Sports As A Weapon Podcast
Sports As A Weapon Podcast
50 | 'Big Time' and College Sports
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In this episode of The Sports As a Weapon Podcast, Miguel speaks with Rus Bradburd, current television color analyst on ESPN+ for New Mexico State Aggies men’s basketball. The discussion covers Bradburd's multifaceted career as a Division I college basketball coach at UTEP and New Mexico State, and a professor-turned-author. Bradburd shares insights from his novel 'Big Time,' which satirizes the corporatization of college sports and explores themes of radical politics and academic culture.
Miguel and Rus delve into topics such as the disparities in academic versus athletic department salaries, the implications of the Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) deals in college sports, and the changing landscape of American universities. Additionally, Bradburd discusses his impactful 'Basketball in The Barrio' camp for the youth in El Paso and his upcoming book project on Syrian refugee children integrating into Gaelic sports in Northern Ireland.
Links:
* Visit Rus Bradburd’s Website
* Buy Big Time by Rus Bradburd
* Basketball in the Barrio Website
* Basketball in the Barrio Documentary (YouTube)
* Bradburd chooses writing over hoops by Scott Powers/ESPN (2013)
* Forty Minutes of Hell: The Extraordinary Life of Nolan Richardson by Rus Bradburd
Miguel Garcia and Comrade E produced this episode. The Sports As A Weapon Podcast is part of the @Anticonquista Media Collective. Subscribe to the ANTICONQUISTA Patreon and follow ANTICONQUISTA on YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook.
All the video episodes are on the ATICONQUISTA YouTube, and listen/subscribe to the Sports As A Weapon Podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Deezer, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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50 | 'Big Time' and College Sports
Intro: [00:00:00] To build the new Chicano movement. That's what we came here for.
Miguel: Hey everyone, it's Miguel Garcia and welcome to another episode of The Sports As a Weapon Podcast, a Chicano Chicana Sports podcast on the entanglement of sports radical politics and working class sports fan culture. And don't worry, we talk about just sports too. Now, uh, sports has a weapon as part of the ANTICONQUISTA Media Collective Network.
ANTICONQUISTA is an anti-imperialist media collective. Our content is produced by and for the Latin American and Caribbean [00:01:00] diaspora. We are dedicated to exposing and fighting the capitalist imperialist system, the root cause of our displacement. Subscribe to ANTICONQUISTA Patreon. At Patreon/ANTICONQUISTA, and follow ANTICONQUISTA on YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram.
Also, be sure to listen, subscribe to our podcast, the Sports as a Weapon podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. And the video podcast goes on the YouTube, the ANTICONQUISTA YouTube page. So today I'm very excited to welcome, um, this guest on the podcast. He's an author, writer, professor, and former college basketball coach.
He has a lot of experience in both areas. It's really cool to get a guest who's been in both worlds. Um, very excited to bring Rus, Bradburd on the podcast. Um, welcome to the podcast, Rus. Thank you for coming on the podcast.
Rus: Thanks, Miguel. Yeah, and as you mentioned, I was a college basketball coach in Division one for 14 years, uh, eight years at UTEP at the University [00:02:00] of Texas El Paso.
And six years at New Mexico State and then became a professor in the, in the Creative Media Institute and did that for 16 years. So I've, I've been on both sides of it, which I think is, is pretty rare. And I've lived down on or near the Mexican border for, uh, you know, for, for a long time.
Miguel: Yeah. Um, I know you coached at utep, uh, university of Texas, El Paso and then New Mexico State.
Right. Was there any other places you coached at?
Rus: No, but when I left after I got my graduate writing degree, I went to Ireland for a couple years, uh, which, which we'll get to when we talk about my, my future projects. We'll get to that.
Miguel: Alright. Alright. So yeah, let's, uh, you have a lot of great stories.
We'll get into 'em. Um, but let's just, uh, you talk about your, uh, transition from college basketball coaching to professor and author, writer. Like how did that come about? Um, why did you decide to do that?
Rus: Well, I was, I was always a closeted [00:03:00] reader when I was coaching. You know, I love books. You know, I majored in phys ed in college, just so I would've more time to read, which wasn't really a great, uh, decision, probably on my part.
But, but, uh, I was always a closeted reader, and I would bring books on recruiting trips and books, uh, to road games. And I used to love Southwest Airlines because if you're the last one on the plane, you get stuck in a middle seat away from your, the, the team and the other coaches. And I'd be like, I'm up here by myself.
And then I could read my book in peace. Uh, so I was always a, a, a, a, a reader and loved books like, like most writers, you know, were readers who have spilled over. And I think most coaches are people who love to play regardless of, you know, I was a terrible player. But, um, and then my first year, uh, at New Mexico State, actually my first day on the job at New Mexico State, I went to an art opening.
And I just saw, saw it in the school papers, said, oh, I'll go to this after work today. And I met a, a writer named Robert Boswell, who recognized my photo, happened to be in [00:04:00] the newspaper that day. And he asked me, are you the new basketball coach? And I got to be friends with Robert Boswell. And so as I was coaching at New Mexico State, I was taking one class, you can take a class for free if you're an employee of the school.
Okay. Each semester. So I was started taking classes with Robert Boswell, and he was nice enough to move the classes to Tuesday. You, you probably, do you remember the big Monday games that used to be on ESPN? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, the next day it was often in the big Monday games, but even if it was a road game, uh, we would always take Tuesday off, and that meant I could go to class on Tuesday night.
So I just got more and more interested in it. And then finally in the year 2000. I quit and, you know, somewhat of a midlife crisis, I guess. Um, I was 40 I guess at the time, but, but I, I just decided, I'm gonna try this writing thing. I had gotten discouraged by the business side of college athletics, which of course seems very modest now, the business side of college, but, you know, basketball has been, in some ways was very good to me, but in some ways it, it, it brought [00:05:00] a lot of heartache and, you know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of ups and downs in the world of college sports.
Miguel: Yeah. So just that, that experience, the, uh, being very, uh, knowing that business side and how corrupt it is, kind of like also influenced your transition sounds like.
Rus: Well, and, and one of the things you, you know, I started to notice, and at that time, salaries were fairly moderate, but I was making more as an assistant basketball coach than anyone.
In, in the academic department that I wanted at first, we joined the English department before I went to creative media, and I was making more money than everyone in the, in the English department, except for the department head was making a little bit more than me. And so that, that's always been the, the situation.
Interesting. You know, you can sort of follow the money and see that, you know, see that at, at UCLA or at, at, at, you know, at Stanford, the football coach outranks the president and the basketball coach outranks the president. You know, I think you can follow the money and, and see that pretty quickly.[00:06:00]
Miguel: Interesting to know, like, you know, New Mexico State is not, you know, like a Duke or something like that in terms of like powerhouse and how big. We're not, we're,
Rus: we're not as, we're not, we're not as completely lopsided as some of those schools are. But even then, Miguel, I will say this, is that, you know, I worked for two very famous coaches.
