University of North Carolina Athletics
Not Just Another Coach
March 29, 2000 | Men's Basketball
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Complete NCAA Tournament Coverage
March 29, 2000
Originally Published on March 24, 2000
y Geoff Calkins, Scripps Howard News Service
AUSTIN, Texas - The 12-year-old boy had polio, a sapping, debilitating illness that robbed him of the use of his legs.
He missed a year of school. He was permanently consigned to a wheelchair. When it was time to go back to school - to West Junior High, in Parsons, Kan. - he needed someone to push him.
Which is when the older kid from down the street started showing up, without even being asked, every single morning.
The 12-year-old still doesn't know why the older boy did it, why he felt compelled to take it as his duty. But it got to be a routine, the two of them, as regular as a Kansas sunrise.
For three years, they'd head south, to the junior high.
For four years, they'd head west, to the high school.
"We went across the street for seven years," he said. "One way or another."
The 12-year-old boy is 61 now. His name is Bob Brandenburg and he still lives in Parsons. Tonight, when Tennessee takes on North Carolina in the Sweet 16, he'll be pulling for the kid who helped him all those years ago.
"Bill Guthridge is just a solid, quality guy," Brandenburg said. "They don't come any better."
At the risk of sounding hopelessly out of it, we're going to talk about an old virtue, today. We're going to talk about loyalty.
Draw up a list of the qualities most valued in the modern world of sports. The qualities that are most apt to put your face on SportsCenter.
Charisma would be right up there, wouldn't it? And flash. And pure, incandescent talent.
ut loyalty?
Loyalty would rank somewhere below interesting body-piercings.
Players jump from team to team. Coaches jump from school to school. How did Tommy Tuberville put it after he left Ole Miss for Auburn?
"This," he said, in what might well be the catch-phrase of a generation, "is a business."
Which is why it's so nice to witness the recent success of Bill Guthridge, 62, the North Carolina coach who has always figured there's more to life than the next stop, the next job, the next rung on the ladder.
"He's never been a big self-promoter," Brandenburg said. "If he thinks something is right, he's going to stick with it."
This is how Guthridge has lived his life, from those days back in Parsons, to his days at Carolina. He's been married to the same woman for 31 years. He's a doting son and father.
Guthridge's 96-year-old mother, who died earlier this week, had been in a nursing home, uncomprehending, for several years. He visited her like clockwork.
And on the basketball court? Well, put it this way. The guy has played or worked in basketball for 42 years. In that time he's been involved with two college programs. Two college programs. That's a good week for Larry Brown or Jim Harrick.
First, came Kansas State, where Guthridge was a player, then an assistant for Tex Winter. He might have stayed there, too, except that after five years, Winter pushed him.
"I sort of insisted that he go," Winter told the Charlotte Observer. "He was so loyal."
Then came Carolina. Where it's hard to remember which came first, Guthridge or that pastel shade of blue the team is wearing.
Guthridge spent 30 years as Dean Smith's assistant, 30 years working in the game's biggest shadow.
He coached Bob McAdoo and J.R. Reid, Mitch Kupchak and Serge Zwikker, Sam Perkins and Vince Carter.
"I believed in the institution," he said, by way of explanation. "And I felt I was contributing."
Finally, three years ago, Smith stepped down. Picked Guthridge as his successor. If nobody else understood Guthridge's importance to the program, Smith did.
"He never did receive enough credit," Smith said, "although he didn't ask for it."
Now, the truth is, it hasn't gone all smoothly since then, in the sense that Carolina hasn't yet won a national championship. Guthridge's first team made it to the Final Four, but that was largely attributed to the individual talent of Carter and Antawn Jamison. The next team got bombed out of the first round of the tournament by Weber State.
And when this year started poorly, the Carolina fans turned surly.
Guthridge - unlike, say, Tennessee coach Jerry Green, who lashed out at one radio caller as an "idiot" - handled the heat with typical good humor.
"I don't mind if they hang me in effigy," he said, "as long as they don't do the real thing. That's where I draw the line on that one."
After last weekend, of course, it was harder to find the critics. North Carolina beat Missouri and No. 1 seed Stanford to make it to the Sweet 16. Two more wins, and Guthridge will be off to his 14th Final Four.
So at roughly 9:10 this evening, Brandenburg will pull his wheelchair up to the television, flip it to CBS and pull for the guy who used to push him to school all those years ago.
"They don't make many like Bill Guthridge," said Brandenburg, simply. "But they ought to."
