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Where have all the villians gone? By J. BRADY McCOLLOUGH He scowled, he scoffed, and it took 30 minutes for Bob Huggins to admit that he would be excited for tonight’s game against Kansas at Allen Fieldhouse. “Probably,” he offered, he would be more excited than he was for the game against Kennesaw State earlier this season. Yes, Kennesaw State. On Tuesday, Huggins looked and acted every bit the coaching nemesis that has been missing from Allen Fieldhouse since Norm Stewart retired from the Missouri bench eight years ago. The “Sit down, Norm!” chants and the seething insults thrown at former Oklahoma coach Billy Tubbs are only faint echoes now. But if there’s one coach with the ability and aura to remove the frog from The Phog’s throat, it’s Huggins. “Bobby’s one of the last of us bad guys,” Tubbs says. “Everybody’s getting politically correct now, and Huggins is one of the only ones out there that …” Tubbs paused. “Everybody’s being so nice to each other,” he said. “It’s kind of sickening.” Allen Fieldhouse misses those villains of old, the coaches who instilled hatred, respect and fear into the 16,300 fans who routinely pack the old barn. But how does one become a villain? Well, first off, he must win in Lawrence somewhat frequently. Former Kansas State coach Jack Hartman won six times, Tubbs four and Stewart 11. His team must play there every year, which eliminates current Big 12 South coaches. He must stay at his institution long enough to become a familiar face. And, most important, his program must be a threat to Kansas. Even Stewart agrees that Huggins has the tools to be next in line. “Bob is what I’ve always referred to as a jaw-grinder,” Stewart says with a chuckle. “The muscle below the ears gets a lot of work. Bob’s a competitor. He’s more visible. He might take over that position.” ••• The Kansas fans came after Billy Tubbs, swinging at him as his players stood in front of him for protection. That day in 1984, Tubbs became public enemy No. 1 in Lawrence. His Sooners won in overtime to clinch the Big Eight regular-season title, and he allowed them to cut down the nets on their opponent’s home floor. As Oklahoma celebrated, the KU fans took out their angst on the seemingly-always-smirking Tubbs. Tubbs says they did it because Kansas had done it in Norman the previous year after winning a first-round Big Eight tournament game. Retired longtime Kansas broadcaster Max Falkenstien doesn’t remember it that way at all. “I don’t think KU fans have ever forgiven Billy Tubbs for that act,” Falkenstien says. Tubbs hasn’t forgotten Allen Fieldhouse either. “It was wild up there!” Tubbs says. “They could walk by your bench, they could touch you, they could pour a little beverage on you. It was a tough crowd.” So many things were different in the heyday of the coaching villains. For one thing, Allen Fieldhouse was laid out differently. Opposing coaches used to walk under a throng of students on their way to the floor, which allowed fans to toss popcorn on them. The signs fans made ranged from the brutal to the obscene, but now the KU administration has cracked down on signs. “The shenanigans that used to go on aren’t going on now,” Stewart says. The culture of the game has changed, too, with more vanilla coaches who laud their next opponent. Tubbs, Stewart and Hartman were different, with bigger-than-the-game personalities. They were fearless, and in the end, that meant they were to be feared. “I don’t really care about history,” says Tubbs, now the athletic director at Lamar University. “My players and I were never ‘awed by The Phog, what a great history, blah, blah, blah.’ ” Sure, Tubbs’ antics drove KU fans mad. But that made it even sweeter when the Jayhawks beat Oklahoma in the 1988 national championship game at Kemper Arena. “Yeah,” Tubbs says, “they ought to be thankful to me.” ••• Ryan Kruse realized something in discussing Huggins’ candidacy to be the new bad guy: A good villain makes you stronger. “What’s been missing,” says Kruse, who graduated from KU in 2000, “is the Big 12 North being competitive with one another. That’s hurting KU at the end of the year more than in the middle of the year. Did I enjoy us getting beat on Saturday? No. But I can’t see how that’s going to hurt us.” Can Huggins make Kansas State into a second perennial power in the North? He’s certainly gotten started quickly. His Wildcats are 6-2 in the Big 12, tied with Kansas for second in the league. Kruse and many other Jayhawks watched as Huggins’ Wildcats upset Texas on Saturday in Austin. “KU fans are on edge because Bob Huggins has a proven track record,” Kruse says. “The ‘Back in Black’ mentality he has, he’s supposed to be this hard-nosed, tough-stance coach. As a fan, I can sit up in the stands and pick on him.” Nobody really knows what to expect tonight. Will fans at Allen take it easy on Huggins in his first visit and wait until he wins one to get ornery? “It has to be someone who’s beaten you a few times before the fans and students take out the cudgel themselves,” Falkenstien says. Huggins, asked about what he expected tonight, said it didn’t matter. He just hoped that the Kansas fans would be classy. “When we went on the road in Conference USA, the people who were nasty and all that, they were wannabes,” Huggins says. “They’d bring all the degenerates in from town and they’d yell and scream and act like fools. That was their idea of trying to be like the classy people in Louisville.” Ah, yes, the old rival. Huggins seems to think that Louisville’s Freedom Hall is comparable to what he’ll see tonight. “Freedom Hall!” Kruse says. “I don’t think that touches the tradition and atmosphere that Allen Fieldhouse has.” Call it the first of many disagreements. The first game hasn’t
even started yet, and already things are getting heated.
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J. Brady McCollough - jbrady@coveringsports.com (email) - 816-868-2621 (cell) |