Don Haskins was the coach who broke the color line in college basketball in 1966 before I ever thought about being a coach. You know, I was seven when he did that. But, but, um, and I worked for Lou Henson, who was also a, a famous college coach, but I was always more, I didn't think about this at the time, but I, looking back.
I don't think I could drop a single play that Don Haskins or Lou Henson used to run, but I've got some really good stories about those guys. And I think even then, I was always more interested in the stories behind the game rather than the X and Os. And also, frankly, you know, uh, basketball was a window into black culture.
And that I, I found that fascinating as, as a high [00:07:00] school kid, I was much more, you know, I never made my high school team, but I, I, I was much more interested in the spinners and the stylistics and the Temptations and the Isley Brothers that, that, and, and that, you know, I think music can be a window into other cultures, and food can be, and I'll talk about more that more as later, but also, you know, sports is often a window in into other cultures.
Miguel: Yeah. That's, yeah, because, um, ba you know, how the black culture has, you know, just shaped our music and sports like basketball for so long. Um. And, you know, and then a lot of times, like you'll talk about in this book, or even though it's a satire, some of these stories, like, I'm just gonna get into it like a character, the quarterback.
You, he's half black and half, uh, Mexican, right. In your book. The character.
Rus: Yes.
Miguel: But I found it interesting, just even that storyline within him, like they're, he's the star quarterback. They're expecting him to just care about football, but your, you know, your stor, [00:08:00] your book goes oriented more, they're more than that, just the sports.
Um, it was interesting that he actually identified more with his Mexican side. Um, but I I, I was very fascinated that you, you put that in there, that in the book. So we'll get into the book into that. But your, your, I guess your life experience really did shape this book. It's a satire, but. There's a lot of, uh, truth within it that's real life.
I,
Rus: I've got where I, I just think I've gotten where I think you, I can, I get very discouraged by the news for the last, not, not just, I mean, a lot, especially a lot of the problems at the universities. It's, it's hard to blame on Trump, you know? That, that, that things have been, things have been, you know, one of the things that, that I, that I have found while working on this book is that there's this idea that all our universities are left wings, Marxists, you know, Marxist institutions.
But in my experience, that's not true at all. Miguel, I, and I'll, I'll, and I'll explain what I mean by that. Is that, is that, yeah, in the history [00:09:00] department there's somebody teaching, uh, the history of Marxism and in the English department there's gender and sexuality class or that kind of thing, but. If, if you think about, for example, I don't wanna pick on California, but if you think about UCLA where the, the basketball coach probably makes 4 million a year, and the football coach makes 5 million a year and the president makes 1.5 million, and the vice presidents all make a million, and the deans make 300,000.
But if you send your kid to UCLA, they're gonna get taught by adjuncts for the first two years, they're gonna be taught by adjuncts and instructors that don't have health insurance. That is not a leftist system, that's not a Marxist system that has nothing to do with progressivism. And, and, and so I would say that's the corporate model where the, the CEO, who's the football coach at UCLA and then the president is under him, that, that feels to me like a CA corporate model.
I think the differences that what academia is often doing is pretending to be progressive and that it's often just, it's often, um. You know, just for, just for [00:10:00] show, it's, it's, it's often, it, often it doesn't have anything to do with reality, but it's pretending to be progressive and pretending to, it's more window dressing and performative.
That, that's been my experience is that in our, in our English department, you know, for example, the, the idea of the, the, uh, land acknowledgements that happened before, you know, before, uh, before a lot of events on campus. But I don't think anybody really wants to give their land back to la back to Native American people, you know, and, and in our part of the country, you know, our, you know, where, you know, this was at, where I'm sitting today was actually Mexico at one time.
But I don't think anybody's interested in giving that. So in my experience, it's, they are not leftist institutions. You know, in, in my limited experience being at UTEP and New Mexico, they, they're only pretending. They're only pretending to be, or else the, the, you know, the, like again, at, at UCLA, the football coach wouldn't be making, you know, 70 times more than the English professor does.
Miguel: Uh, I really love that you broke that down with your experience because I'm, [00:11:00] that even just my own experience in academia. I went to grad school, we were talking about this offline. That's how I ended up in Northern California. Um, I went to San Jose State. My whole goal after I got my master's in applied anthropology, I was in, in cultural anthropology.
I was, my plan was to get a PhD, but my experience during grad school and even in undergrad, seeing, seeing how more and more professor jobs are not tenured and they're going to that model of the adjunct where you don't get no work or benefits, no rights. You get paid, you get to work at like different schools, like go to five, three different schools and do a bunch of classes just to make some money.
Right.
Rus: Yeah, that, that, that's not how, that's not how a leftist institution would work.
Miguel: Scared me. That scared me. And that's kinda why I decided not to do it, even though that was my whole goal. And now I got a, like a regular job. I got like a state. I work, I have a state job. That's why I live in Sacramento.
Um, but yeah, that's what scared me. And then I've [00:12:00] now seen friends. Like I only know one of my friends that actually got a tenure job. I know a couple other people. These are smart people, academics in their field. Like they know what they're doing. And one of 'em is just, they keep getting adjunct jobs or they get like a visiting professor, you know, it's hard.
They're not getting that tenure job. And,
Rus: and even, even to back up even further, Miguel, I, to me, a, a bigger problem is the affordability of graduate school. Mm-hmm. So here's a, here's an example. As you know, there used to be very few, surprisingly few. African American coaches and I came to understand when I went to utep my first year, I made $10,000 and the next year I made 12,000 and then 14,000.
But I think I always knew subconsciously, uh, that I could always call home to my dad if I needed a hundred dollars for rent or $500 for whatever. But I think what happens if, if, if I were, if I had been a, a inner city black kid from a low income family, and I graduated from college, I'm not gonna go work for $10,000 at utep.
I can go to [00:13:00] the local high school and start at $35,000. And so what, in my view, what was keeping people out of, uh, college coaching, uh, particularly African American kids, was that this idea that you have to pay your dues first, which all ma which makes sense on paper. But in, in reality, what it meant was it kept black kids from wanting to be college coaches because nobody wants to work for, I did it for 10, 12, and 14,000 my first three years.
And, and I, my feeling is that black kids are probably, probably thinking, I don't wanna put words in anyone's mouth, but probably thinking I've already, we've already been paying our dues. I don't wanna pay. And I think the same thing happens in academia is that if you graduate from Sac State with a degree in English.
You can think, okay, now, well now I can go teach at, uh, you know, at the local high school. You know, I can teach at the local high school and start off at 49, 40 9,000, or I can go to graduate school and get seriously in debt. That's
Miguel: what happened to me. And
Rus: so, yeah, and, and, and so and so there, it's, so that's what keep, that's what's keeping poor kids away.
Uh, uh, the same thing that was keeping [00:14:00] poor, uh, poor black kids from, you know, from joining the college coaching ranks is, is what's keeping more kids from of color. And so, so the, this what I think that they should do. I, I know that Trump has shot down any kind of race-based admissions, but just do it based on income and zip code.
That's easy. It's an easy, seems to me to be an easy enough solution. If you want more, if you want more professors of color, make education affordable and don't have people go into debt for the rest of their lives.
