Question about Spencer Haywood and Potential Recruitment at UK

[JPS]

Recently it's come to my attention a number of references talking about Spencer Haywood where Haywood suggests among other things that when he was coming out of high school, that he signed with Tennessee but that Adolph Rupp at Kentucky somehow prevented this from happening.

There's also an interview with Haywood where he specifically mentions that he visited Kentucky's campus, but was not comfortable there, largely because of Rupp and his language.

This is all new to me. I've spent a lot of time over the last 15 years or so looking at UK and the whole integration issue and never until now heard about Haywood being recruited by UK, nor about this suggested tampering by Rupp of Tennessee's recruit.

Anyway, I was curious if anyone know anything about this ?

Here is what I know.

1.) First the interview is linked below. I haven't gone back to listen to it after I first heard it a few months ago, but it does touch on his visit to UK, his dealings with UT and also mentions a conversation he had with Rupp prior to the 1968 Olympics where Rupp tells him that he is an important part of the team and cautions him not to get injured in the pre-Olympic trials.

https://www.nbrpa.com/interactive/index.aspx?gal=video&rnd=123

2.) Second a blog entry from an earlier article a number of years ago where Haywood says in an interview:

I wanted to play in Tennessee so my people down South could see me, but I didn’t realize that I was the first African American player to sign for the Southern Conference. Adolph Rupp decided that if I wasn’t going to play for Kentucky, I wasn’t going to play. He just erupted and there was such problems going in that I decided to get out of there. I had to sneak out in the middle of the night --same way I left Mississippi. Will found me a place, which turned out to be in Trinidad, Colorado—the middle of nowhere.


3.) Third a recent article in a Seattle newspaper where it says much as the same as what Haywood claimed earlier.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/basketball/293275_haywood22.html

A Mississippi native raised as a teen in Detroit, Haywood accepted a scholarship offer from Tennessee, supposedly making him the Southeastern Conference's first black basketball player. When Kentucky's Adolph Rupp interceded, suggesting his program would decide when and where the league became integrated, Haywood fled to Trinidad State Junior College near the Colorado-New Mexico border, where he averaged 28.2 points and 22.1 rebounds.

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For my part, I have contacted the authors of the last two items looking for more information.

When I did a newspaperarchive.com search for Haywood during that time, what I found doesn't particularly back up the claims, although it does leave the door open that Kentucky may have been recruiting Haywood that year. The claim that Rupp somehow controlled who Tennessee signed and played is frankly ridiculous and doesn't stand up to the records below. If Rupp was able to control such a thing, I would have expected Ray Mears and others to make a huge stink about it. But this is the first I've heard about it and there's nothing in the records to suggest it, other than what has come from Haywood's head.

Regarding Haywood and Tennessee, I did find articles that confirmed that he signed with Tennessee and intended to play there:

May 19, 1967 - Haywood announces during a high school team banquet in Detroit that he intends to sign with Tennessee. UT coach Ray Mears is in attendance.

June 1, 1967 - An article is published saying that he has accepted a scholarship offer from Tennessee.

August 29, 1967 - An article is published mentioning that Haywood would not be attending UT due to 'academic deficiencies'. It is suggested that he will try to attend a local Knoxville college to get his grades in order.

I didn't find anything specifically linking Rupp and Haywood until a few years later when the professional leagues were looking to lure Haywood out of college early. Rupp came out with a statement condeming the professional leagues for raiding the collegiate ranks for underclassmen.

As far as the idea that Kentucky recruited Haywood and that he visited UK, I have asked a few people who should know but haven't yet received any confirmation that this actually happened. I'm hopeful someone can confirm or deny and if so, provide details about the visit.

One item I did find which certainly leaves the door open that Uk did recruit him was an article from that year where it mentions UK's recruitment of Jim McDaniels and other players. Although Rupp doesn't name names, he does mention that UK was interested in two black out-of-state players who were nearly as tall as the seven-foot McDaniels. This would certainly match up with the description of Haywood, who was in the 6-8 to 6-10 range.

Below is the article:

http://www.bigbluehistory.net/bb/Graphics/Articles/1967recruiting.jpg

[JPS]

Just to follow up on this, I have been able to view two of Haywood's biographies, one which was published in 1972 and the other was republished in 1994 (not sure the original publication date).

Anyway, it's interesting to contrast what was said in these books (one which was published at a time when Rupp was still around and very much could comment on anything Haywood might choose to say).

