florida will face No. 6 seed St. John's or No. 11 seed Gonzaga in the Sweet 16, but I think BYU will get past either of those teams.
West: I don't know how this stacks up against what other people are predicting, but I've predicted the most "upsets" — i.e., the games in which the lower–seeded teams win — in this region.
I think No. 9 seed Tennessee will defeat No. 8 seed Michigan in the first round. I also think No. 11 seed Missouri will beat No. 6 seed Cincinnati.
But that's it. My days at the track taught me that favorites pay off more often than longshots do. So the rest of the games in the West should follow form, and I think No. 1 seed Duke will defeat No. 2 seed San Diego State in the regional final.
Which brings us to the Final Four.
All eyes may be on North Carolina and Duke as they square off on one side. That's only natural. They have a long rivalry, and they have been in many Final Fours between them, but they have competed in the same Final Four only once (1991), and they have never faced each other in one before.
This will be an historic chapter in their epic rivalry
The Kansas–Florida game may be overlooked — and I think that may well be to the benefit of the winner, Kansas. Not as much pressure.
Thus, after Duke emerges with what may be a hard–fought victory in its semifinal and Kansas defeats Florida, I predict that Kansas will win in the championship game on April 4.
I suppose the odds are pretty good that you don't remember where you were and what you were doing 30 years ago today.
But I do.
I was still living in my home state of Arkansas. I was a journalism student at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, the home of the Razorbacks. Regardless of religious faith, that's really Mecca for most Arkansans (and I guess you have to have lived there — or someplace similar — to understand).
On this day in 1981, I was in my hometown of Conway, Ark., which is about 120 miles to the southeast. It was spring break, and I was visiting old friends in Conway that week.
The NCAA basketball tournament got under way that Thursday, on March 12, 1981. Before it ended, John Hinckley would attempt to assassinate Ronald Reagan. Later that year, someone would shoot Pope John Paul II. Somebody else had already murdered ex–Beatle John Lennon a few months before.
In mid–March, Razorback fans rejoiced in the basketball team's opening round victory over Mercer, but then a sense of foreboding set in. The next opponent would be Louisville, the team that won the national title the year before.
Arkansas and Louisville were to face each other on Saturday afternoon, March 14, 1981, in Austin, Texas. Austin, as any long–term Razorback fan could tell you, had been the scene of many Arkansas disappointments over the years, most of them in football.
But that had been in contests with the University of Texas.
Razorback basketball had really taken off in terms of popularity in recent years. Eddie Sutton took the Hogs to the Final Four in 1978, then they were within a whisper of returning to the Final Four in 1979 before Larry Bird and Indiana State knocked them off in the regional finals.
Spring break was nearing its conclusion. I was planning to drive back to Fayetteville the next day, but on that Saturday, I went over to visit my Aunt Bess and watch the game with her.
Aunt Bess wasn't really my aunt. That's just what everybody called her, and she was probably old enough to be my grandmother. She treated me as if I were her grandson. Matter of fact, she had a grandson who was close to my age, but he lived two time zones away so I guess I was kind of her surrogate grandson.
I used to stop at her house after school on Wednesdays, and we would drink iced tea and talk for an hour or so about all sorts of topics. She was old school about a lot of things, and she did her best to pass along lessons for living.
And, like just about everyone else in Arkansas, she was a Razorback fan.
The three–point shot was still several years from becoming a reality so Reed's shot was only worth two points. But that was enough to turn a one–point deficit into a one–point triumph.
I have never had a feeling like it — before or since.
Aunt Bess and I leaped up from where we had been sitting. We yelled in unison, and then we embraced.
As I have written before, Aunt Bess was devoutly religious. She saw the hand of God in everything. In hindsight, I was always envious of that sense of assurance. Aunt Bess never seemed to doubt that there was a purpose in everything, but I often did. I still do.
But Aunt Bess was certain of what she had seen.
"The Lord took it away from us," she said with a big smile, "and then he gave it back to us."
There was "a reason" for that, she told me, but, 30 years later, I'll be darned if I can figure out what it was.
Arkansas got routed by future SEC rival LSU in the next round.
They'll be announcing the NCAA Tournament pairings today. Not so long ago (or so it seems), that was an important day in my life.
In my home state of Arkansas today, there seems to be some uncertainty about the future of the relationship between my alma mater, the University of Arkansas, and the basketball coach, John Pelphrey.
Pelphrey's position was a bit shaky when the Razorbacks went one and done in the SEC Tournament last week, but the reports I heard indicated that, even so, he would remain the coach for another year.
Lately, there have been reports that Pelphrey violated NCAA rules, and many people now seem to feel that all bets are off.
I have no special insights into the situation. Since I no longer live in Arkansas, I often feel as if I am an outsider when it comes to these things. Today, I have been trying to learn what I can from a distance.