Miguel: Go back in history. That also, uh, when I was an undergrad, I got involved with like. Student moving against tuition hikes.
Um, and so I learned a lot of history of what happened. And even in the California system, they were supposed to have, they were supposed to have public free college, and then Ronald Reagan was governor and took, didn't want that to happen. It made it happen. So it didn't happen. And that was in the sixties.
And so that's why that for, and then everyone, pretty much, I guess California is one of the states that all the other states modeled that [00:15:00] system after. And here we're,
Rus: yeah. And so, so the, and the government's, you know, we have, we have, we have plenty, we have plenty of money to, to bomb Venezuela, but we don't have money for, for our universities.
And so anyway, but let's talk about the funny book about, about big time.
Miguel: Um, so we kind of talked about your, how it shaped your, can you talk a little bit more how your experience as professor in college of basketball, we talked about it a little bit here in our discussion right now of how it, how it you imagined and created this novel.
Rus: I, I can, I can tell, I can. There was one single incident that really fueled this. Is it, we, I was at, I was at a faculty meeting at that time. We were still in the English department, at an English department faculty meeting and a new writing professor who's a wonderful person. And you know, the, the, a friend of mine, she, but she was new and she raised her hand and said, look, it's only the, you know, it's only, uh, three weeks or four weeks into school and I'm already bogged down with committee work.
I've just got too much committee work and I'm supposed to be a writer. I should be working on my novel. [00:16:00] Is there anything we can do to reduce committee work? And by the end of that meeting, Miguel, they started a new committee to study how we could do less committee work. And that's sort of, that's sort of bizarre logic.
I just left the meeting. I just, I just wanted to beat my head against the wall because it, it, it did seem like it, it did seem like, I think what one of the things that's happened, it's sort of similar to what Ezra Klein's recent book abundance is about, is that I, I do think that, you know, the English department would claim to be progressive, but we're so in love with the process.
And so in love with committees that we can't actually get anything done. And so that, that's, that's when I, that was when I thought no one would believe this if I, and I had read, you know, and I, so I started reading, I wound up teaching a class called the Comic Novel to help me think about, you know, to help me think, like I would imagine, I imagine you knew a lot about the progressive side of sports before you started this podcast, but, but there's something about doing it that you learn even more.
Mm-hmm. I, I, I don't wanna put words in your mouth either, [00:17:00] but I, I think, I think for me, I started, I taught that class the comic novel, and we did Rick Russo, uh, Rick Russo's, uh, straight man. And we did, uh, Matt Johnson's book called Pim. And, uh, you know, and, uh, catch 22, of course the famous and I got where I thought that comedy is a way to get at some, a certain truth.
For example, I think that most people would say that the greatest. Anti-war book ever written is Catch 22. And it's really funny, you know, it's, it's a now the end, it gets a little disturbing last 20 or 30 pages. But there's something about making fun of things. And I'm not the first person to think of this.
If, if you, if you, you think about the Marx Brothers or Richard Pryor or even the Three Stooges, they're often making fun of the elites. They're, they're sticking their thumb in the nose, uh, sticking their thumb in the eye of the college president. That's a big thing with the Three Stooges and the Marx Brothers, is they're constantly making fun of, of, of the, of the academic elite and the business elite.
And I do think prior, prior
Miguel: to George Carlin.
Rus: [00:18:00] Yes. Right, right. And George Carlin, yes. But, but, but there is something, there's something about comedy that can reveal that reveals things. And I would say the same about fiction, is that fiction can often reveal things that nonfiction can't. So I, I, I, I, I think many, many of us on the writerly side, I think the greatest anti, the greatest book about the American Depression was Grapes of Wrath.
And it's, you know, it takes place in, in California, but it's, it's, it's fictionalized and there's something about fiction that can get it a greater truth. And there's something about comedy that can get it a greater truth. And so that's what I was after with big time with, with the satire. So the way, the way it starts is there's a university in trouble and they take a billion dollars from Coors, but Coors says, oh, but you've gotta rebrand as Coors State University.
And by the way, all the money has to go to football and basketball. So they immediately. Half the faculty resigns and, but the remaining faculty, they have to work at the football and basketball games, or work for football and basketball in order to survive. So the math department does statistics for [00:19:00] the teams business, does the investments for the players and coaches.
Uh, engineering is enlarging the stadiums all the time. Uh, the English department writes the programs, but in, in my novel, these two old history professors, Eugene Mooney and Peter Braverman, they decide they're, they love the 1960s or six 1960s, love in love with the radical movement of the anti-war movements of the sixties.
And they decide, dammit, we're gonna take, we're gonna take our university back. And they sort of conscript this, this new poet with dreadlocks a, a white lady with dreadlocks to be the face of the, of the, of the Antis Sports Movement at Coors State.
Miguel: That's her name was, uh, Layla.
Rus: Yeah, Layla Sillman.
Miguel: Sillman.
I was trying to make sure I was a pronouncer, right? So I waited for you to say, um, sort
Rus: a play on there. Well, first there is a famous poet named Ron Sillman, but it's sort of a's sort of a play on silly, you know, silly man, you know, you know. And so what I'm doing in the book, really, I, it started off, you know, sort of mocking college sports.
When I first started, but [00:20:00] what really what it winds up doing is mocking the academic side of things. Like, all of these things have happened. This complete overemphasis of sports has been going on for years. It, well predates the Trump administration and it really, it really predates the, you know, that this sort of, this sort of, uh, elevation of sports has come at the expense of academics.
And in my experience, acade the academic side, they, they don't wanna talk about it. Uh, but, but the other impetus for this, for this whole concept, for this book happened at University of Chicago, it's hard to think, to get your head around this University of Chicago, which would be sort of like a Claremont Mud or, you know, a really high level academic school.
It, they were, they used to be in the Big 10. They were in the Big 10 conference with Michigan University, university of
Miguel: Chicago actually had a, I did not know that. I've only known them as aca, like known for academia, you know. Yes. They were in
Rus: the Big 10 and they had the first Heisman Trophy winner. In 1936, the, uh, Jay Beringer won the Heisman Trophy.
Three years later, the president of the University of Chicago. Decided to drop [00:21:00] football. And because he felt like it was corrupting the mission of the university. And, and I suspect that he thought there'll be all kinds of copycats, but of course, instead the opposite happens where Sacramento State says we're gonna go division one also, and Cal Baptist says we're gonna go division one also.
And, and, and, uh, you know, and, and, uh, uh, San Luis Obispo says We're gonna go division Cal Davis's, division one, and everyone is on the this. It has become like the arms race, and particularly with the name, image and likeness now, where, where I'm all, I was all for paying the players. I thought that was a good idea, but now it's gonna beco become the arms race, where race the, you know, the quarterback at UCLA will soon be making more than the president.
Miguel: Yeah. So, um, I know in your book you even that dynamic of, we talked about this before we started the recording, but in your book you showcase how the university president pretty much just becomes like a. He's a symbolic leader, whereas the one with the most [00:22:00] power is actually the foot, the head football coach in this book.