First from the 1972 book, "Stand up for Something - The Spencer Haywood Story" by Bill Libby and Spencer Haywood (Grosset & Dunlap) 1972, pg 36-37


I finally decided to go to Tennessee. That sounds crazy, I know, and [Will] Robinson was dead against it. He figured they just wanted to use me, and he was probably right. But I had met a chick in Knoxville when they brought me to the campus for a visit and I really dug this sister; and even though there weren't many blacks in school, there were a lot of them in town, and a lot of sisters I thought I could deal with in the black part of town, and I thought I'd have fun there. It's just a chancy thing, you know, why a guy makes up his mind that he likes this place or that place or wants to go here or there, and a sympathetic sister is as good a reason as any. Ray Mears, the coach, seemed like a nice man. And there was a lot of talk of me breaking the black barrier, blazing a trail in basketball for blacks to follow me in that school and all southern schools. I liked the idea of being a pioneer. So I enrolled. But when I took the entrance exam, I flunked it. I did my best, but I wasn't ready for it and I didn't make it. And the NCAA ruled I couldn't play ball there because of that. So I dropped out.


Note, no mention of any pressure from Rupp or Kentucky. It was pretty much cut and dried that Haywood was not eligible. Note that this is in agreement with what I found when searching through newspaper articles from that time period (ie an article in late August of that summer mentioning Haywood leaving UT because of academic issues and absolutely no mention of any comments by Rupp concerning Haywood being at Tennessee (during that summer or at any time for that matter) etc.)

Here is a much longer excerpt from Haywood's next book. Note that in this one he does go into more detail about his 'accomodations' at UT and basically admits that he wasn't eligible to begin with, but chose UT in part because they fed him a line about it not being a problem. He does mention Rupp in this (which I bolded, but terms it a 'rumor'. Again, nothing concrete concerning how Rupp is supposed to have any power over who UT recruits or plays.

From "Spencer Haywood's Rise, Fall and Recovery" Amistad 1994.


Will Robinson told me I was crazy. Charles Wilson, my coach back in Belzoni, told me I was crazy. But what did they know? I was eighteen years old and ready to make decisions for myself, a little tired of having my life dominated by my coaches. I would choose my college on my own, thank you, and I chose the University of Tennessee, in Knoxville. I was returning to the South.

I would be the first black basketball player at Tennessee, and the first black player in Southeastern Conference. I would strike a blow for my race, be a pioneer. Somebody bad to integrate college basketball in the South, and Mama always told me I was special. Who better to take on this mission?

Robinson told me Tennessee was taking advantage of me, exploiting me. He didn't like all the promises they were making. He wanted me to go to New Mexico, where he had sent a couple of his star players, or to the University of Detroit, where he expected to be hired as head coach when the present coach steppeed down.

Sorry, not interested. By going to Tennessee, I could do my duty for the movement, push forward the boundaries of integration. The closer to home the better, and Ole Miss wasn't going to recruit me. Tennessee would be traveling to places practically in my old backyard, and my mother and family could come to a lot of my games.

Coach Ray Mears seemed like a nice man. And on a recruiting trip to Knoxville I met a very pretty girl and we hit it off real well. When you're eighteen, something like that can carry a lot of weight in the college decision process.

A big selling point for Tennessee was that unlike most of the schools that recruited me, Tennessee said it wouldn't be necessary for me to attend junior college for a year. I didn't pass Tennessee's entrance exam, but I was told that that was no problem. The school would bring Wiley Davis and me to Knoxville for the summer, get us nice jobs, and set me up with tutors to prep me for another shot at the test.

Our first day in town, we popped into a little downtown restaurant for lunch. The waitress wasn't overly friendly, and when she gave us our check we noticed she had written on it in large letters, "Niggers go home."

And here I thought I was home. We showed the cheek to Coach Mears, and when we went back to the restaurant two days later we found out that the waitress had been fired. Man, we had some power. Two days in town and already we were making social changes.

The school got us a room in the Colored section of town, in a boardinghouse run by a nice old woman named Mrs. Ben. Our room was under the stairs, in what probably had been the maid's quarters at one time. And the school got us jobs. Wiley had a real job, working in the back room of an auto parts warebouse, and he actually had to show up and do work.

My job was nicer. I was employed by a Buick dealership, to drive new cars from the showroom to the garage. The hours were good: zero. My pay was a nice weekly check and the use of a car. I started my college career with a near-new, red Delta 88.

The car came in handy, because I bad a lot of errands to run. I had to make regular trips to a local clothing store that was owned by a Tennessee alumnus who let Wiley and me have clothing at a 100 percent discount.