I was acquainted with John Brummett, now of Arkansas News, when I lived in Little Rock and worked for the Arkansas Gazette. He is, as he says, a political columnist, not a sports columnist, but the lines are often blurred in Arkansas when the Razorbacks are involved.
And I think he makes a good point when he says that Arkansas has lost its "brand." One of the things I always admired about Brummett was his way with words, and he shows that in his column about Razorback basketball.
"The problem with University of Arkansas basketball," he writes, "is that it ... is Elvis without a hip, Dylan without a lyric, Michael Jackson without the moonwalk."
Football will always have an identity in Arkansas, but other sports need a "brand" with which fans can identify. Basketball got that from Eddie Sutton and Nolan Richardson. It doesn't seem to have gotten that from the coaches who have come along since.
Harry King of Arkansas News says there won't be an announcement made on Pelphrey's fate until the weekend is over at the earliest — and if the Razorbacks somehow manage to get into the NIT, it will probably wait until after they have been eliminated.
Joanne Gerstner at the New York Times reports there have been rumors that Missouri coach Mike Anderson is a top contender for the job. Anderson, as Gerstner observes, has roots in the Arkansas program, having been an assistant under Richardson when the Razorbacks won their first — and, so far, only — national basketball title in 1994.
Ah, yes, 1994. I remember it well.
It had been years since I left Arkansas, but I followed the Razorbacks that season with a real sense of pride.
I had been just a schoolboy when Sutton came to Arkansas and turned the U of A basketball program into something more than a diversion between football seasons. The national title was like the culmination of all his efforts.
It had grown before my very eyes. It was still growing when I left the state. And, nearly 17 years ago, it blossomed under Richardson into a national champion.
The Razorbacks made it back to the national title game the following year but lost to UCLA.
I don't know all the details about what led to Richardson's departure from Arkansas — and it isn't really something I want to explore today, anyway — but things just haven't been the same for the program since he left.
In the years after I left Arkansas, I always knew the Razorbacks would be in the NCAA Tournament, so I didn't really pay close attention to the regular season. And even when they dropped from the national rankings, I wasn't overly concerned.
But in recent years, the Razorbacks seem to have returned to the basketball swamp in which they existed before Sutton came along.
Sutton brought a magic to the Arkansas basketball program, and Richardson picked up the baton when Sutton dropped it in his haste to take the job at Kentucky, but Sutton made his way back to Oklahoma, where he made a new name for himself at Oklahoma State.
Thus, I think one of the most interesting reports I have heard comes from Berry Tramel of The Oklahoman, who suggests that Arkansas might replace Pelphrey with his former Kentucky teammate and now Oklahoma State coach Travis Ford.
Could Ford restore the magic that the Arkansas program needs to bring fans to the games and make Razorback basketball nationally prominent again? His first two years at OSU resulted in 20–win seasons and consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances, but the Cowboys' record this year was much like Arkansas', and it is doubtful they will make it three in a row.
Still, if the U of A's administrators believe Ford can restore the Arkansas brand — make it his own — it might be worth a try.
It was bound to happen. It was like that week before Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, when people stood transfixed for days, watching as it meandered across the vast Gulf of Mexico and only began taking steps to protect themselves — or get the hell out of there — when the storm was practically on top of them.
The NFL and the players bought themselves a few days to dream about a miracle. When one did not happen, they were forced to do what they should have done earlier.
I feel somewhat vindicated by Don Banks of Sports Illustrated, who writes, "Here's wishing they would have saved us all some time and skipped the explanations of what went wrong, or why things broke down once again."
It's all public posturing.
And, really, who can blame either side? They're only mimicking what they have seen their national leaders doing, and they've all been guilty of it. No one is blameless.
Everyone points fingers and assigns blame — and nothing gets accomplished.
Well, they went through their week of pretending that they were making progress, but they really weren't. Now, they have to get down to the hard work, and the pressure will just increase as the days go by. The NFL draft is supposed to be held next month. Players should be going through offseason conditioning programs and drills. In a few months, training camps will be scheduled to open.
Fans will be increasingly impatient — until an agreement is reached or the NFL does what major league baseball had to do 17 years ago and cancel the season.
That didn't really work out too well for baseball. The 1994 World Series was canceled and the start of the 1995 season was delayed, leaving a bad taste in everyone's mouth that lingered for a few years and didn't go away until the home run duel between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa in 1997.
That gave baseball a shot in the arm — until it was revealed that McGwire, probably Barry Bonds and possibly Sosa hit hundreds of home runs in their careers (especially the late 1980s, the 1990s and the early 2000s) with the artificial assistance of steroids.
Since those revelations, America's pastime has been steadily losing fans.
The same fate awaits NFL owners and players if they don't get over their greed and resolve their differences.