But that's also how a reality is. Like these football coaches are making 10, $15 million a year. University of Presidents make a lot of money, but we know who's like running the school. Like we're seeing a lot, like, let's say, uh, right now when University of North Carolina. Bill Belichick is, you know, over there coaching, right?
You hear all these stories of all this favoritism and all these things happening because it's Bill Belichick. Um, so I just, I was, I love that you may put that in the book 'cause yeah, it's fiction, but it's also paints that picture of what's happening in reality as well.
Rus: Well, do you remember a, a few years ago, the president at the University of Missouri was leaving his office and these progressive kids, I can't remember if they were Black Lives Matter or, or anti, you know, anti-war, I can't remember.
Wasn't it was the
Miguel: college basketball team, right? Or one, it was a, maybe, maybe,
Rus: or a couple of football players maybe. They tried to get the college president to talk to them and he rolled up his windows and drove away, [00:23:00] and that's what got him fired, is that the football team turned against the president.
And so I think it's, you know, and, and the other thing I, I wonder about is, again, I, I, I think it's great that there's money flowing into minority, particularly the black community based on NIL Money, the name, image, and likeness. Uh, stuff, and again, New Mexico State is fairly. S in that regard, I think our, our basketball players are making, on the average about $40,000 a year.
Not like, not like at UCLA where they're probably making 600 or $700,000 a year. But I've wondered, I've wondered this, Miguel, let's, let's say you're teaching freshman English, you know, and you're making, you know, 22,000 as an instructor and the star quarterback doesn't come to class. Are you gonna, you're gonna flunk that guy who's making over a million dollars a year.
You know, like if, if, if you'll know, I would challenge your viewers to think about a, a basketball player or football player who's been declared ineligible in the last five years. It hasn't happened. It used to be this guy got ineligible or this guy to sit out a year or sit out a semester [00:24:00] never happens anymore.
No one, no one has ever been in. And I think a part of that is the online classes is sort of the corruption of the university by, you know, by having online classes instead of in, in person. You know, like I can, I can, I can read about, you know, I can, I can read about how to make a delicious dish, you know, on, on the internet.
But there's something about your grandmother teaching you how to make it, that, that, you know, it's, you know, I, I think that all of the great learning in human history has been handed down from person to person. I don't think you can do it on YouTube or not do it as well anyway, uh,
Miguel: from my experience, uh, 'cause I think online classes kind of started happening.
When I first started college, I went to community college first, and this is in 2004. Um, and I remember online classes are easier than others, but it's not the same. Like, I prefer it in person. Um, I know if convenience helps, but certain classes are like doing, uh. Math was, I did that math class online. That was [00:25:00] hard.
Rus: But, but the online classes were designed for the pregnant mom or the kid with the broken leg, or you're in a remote, remote part of New Mexico and you couldn't get, it wasn't designed as a, as a way of life. But it's become that because you don't have to pay for heating bills and clients way, it's a way for the university to make more money.
But that, so that's one of the other things that I would like to address is that I guarantee you at Miguel, at Sacramento State, they are losing money hand over fist. Now, UCLA may be making money, but I've grown weary of that argument when I mentioned Michigan and the football coach makes six used to make $6 million a year and that kind of thing, and people point out, but they're making money.
So, so it's fine. But I would say just because you're making money doesn't mean it's right for academia. Like there's all kinds of things we could do at, you know, at we could, all the kinds of things we could do at a university that would not be, we could have a topless club on campus. That would, that would make a lot of money.
But that doesn't mean it's right for our educational system. Right. And so the [00:26:00] fact that it makes money, I really, I really reject the idea that, that the excuse that the only excuse that people can come up with for the bigger schools is, but it's making money. And I don't think that's a legitimate, I don't think that's a legitimate way to think about American universities
Miguel: with you.
Um, and speaking of Sacramento State, they are going, they're really, really going hard at trying to get, trying to become a bigger like school in terms of the conferences. Um, they hired Mike Bibby as their head coach for basketball. Um, I think Shaq's part of their program. 'cause you know how now with NIL the programs have general managers and all that.
Shaq has no connection with Sacramento, but here he is. Right. So they're, they were trying to get a stadium for their football team too. 'cause the football team was playing real, they've been really good, um, lately. And they, because they wanted it with the PAC 12, uh, dissolving. They wanted to rejoin the PAC 12 with the smaller the other schools that are gonna join it to kind of keep it alive.
[00:27:00] Um, I don't think it's happening. They're getting a stadium, but they're, they're, they're exactly right. Like why they should be focused on academics.
Rus: Yes. Most, most schools are losing money hand over fist, and I don't know how the system can sustain itself. Like I, I, I don't, I don't know that, again, I was all for the, you, you can't have the coach make 6 million and the player get room board tuition and books.
So that's what was always the model is that it was, it was unfettered capitalism for the coaches. But it was socialism for the players. Like, oh no, you can't, you know, that there was a, so there was a real, that was a, but I, you know, college sports for many years has been wanting to have it both ways. Like the coaches can make as much money as they want, but the players, you're, it's, you're in it for the purity of the game and for, you know, because you're gonna get an education and that kind of thing.
So, and I also have to remind our fans at New Mexico State is they get angry at the kids for switching schools for more money. But I tell 'em, it's not the kids who came up with these rules, it's the grownups. You know, you can't put a chocolate bar in front of your daughter and then say, don't eat this.
You know, and that's what we've [00:28:00] done to these kids is we've, you know, we've, we've, every now and then there's a kid who will make a decision based on loyalty or I wanna be closer to my parents, or, but in general, the kids, it's, it's all a big money grab. And this is the system. This is the system we've given children, you know, or, or young men and young women.
Miguel: Yeah, the transfer portals is pretty crazy how everyone's changing teams. Um, like I know there was just a big thing last week about, uh, his last name's Williams. He's the quarterback for Washington University of Washington. He was gonna go back and got a new contract for this NIL, but then it came out, oh, he is going back into the portal.
'cause Lane Kiffin at LSU is trying to give him a bigger contract, even though, so Washington put out a statement like he already signed his contract. So it's creating all these, these issues as well. Yeah. Um, and your book, uh, calling it Coors State, like obviously is a perfect play on how college sports is, when it, you know, all the ball games.
I have a sponsor or like Chick-fil-A Bull, you know? [00:29:00] Exactly. Or even stadiums. Right. It's not just the ml, the Pro stadiums, college stadiums, arenas are all sponsors. That's exactly what, and then we know Univers, like let's say University of Oregon. Everyone knows that Phil Knight and Nike are like. The ones falling all the, putting that money into their sports programs.
So a university, uh, someone like Phil Knight's already like a shadow owner of a college, um, in that way. So I, your book is just a, it's satire, but it's, and I it was very comedic as well. I love that.
Rus: Well, one of one, one of the things when I was writing it, it, it took about 10 years to write, believe it or not.
Uh, and uh, and I kept thinking, I've gotta get this thing finished before, 'cause I thought what would happen is that they would clean up, clean up the whole thing and de-emphasize college sports. But now, of course, with it, it's, it's only go, it's gone the other way. And so I was lucky in that way. And the other reason I was lucky is that, you know, core state, in my mind, I imagine it as Colorado state.