This was what college life was all about, it seemed to me. How could it be wrong? I was dealing with the city's leading citizens, who were with a great university. They didn't look like crooks, and who was I cheating? I would be working hard to fill their field house and make millions of dollars for the school, so what was the harm if I had a nice set of wheels and didn't have to wear the same pair of pants every day?

On weekends Wiley and I drove down to Silver City. Mama cooked us chicken dinners and I showed off my new car and new clothes and new status. Hello, Silver City. Heeeeere's Weedie, behind the wheel of an Oldsmobile.

Wiley and I enjoyed the summer, except that we got homesick when the brothers started rioting back in Detroit. We watched the riots on TV one night at Mrs. Ben's place and the newscaster was talking about "roving bands of Negroes." We tried to pick out people we knew among the looters and rioters.

"Hey, there's the Chit-Chat Lounge on Twelfth Street," I said.

"Look what we're missing," Wl1ey said, and it was true. Those "roving bands of Negroes" were our people. It was ugly, the shooting, and looting, but it was also an expression of honest frustration and rage. We felt a certain pride watching our people stand up and defy the world. Wiley and I felt like we were missing out on a cultural festival and social revolution.

I felt even more alienated when Coach Mears informed me I would have to go to a junior college in Chattanooga for a year. Apparently Mears was encountering opposition to my enrollment. If I were normal superstar recruit, Tennessee could slip me in even if my grades were low, and I flunked the entrance exam. But I wasn't normal; I was Black and large and well-known. The rumor was that Kentucky coach Adolp Rupp wasn't happy about Tennessee's having landed me and vowed that if I wouldn't play for him, I wouldn't play for anyone in the SEC. The NCAA's attention was focused on me and Tennessee.

It seemed to me that Tennessee was reneging. The people in town and at the school, for the most part, had been very nice to us. Coach Mears seemed like an honest man. But they had made it sound so easy and now there was a major kink in the original plan. I wanted to call off the whole deal, try out one of the other 338 schools that had recruited me, but the Tennessee people told me that would not be possible.

"We've invested a lot of time and money in you, Spencer," they told me. "You can't leave us now."

I figured I could. Wiley and I called UTEP to see if those people were still interested in me, and naturally they were. When Robinson found out about that plan, he phoned us and really ripped into us.

"Oh, now you're negotiating deals for Spencer, eh?" Will said to Wiley. "Look, I warned you about Tennessee, and if you guys want out of there, I'll find a place for you."

He did. He set it up for us to attend Trinidad Junior College in Colorado for a year. then scoot right over to Albuquerque and play for the University of New Mexico. Mel DanieIs, who had played for Robinson at Pershing, had just finished a big career at New Mexico and he was one of my heroes, so this seemed like the right way to go. Bob King was building a very powerful program at Albuquerque. Sounded good to me.

The hard part would be getting out of Knoxville. I knew the Tennesee people would not be happy to see their new superstar splitting town, so Wiley and I figured it would be best if they didn't see us splitting town. We knew there might be trouble, angry confrontations, and who knows what else. Threats? Intimidation? When you're raised in the South, your imagination can really take off on stuff like this." We were afraid that if we tried to reason or negotiate our way out of town, we might not get out.

We plotted our escape. Coach King arranged a midnight flight from Knoxville to Denver. He wanted to get us to Trinidad as quickly as possible, ahead of the rival recruiters who would be circling like buzzards once word got out that I was fleeing Tennessee.

Late one night Wiley and I jammed our luggage in the trunk of the yellow Cutlass I was driving at the time and headed for the airport. But we ran out of gas on the way, so we left the keys in the car, grabbed our bags, and ran the last two miles to the airport, looking over our shoulders all the way. We were scared as hell until the plane got into the air, and then we laughed like little kids. We imagined the newscasts.

"Spencer Haywood has disappeared! Police found his car abandoned airport, and there are no clues to his whereabouts."

We were relieved to be leaving the South, but all we knew about our next destination was tbat it was somewhere in the West. Trinidad. Sounded exotic, like something in the Caribbean.


Comparing what is written in these books versus what is suggested in more recent articles is pretty dramatic in terms of differences. It's pretty clear to me that Haywood has taken what was a fairly straight-forward example of someone who simply wasn't academically eligible to play Division I college basketball coming out of high school, and instead has thrown the blame for his own shortcomings on Adolph Rupp, who I've come to see over the years is a convenient scape-goat for anything and everything.

I also might add that whatever story Haywood has been saying of late, the 'journalists' who are repeating it in their stories apparently haven't done much of any of a job in terms of actually checking the validity of it, even when it makes very little sense to begin with. They should be ashamed of themselves.

I'm curious what other people's take on all this is ?

Thanks

Jon