It might be worse. The economy wasn't great in 1994 — but it was a lot better than it is today. Unemployed fans may not be as sympathetic as they were then.
For that matter, fans were a lot more sympathetic four decades ago, when athletes were virtual slaves to their teams and had no control over their professional lives.
But today many fans see all professional athletes as overpaid prima donnas and all team owners as greedy.
The NFL's most recent experience with a work stoppage as nearly a quarter of a century ago. Much has changed in that time. Tom Landry was still coaching the Dallas Cowboys. Joe Montana was still playing for the San Francisco 49ers.
That lockout was modest compared to what may be in store for the NFL in 2011. The players' strike lasted less than four weeks. Three games were played with "replacement players," and one game was canceled.
It was often treated as a gag. The replacement teams were given funny nicknames, like the Chicago Spare Bears, and fans seemed to embrace legitimate pro football when it returned.
But there doesn't seem to be much that is funny about this situation.
Forty years ago tonight, Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali met in the much–anticipated "Fight of the Century."
Technically, I guess you could call it the first"Fight of the Century" — at least in my lifetime.
There have been other fights that have been known as the "Fight of the Century" — the 1910 bout between Jack Johnson and James Jefferies was known by that name, and so was the 1938 fight between Joe Louis and Max Schmeling — but most modern fight fans would tell you it can only apply to a showdown between Ali and Frazier.
Ali and Frazier met three times in the 1970s, and their first bout was on March 8, 1971. I guess some folks would say it was the best of the three — but, to reach that conclusion (when the third fight was the famous "Thrilla in Manila"), one was required (practically) to be pro–Frazier and/or anti–Ali.
It was, after all, the only one of the three fights that Frazier won.
It was an epic showdown. Both men were undefeated as professional fighters. Frazier was the defending champion. Ali was a former champion.
In 1971, though, if one was pulling for Frazier, it said more about that person's politics — specifically, one's position on Vietnam — than anything else. It was as telling as the length of one's hair or the style of one's clothes.
Ali had served a suspension from pro boxing in the very prime of his career for refusing to serve in the military during the war. He had been stripped of his title in April 1967 and then allowed to return to pro boxing in October 1970.
Frazier, on the other hand, was a darling of the pro–war elements in American politics in those days. He said that he didn't serve in the military because he was a father, but he would have no problem serving if called upon to do so.
Before he retired from boxing, Ali became the first man to win the heavyweight championship three separate times. He is considered by most boxing observers to be one of the greatest heavyweights — if not the greatest — of all time.
But, in 1971, he was really no more significant than any other man who had held the heavyweight title at one time — just more flamboyant than most, certainly more controversial than most. He had fought twice since 1967, and he was being thrust into the ring to face the defending heavyweight champion, a fighter who was known to be a punishing puncher.
It was often suggested that he hadn't had enough time to get into peak condition for a shot at the title. That was a fair assessment, I suppose.
It certainly was better than many of the things I heard people say about Ali at the time, that's for sure.
Perhaps no challenger up to that time had been as reviled as Ali. I've heard that Johnson, the first black heavyweight champion, took a lot of abuse while he held the title (but not, I believe, before that time) whereas Ali was always a lightning rod, whether he was the champion or the challenger.
Whether his surname was the one he chose (Ali) or the one to which he was born (Clay).
In 1971, there was a lot of residual anger directed at him from those who supported the war in Vietnam — and resented it when Ali refused to be drafted into service.
In hindsight, I guess the irony is that even those who opposed the war weren't necessarily supporting Ali. My mother, for example, was strongly opposed to the war, but she didn't particularly care for Ali, either.
She was a supporter of civil rights, though, so I'm sure she sympathized when Ali said, "I ain't got no quarrel with the Viet Cong. No Viet Cong ever called me nigger."
As I recall, Frazier said nothing that was in the least bit incendiary — which was a big part of his appeal to conservative Americans.
I guess the Vietnam angle spilled over into other areas. Although both men were black, Ali was something of a champion in the black community — whereas Frazier was often seen as the "white man's champion."
Tickets to the fight sold for $150 — a figure that, as Tim Dahlberg of the Associated Press remembers, was an "astonishing sum" at a time when the minimum hourly wage in America was $1.60.
There was no pay–per–view in those days. For those who were willing to part with the cash, one could see what was called "closed–circuit" coverage of a big fight at selected movie theaters. And there was no bigger event in the boxing world than Ali–Frazier I.
I don't know what tickets to closed–circuit venues went for in those days, but it was simply out of the question for me. I wanted to see the fight, but I just couldn't.
Years later, I finally saw a tape of it, a tape that included the pre–fight stuff that the people who bought the closed–circuit tickets saw that evening. Fight Night brought all the celebrities and publicity hounds to Madison Square Garden, the folks who cared more about being seen than what they were seeing — even if what they were seeing was historic — and the paparazzi of the day were only too happy to oblige.