I [00:30:00] don't really know. But, but you know, their big rival would be the University of Colorado. And that's really the model for the, the, the incredible corporatization and, and the turning, turning a university into a business, you know, university of Colorado. Now there's a class. Studies how the football team is portrayed in the media.
You know, it's just like, it's, it's all, it's all, it's all sort of incest, incestuous in, in my view. But the idea that Dionne Sanders and primetime and, and that kind of thing, and that would be, you know, theoretically that would be core state's big, you know, big rival. And so just, I was lucky in that way. I think that's part of the reason the book got got attention is that, you know, this was all happening on the cusp of these major changes in college sports
Miguel: was being, living in the southwest, working at UTEP or living in New Mexico, working for New Mexico State also kind of pointed you in that direction of a cooler state.
'cause Colorado's also the Southwest very, you know, the region.
Rus: Yeah. And I, I, I, I did, I did [00:31:00] wanna focus in our area. You know, I think our basketball coach at New Mexico State, who's probably the most underpaid guy in the country, I think he makes 320,000 or something like that. You know, it's not anything close to the 3 million that the guy at Arizona makes.
And so I just, and I got the idea, and Coors historically has leaned, you know, is a, is a right wing sort of family and a right wing, right wing corporation. So I'm sort of mocking that, that, you know, that sort of idea that there's a sort of this right winging takeover of a, of an American, American campus.
And then, you know, w with the two professors with Eugene Mooney, he's sort of, let's work within the system and we can do things. The right, you know, we can, we can, let's take this to, we can, we still have committees and we have a system to, to, and then Peter Braverman, he's the loud mouth, he's the opposite.
He's, we're gonna burn this damn place down, burn it to the ground. And people have asked me, well, you know, are these based on real people? But I would say they're, those are both me. I've sat in, I've sat in faculty meetings where I thought, faculty, this is crazy. We, you know, just wanted to scream. [00:32:00] And, but then I've also been there, you know, I worked for the famous coach, Lou Henson, who was very mild and modest and had nothing but nice things to say to people.
And that was a way that he was able to get things done. He taught me that is, you can yell at the lady at the airline counter, but you're gonna do a lot better by smiling and making a joke out of it and getting her to laugh. And, and so I do think, I, I, I kind of see myself as, as both of those people, I, I go ba I'm conflicted myself and clearly, clearly Miguel, I'm conflicted.
Like I'm still the ESPN analyst for Aggie Home Games. Here I am sort of mocking the whole system. But there, I'm, I'm like the alcoholic that keeps walking by the bar saying. Is that Miguel in there? Maybe I'll just go have two beers with Miguel. You know, that kind of thing. I, I, you know, I, I'm, I'm mocking the system and I think the system is corrupt, but I'm the TV analyst too.
And so, you know, I'm, I dunno if you'd call it hypocritical, but I, I would say maybe it's hypocritical, but I would say I'm, I'm conflicted. Like, I'm actually part of the system. I'm making fun of, like,
Miguel: there's [00:33:00] contradictions, but we all gotta live under this system, you know, so you still gotta, there it's, we still gotta work in it, even though we want to dismantle it until it gets dismantled.
Intro: Yes. Um, right. I, that's how I
Miguel: feel. That's how I feel as a, I, I'm a state worker, like just a regular, you know, state worker in a union, but like, I'm not like a governor or nothing. But even when I got this job, because of my radical politics, I'm like, oh, am I being a sellout? Like, but I'm just, you know, we just gotta work.
Right. Um, you gotta, it's like players, some of these players making money, I'm all for them making money. They were getting exploited for all these years, right? Yes. They're playing and like you said, those kids, it's not their fault. They're just playing in the system that was set up.
Rus: Yes, yes. And, and, and by the way, by the way, my wife is a, is a fair in the world of poetry.
She's a fairly, fairly well, she's a well-known poet, and so I wanted the hero of the book to be, one of the heroes of the book is Layla Sillman. She's, she's from the Bay Area and she, it's her first job in academia. And, uh, it's her first, [00:34:00] but she's become a bit of a celebrity because, uh, this is, I think very early in the book, uh, before she ever arrives at Core State.
Taylor Swift holds her book up, holds her book up to the camera on a, on a national tele, tele nationally televised show, and talks about Layla Sillman's book. And so the university wants to hire her because she's a celebrity.
Miguel: She's one of the superstar academics. Yeah. And
Rus: that thinking that might help boost, you know, and, and the English department is dying, so they're all, they're in favor of this.
But, uh, I wanted someone to sort of be the, they're, they're sort of the Rosa Parks, you know, you needed a figurehead. The, the, the two old history professors are too old to be the face of the movement. So they wanted this hipster dreadlock, uh, young woman to be the, to be the face of their movement.
Miguel: Uh, so some of that inspiration came from your wife being a poet and then
Rus: Yes.
Yes. Obvious. Okay. And, and, and, and, and I did, I did. I liked the idea of, you know, Eugene Mooney, the work within the system guy, he's a Mexican history, he's a professor of Mexican history, and I liked, and, and so that's what, that's [00:35:00] the appeal to Trevor Knight and his, Trevor is enamored with the i of Mexican history because his mother is Mexican American and, and that, that kind of thing.
So I just, I wanted, uh, you know, like, like any writer, I want things to overlap and things to get messy and to, you know, to, to complicate things. But that seemed like the right job for Eugene Mooney was to be a professor of Mexican history and be obsessed with, with, uh, Zapata and, and Pancho Vi. Yeah, I
Miguel: saw that I was, uh, also, uh, his father was a former ba uh, football player, like star quarterback at another school.
Yes. That, but I, I
Rus: think in my mind, Trevor, Trevor Knighton, the star quarterback, he leans more, I think he has more affection for his mother. You know, he winds up, you know, and, and the, the professors need a couple guys inside the football team to, to help revolt and to lead the revolt. And so they, they convinced the, they convinced the two football players who are roommates to, to join them in the revolt.
Can
Miguel: you talk about that? That was, they do like a protest, right? That's what they organize in your book? In the story. I think there's,
Rus: I think there's three protests in the book, [00:36:00] and the first one is Layla Sillman reads a sort of, a, sort of a radical poem on campus and a as sort of a, the campus, by the way, the campus campus police at core state or the criminal justice professors.
And so the, the criminal justice professors come with batons to break up the, break up the, the poetry reading, which actually, now that I think of it, it's a little bit similar to in Minnesota where, where they're, they're shooting poets in the face. But, uh, you know, and, and, uh, but the, uh. The, there's the first protest is the, is the poetry reading that goes badly.
Then, lemme think the next one. Oh, the next one is that the two professors lead a march of the protestors right onto the football field during practice. And that goes very badly. They get, they wind up getting tackled and destroyed by the, by the football team. And then the final one takes place at a basketball game where the two professors, they've gone on the lamb and they decide to, uh, fa it's called fast roping.
It's, I thought it was called repelling, but it's actually fast roping, like what you would do from a [00:37:00] helicopter. They fast rope down from the, from the arenas, uh, the, the top of the arena. It's not the ceiling. What would we call? But before the lights start talking
Miguel: about, because in, I remember wrestling, they would do the stunts in professional wrestling.
They would do these stunts.
Rus: Oh really? The
Miguel: nineties. Yeah,
Rus: a lot of them have done a bunch the
Miguel: times. Yeah, yeah. That's how I remember it.
Rus: They fast, they fast rope down and, and, and, and, uh, you know, in order to, to lead the protest at a basketball game, and of course every, you know, the, it's a little bit like Don Quixote, you know, the, the Great Sante, which some people think is the first novel ever written, but Don Quis, uh, by, by, by Cervantes.
And, uh, you know, and, and Donte, you know, uh, he and Sancho Ponza, they keep, they have all these battles, but they always fall on their face. They land up, wind up with their face in the mud. And I think that's what happens to, in my mind, that's keeps happening to the professors in the movement because frankly, I'd, I'd hate to be so pessimistic, Miguel, forgive me.
I don't think it's gonna change. I don't, [00:38:00] I don't, I think it's only gonna get worse. I don't think it's going to get better. At least not in our lifetimes. You know, there's just too much, there's just too much money involved, and there's television money and endorsement money, and I think the rich will get richer.
And I think some schools like Sac State and and Cal State Northridge will decide, this is not for us. We need to go back to division two or division three. But I don't think, I don't think there's any, you know, even though I'm making fun of it and laughing, but I don't think I, I'm not optimistic about the future of the American universities.
Miguel: Yeah. And then just seeing what's happening on the macro level in our society, in our country. Like, it's not looking good. Like you just meant, you just mentioned your, uh, character. That's the poet getting beat up by the police. But yeah, last week, real life happened. A ice agent killed Renee. Good. Right. And so your book was written, your book was written two years ago.
And then see there's, there's, it's almost like. You know, nobody gets killed in your book, but that violence is there. That actually happens [00:39:00] in real life.
Rus: Yes, yes. And just sort of a, you know, co core state because of the criminal justice department, that they're the sort of the, the kick kick ass security guards.
And, and it becomes a, it becomes a bit of a police state where Eugene Mooney and, uh, Peter Braverman, the two professors have to, they go into hiding, they wind up hiding within the football stadium and subsisting for a few weeks on popcorn, uh, for the popcorn from the concession stand before they go out, back out into the real world.
And, and of course, there's a betrayal, I don't wanna spoil it for your, your, your, your viewers, but there's a betrayal at the end of the, there's a betrayal at the end of the book and some allegiance is switch and, and that kind of thing. And I, I, and I do think occasionally somebody has to be sacrificed, like, uh.
At, at the end of, uh, one Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, you know, the, uh, the famous book that became a famous movie. You know, Randall Patrick McMurphy, who's a very rebellious, he's not politically rebellious, but he is rebelling against the mental health system. You know, he winds up dying, he [00:40:00] becomes sacrificed with, you know, in the book.
And so I felt like, I felt like there needed to be some, some surprises at the end of the book, but, uh, your, your viewers will have to, they'll have to, they'll have to read to the end of the book. Don't skip ahead. No
Miguel: spoilers. Yeah. Um, so. Uh, now to kind of switch gears a little bit, I wanna talk a little basketball.
Um, you have a basketball camp called in El Paso called basketball in Rio. Could you discuss that history of the camp and how it happened, why it was important for you to provide this, uh, service to the community? Sure where,
Rus: where, where I made my name as a coach, or at least what got me into the business was I was, would go around the country at these basketball camps and do dribbling and ball handling drills.
You know, dribble two basketballs blindfolded and that kind of thing. And three basketballs and that kind of, sort of Harlem globe trotter type tricks for your, for, it's hard to, it's hard to talk about it without showing you, but just the kind of dribbling and basketball tricks that are, have become popular with [00:41:00] the, and one tour and that kind of thing.
And so I was going, I was, that's how I made my name and I learned that you could teach kids basketball before they could ever reach the rim, but with shooting they could learn to dribble two basketballs. And so, but I also noticed it in El Paso where I was coaching. It's a, it's a, you know, it's a very poor town.
It's 80% Hispanic and the kids, the kids from the Hispanic neighborhood. Couldn't afford to go to the UTEP basketball camp. And when I asked our players about it, I said, well, what basketball camps did you go to as a kid? Well, they couldn't, the black kids couldn't afford to go to any basketball camps. It's, it's only the wealthy white kids who are going to the basketball camps.
Anyway, so I decided to start a camp do with, for little kids, just using, using my dribbling skills and teaching dribbling. It was, we, it was called Basketball in the Barrio and we charged the, the first couple years we charged $20 and then we decided that's too much. It was $20 for the entire camp, which is incredibly cheap.
Like if you send your kid to the ar, university of Arizona camp, it's $450 now [00:42:00] to, to go to, to go to the camp. And, you know, you wanna, if a parent wanna send two or three kids to basketball camp, it's just cost prohibitive for poor kids. But yet here's this whole industry college basketball that's built on the back of poor kids.
So I found that very, I thought, found it repulsive. Frankly, I was ashamed that we, that we, we didn't, I, I thought, you know, we should be doing these camps for free for the kids, or, but I, so we did it for free for a couple years, but I also learned that. If you charge your kids a dollar, so what we do is mom gives the child a dollar and then the child has to, the six to 10-year-old girl or boy has to hand the do hand, hand the dollar over hand the dollar over to the person registering them, because that felt like it was more, you know, that when we did it, when we did it for free, sometimes the kids didn't come back the last day.
And so we wanted the kids to feel that commitment. So for a dollar, the kids all get a basketball, a t-shirt. A, a poster that you know is Muhammad Ali or Rosa Parks or, or, uh, uh, um, Dolores Huerta, uh, [00:43:00] John Carlos. This year we'll have Stephanie Hahn on it. The, she's a, she's half Korean, half Mexican. She's the championship box champion boxer now from El Paso.
But we give the kids a poster, a chess set, because we have found, we've learned that learning, learning to play chess as a child is really good for your brain. So we have, uh, we, we give them a chess set, a jump rope. A harmonica. So we teach, you know how at these basketball camps, they have stations where you do layups here and the whistle blows and you're off to free throws, and then you do the, well, at our stations, we mix in percussion and music and dance, and then we have something called education station where they learn to write, they write poetry, or lately they've been learning chess.
And so the, I, the idea, and I've, uh, people have told me, Miguel, that if a kid ever wanted to sue us and say, give me my dollar back, it wasn't really a basketball camp. They would probably get, they could, would probably stand up in court because it's, it's only about a third basketball. And the rest of the time we have mariachi singers and norteno trios.[00:44:00]
And folk loco dancers and storytellers. And we, we teach 'em about recycling, we teach 'em about fire safety. So we mix in things. And so basketball is just the lure. It's just the hook to get the kids to come. Because if we called it educational pride in border culture and educational camp on the border, nobody would come.