I remember that night vividly. There was radio coverage — but each round description was broadcast after a delay, and the fact that it was delayed was announced before each round began (I always assumed that was to discourage gambling) — and I remember reclining on my parents' bed and listening on the radio in their bedroom to the announcers' descriptions of Ali and Frazier trading blows.
It was a chilly night, and, at one point, my mother, who had been listening to the fight with my brother and me, suggested that she fix mugs of hot chocolate for us. The image of the three of us sitting around that radio and the memory of that warm, chocolatey liquid insulating me against that early March evening while I listened to the fight will always be with me.
That's one of the things about my memory of that evening that is so special for me now. Mom enjoyed some sports, but she had no real interest in boxing — and, as I said, she wasn't too keen on Ali, either. On that evening, though, she listened to the radio broadcast with my brother and me — and she talked about it with us. Not because it mattered to her, but because it mattered to us.
When we started listening to the fight, I just knew we were in it for the long haul. Maybe boxing fans who were brought up during the Mike Tyson era can't understand, but Ali and Frazier always gave fans their money's worth. No first– or second–round knockouts whenever these guys were in the ring together.
I guess the trend was established 40 years ago tonight. Ali and Frazier went the distance, 15 rounds, before Frazier was declared the winner by unanimous decision.
The speculation by the radio announcers was that Ali was trailing on the judges' scorecards as the men began that 15th round, and he probably needed a knockout — or at least a couple of knockdowns — to prevail. The men had been about even through the first 11 rounds, they said, but Frazier seemed to seize control with a shot late in the 11th round that might have knocked Ali down if not for the ropes that caught him and kept him on his feet.
As I listened to the final round, it occurred to me that it was already over and both Ali and Frazier, as well as all the folks who were in Madison Square Garden that night, knew the outcome. But I didn't. Not yet.
About 30 seconds into that 15th round, Ali was knocked down for what may have been the first time in his boxing career, pro or amateur. Already viewed by many as arrogant, he had come into the fight with red tassles dangling from each ankle, almost defying Frazier to knock him off his feet. The sight of those tassles briefly occupying the area where Ali's face had been must have seemed like justification to his detractors.
I can't describe the sound of the announcers as they reported the blow Frazier had delivered and how it knocked a startled Ali on his back. There was an excitement in their voices that I had never heard before.
It was many years before I saw a tape of the fight, but when I saw Ali knocked on his back and those tassles flying wildly in the air, it looked exactly as I had always pictured it. Frazier, who sometimes seemed to be dragging in the late stages of the fight, appeared to be revived by that and hammered away at Ali following a mandatory eight–count, landing a punch midway through the round that should have dropped Ali to the canvas again.
Ali didn't go down again, but the damage had been done — in more ways than one. Both men went to the hospital after the fight — there were even rumors, for a time, that Frazier had died. Ali swore that he would retire from boxing if those rumors turned out to be true.
Fortunately, they were not.
As a child, I always felt that Frazier and Ali really didn't like each other. Ali was constantly calling Frazier names and suggesting that Frazier wasn't very smart, and "Smokin' Joe" really seemed to smolder whenever Ali spoke to him in public.
A couple of decades later, when NBC brought the two of them together to watch a tape of the fight and reflect on that event, the two men seemed to patch things up. Ali, who had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease several years earlier, said it had all been in fun, and Frazier said there were no hard feelings.
Neither was there any doubt who won the fight.
George Willis writes in the New York Post that Ali eventually admitted that Frazier had been the better fighter that night.
"I watched the fight over and over trying to find excuses, saying they robbed me or didn't like me because of this or that," Ali said, "but I watched the fight, and the first fight he did win."
A "tomato can" is a fighter who is believed to be past his prime and an "easy" or "guaranteed" win for an up-and-coming fighter who wants to pad his record.
Sometimes, though, the "tomato can" doesn't cooperate. For example, in 1990, undefeated heavyweight champion Mike Tyson lost the title to a 42-to-1 underdog named Buster Douglas.
Another heavyweight champion, Muhammad Ali, almost lost his title to lightly regarded Chuck Wepner in 1975. Wepner nearly went the distance against Ali and inspired the original "Rocky" movie.
I got my bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Arkansas, and I got my master's degree in journalism from the University of North Texas. Most of my adult life has been dedicated to writing and editing in one form or another. Most recently I have taught writing (news and developmental) as an adjunct journalism professor at Richland College, where I advise the student newspaper staff. Go, Thunderducks!
Most people would tell you — and they're probably right — that Duke's coach, Mike Krzyzewski, deserves the credit. He's been the coach there for more than 30 years. He's taken Duke to 11 Final Fours (second only to Wooden), and he's won four national titles.