So we've been doing it, we've been doing it for a long time. Next year it'll be our 34th year. And, and it changes a little, it seems to evolve slightly from, from year to, from year to year. And we've had some, you know, famous and not so famous coaches. John Carlos came one year. The, the US Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, came with his family one year.
Greg Foster from the Bay Area, the great basketball player, played 12
Miguel: years. Greg Foster, former league. Yeah. Yeah. Lake.
Rus: 12 years in the NBA. He, he, he's come, he's come a few, he's come a few times. Uh, the championship boxer. Juan Lascano. Juan Lascano was a fireman in Sacramento for a number of years. So we sort of mix in the celebrity coaches.
When I say celebrity, it's, you know, [00:45:00] the level of celebrity is modest, but, but, uh, and I, you know, and charging a dollar, it sounds weird. Uh, our, our sponsor now is a group called Household Furniture. And, and, but for a dollar, you know, there's a lot of coaches that are getting rich from summer camp, and I tell people, I'm getting rich.
I'm just not getting financially rich. I mean, it's really, it's really meant the world to me. And the entire thing, by the way, I should have said this at the beginning, uh, I was, for many years I went to a boxing gym in El Paso that a man named Rocky Galarza ran. I was just, I was just going punch the heavy bags and do the workout, and, you know, I wasn't, you know, I, I have the wrong nose for it.
I had my nose broke a couple times, but I would go and do the workouts and Rocky trained kids for free. And once they became good enough to become a pro, like Juan Lascano, the, the Sacramento Box, the Sacramento based boxer, he had moved to California because Rocky couldn't make him the kind of money that, and so.
Rocky was training kids for free in his, the courtyard of his, his bar and grill for, for 30 [00:46:00] years. And he was probably the greatest athlete in El Paso history. Only Nolan Richardson has ever approached Rocky Galarza. But he was here, he was coaching kids for free. And I, it really changed the way I thought about sports.
I, the reason I got into basketball is I loved basketball and I loved kids, but that's not the reason I stayed in college coaching. I stayed in it 'cause it's pre, it says, look, it says UTEP on my shirt. And uh, and, and, and uh, and, and I never made much money at utep, but at New Mexico State I made good money.
And it became, I think most college coaches, they wanna get into coaching 'cause they love the game and they love kids and they love working with kids. But that's not why they stay in coaching. Rick Pitino is not in coaching because he, because he loves, because he loves because he loves kids. He's in it for the fame and the glory and the money.
And so Rocky really changed the way Rocky Lar and, and, and Rocky wound up being, being he was a victim of gun violence, which is a whole other story. But he died when, when he was about my age. Now I'm 66. I think Rick Rocky was 67 when he died, and, uh, [00:47:00] but it really changed the way I, so I was hugely influenced by Don Haskins breaking the color line and Lou Henson, who broke the color line at Hardin Simmons.
But my biggest influence was, was this man named Rocky Galarza, who no one would ever, people in El Paso know who he was. He's on the, he's in the Boxing Hall of Fame and the El Paso Sports Hall of Fame. But just this idea that it really made me think about why am I doing this? Like what is the purpose of sports and what's the purpose of, of coaching kids?
Miguel: It's pretty much the name of my podcast. You could use sports as a weapon. It's double edged because, you know, you could use it for bad, but the overall reason I came up with is how you could use it for good, you know, for change in,
Rus: in Iner in America. For many years, sports has been at the forefront of social change.
So whether it's, whether it's Tommy Smith and John Carlos or Jackie Robinson, or Megan Rapino, I just recently learned about Katherine Switzer. She was the, she just wrote down K Switzer and registered for the Boston Marathon in the late 1960s. And they tried to tackle [00:48:00] her when she was running, when they realized, Hey, that's a woman, let's stop her.
And, and, and so sports has always been at the forefront of, for, for example, when Don Haskins started, the five black players that won the national title against all white Kentucky, Texas. It was called Texas Western then, but then it became UTEP the next year. But UTEP had never had a black professor. It's astonishing to think about that, that here they're winning the national championship with an all black starting five, and they've never had a black professor in any subject.
It's, it's, it, it, it's shocking so that that idea has happened all the time in sports. And that may be a good segue. Uh, if you don't mind, Miguel, the new book project I'm working on, you'll find this interesting in Belfast, Northern Ireland, which used to be a terribly wared. The Catholics and Protestants were killing each other for years.
But right now there's this weird phenomenon where the Syrian refugee children and Sudanese refugee, they're coming in moving to Northern Ireland, which used to be very violent. And the parents are sticking their children into Gaelic football, which is this weird [00:49:00] Oh yeah. That's an, that's Irish
Speaker 4: cultural sport.
Rus: Yeah, it's a very Irish game. You only, you really only ever see it in Ireland, a little bit in New York and Boston and Chicago. But the, the children are, are breaking the color barrier. So rather than it happened with Jackie Robinson at age 25, which Jackie Robinson was already 25 when he became a rookie.
Maybe 26. But it, it, uh, but here it is, children. So you look at these teams of Gaelic football, these youth teams, and they're like Sean Kelly and Liam o Flaherty, and. Muhammad Akbar. Wow. How'd that kid get on the team? Yeah. And so here it is where sports is in, in particularly in Belfast, in, in a, and it's the, it's the, uh, people who have been most affected by the violence in Northern Ireland that are the most welcoming.
And so that it part of the idea of the book, it's called almost like Belonging. It's still a book project, but I have a great agent in Los Angeles that, and so we're working together to try and finalize this book. But, so that's my new project. You, you'd sort of hinted that. You'd ask, what are you doing now?
And I'm trying to [00:50:00] finish this book about Syrian refugee children playing Gaelic sports. It's a weird, it's a weird story, but you know, this is it, uh uh, that. Sports is often, as we talked about, it's a window into other cultures. Music can be as well. And then also food. Like a lot of the visitors that come, when people come to the border to visit, the first thing they do is they wanna go eat the Mexican food.
And that is often, food is often a window into, you know, into a new culture. So I grew up in Chicago and my, my dad had the sense that rather than we'd go out to eat maybe once every two months, we never went for hamburgers or steaks. It was Korean food and Greek food. We went to Greek Town, we went to Little Italy, we went to Chinatown.
And that can often be a food, can often be a window. And I'm getting hungry just talking about it. Sorry.
Miguel: Almost lunchtime over here. It's already over there. Yes. Um, and
Rus: I think it's, it's probably the same with you. If you went to visit, if you went to visit Puerto Rico, the first thing you would do is, oh, this is different.
You know, isn't this interesting? You know, this is so much different from [00:51:00] what you know. And I, I do, I do think that the, and books, of course, are, can often open, open up, open, open windows into other cultures. But that's, so that's what, that's what attracted me to this story of Gaelic Gaelic football in Ireland, which is this purely Irish game.
And here's these immigrant children playing Gaelic football and, and, and the women, by the way, the women are playing with hijabs on. So it's really great to see the women playing with playing Gaelic football with hijabs on.
Miguel: Is it gonna be a fiction or nonfiction book?
Rus: It's not. Yeah, it's nonfiction. I went over there on Okay.
On something. You, you, you know what, it is a full, I went over on a Fulbright Fellowship, so That's okay. It's an academic award that promotes diversity and, and inclusion, which is, so it's gonna get killed by the Fulbright. I'm pretty well convinced that will get killed by the current administration. But the, that's what, that's the entire point of the Fulbright is, is, is, is cultural, you know, educational and cultural exchange between nations.
And so I, I went, I went over there. That was the whole proposal is there's this weird [00:52:00] phenomenon going on where immigrants are, immigrants are integrating gay sports.
Miguel: Oh, that's, I'm looking forward to that, uh, in the near future. If we could talk about that one when it comes out.
Rus: Well, I, if I can ever finish, I'm looking forward to finishing.
Seriously, I need a break. It's just gotten to be, it's just, I'm not a natural writer. Like I'm interested in stories and I have a good sense. My only strength probably is a writer, Miguel, is I know a good idea for a book. But it's always been a slog for me. I'm not a, you know, I'm not, you know, I wasn't an English major and so sometimes I have grammar problems and this and that.
So I'm, I'm a, I'm a slow worker. I'm, I'm, I'm a, I'm a slow
Miguel: problem with me. And my master's thesis, when I was writing it was the editing process and all that, going back and forth on my grammar and all that. Like,
Rus: and, and it's just like anything else, I think your, your viewers turn on the, turn on the Warriors game and see Steph Curry make this move.
The amount of work that went into him making that move is, is unfathomable for most of us. It's, it's just hours and hours and years and years of practicing this and [00:53:00] practicing that was the same with a book, is that you read the book say, yeah, that was great. But it, you know, there's a lot, a lot of work, a lot of, lot, lot of, a lot of work behind that book, I think.
Miguel: And before we go, I wanna talk to you about this, just more fun. Um, can you talk about your. You talked about a little bit, but some of your experience working with the legendary Don Haskins, of course, people, if you didn't know, as Rus mentioned, he was the coach, the head coach of Texas Western that became UTEP that won the national championship against an all white, they were the all black team against Kentucky, university of Kentucky that had Pat Riley on the team, and that's the movie that he became The Glory Ward, uh, glory Road movie.
Um, so can you talk about that and then also players like Tim Hardaway, your experience discovering players, all that, more of the little fun stuff for basketball.
Rus: Yeah. Don Haskins is credited, rightly so for breaking the color line because it just by chance when they beat, you know, Kentucky had never had a black player at that time in [00:54:00] 1966.
But I always try to mention that when, uh, a couple things. One, when Don Haskins arrived, unlike in the movie. When Don Haskins arrived in El Paso, Nolan Richardson was already the best player on the team who became the famous coach. He's the subject of, of my second book from a while back called 40 Minutes of Hell.
But, but I also mentioned Lou Henson, who I worked for. When Lou went to Hardin-Simmons University, which was his first college job, he insisted on desegregating the team, but he also insisted on bringing a Mexican American assistant coach with him. And the, and the people at Hardin Simpson says, oh, it was a Baptist school, you know, no, no, you can't, you know, but then he said, well, look, I'm not gonna come if I can't bring, if I can't desegregate the team and bring, uh, Joe Rosales with me.
I'm not, and Joe Rosales is still alive here in Las Cruces. But, but yeah, Don, when Don Haskins broke the color line, it really, you know, the, the entire Southeast conference and the entire Southwest Conference, which was all Texas, the other Texas schools, uh, that, you know, UTEP was never in the Southwest conference, but, uh, [00:55:00] here it was, a town on the border was able to de, you know, be the first, the pioneering team and my feeling.
My feeling, Miguel, is the reason Haskins was able to do that. One, he was very colorblind. He just didn't care about it. And he didn't think about it. He was not political. He was not thinking, I'm going to change the world, which is the way the movie portrays him. He just wanted to win games. But I think the reason he was able to get by doing that was two things.
One, it was in El Paso, and so the town was, at that time was 80% Hispanic like it is today. Like Hispanic people are, are far less prejudice than, than than most white people. I don't think he would've been able to do it in Dallas. But the other thing is there was in nine, in, in, uh, in 1964, a city councilman named Bert Williams got Nolan Richardson to play on his So, uh, uh, his summer softball team.
And after Nolan hit the game, winning home run, Nolan was a good baseball player as well. And after Nolan hit the game, winning home run that summer. Bert Williams said to him, come on, we're gonna go eat at the Oasis. I'll treat. And, [00:56:00] and Nolan said, I can't eat at the Oasis. You know, that's, you know, it's, it's a Jim Crow restaurant.
Al, you're with me. Come on. So they went to the restaurant, the Oasis, which was owned by the man who later became mayor, and the waitress said, I can't serve this guy. And Bert Williams went and wrote the anti Jim Crow laws. And so, uh, and, and, and it passed because of what happened with him and Nolan Richardson.
And, and what that did was it, it ended Jim Crow in El Paso two years before the National Civil Rights Act and what that meant of a sports
Miguel: athlete because of a, kind of like a Jackie Robinson thing.
Rus: Exactly. So Nolan Richardson, later, he would deliberately change the world when he won all those national, when he won the national title and everything.
But, but at, but at, at that time, Don Haskins could now say to black athletes all over the country, if you Yes, we're in the South. If you come here, it's de it's desegregated. You can go to the movies. There, there are no more Jim Crow laws in El Paso. So El Paso ended Jim Crow laws two years before the rest of the nation did.
And they were serious about it, rather than [00:57:00] doing it, pretending it, but still having segregated schools. They, they actually, they were actually serious about it. So, El pa, it happened in El Paso, partly because of Burt Williams doing that. And Burt Williams never got credit for it. He never, you know, if he'd have been Bill Clinton, he would've wound up with a cabinet position or running for governor or something like that.
But it was all through Burt Williams and Nolan Richardson and being in a Hispanic town that allowed Don Haskins to do that without any, without the minimum amount of static.
Miguel: A lot of these, uh, different factors for it to kind of happen. Yes. You know, like you're saying, location, because if it would've happened somewhere in Dallas, it's not happening.
Rus: Yeah. As you said, but, and, and briefly I will say about Tim Hardaway, it was mostly luck. You know, I was 23 years old. I went to see him play. I thought, God, this guy's really good. And I didn't, you know, it was mostly Lock and Haskins. Coach Haskins, believe me, when I said he was, I didn't think he was gonna be that good.
None of none of us did. By the way, his book is pretty good. It's called Crossover. It just came out, okay, I should be, I should be [00:58:00] promoting my own book. I should be promoting Big Time or the Nolan Richardson book. But the Tim Hardaway, you know, he, he famously said, you know, years after he was done playing, he was on the radio and said, I hate, well, I hate gay people.
They'd asked him about. And so a lot of the, the la the last 30 or 40 pages about him coming to grips with what he had done and what it meant, and here the irony of a guy coming, playing for Don Haskins. Who changed the world through sports. And here's a guy, you know, Tim had a chance to say, you know, but he was saying, well, I think what a lot of players felt at the time, but Tim, Tim said it, and then having to come to grips with it and, and sort of, rather than do a press conference the next day and deny he said it, which is what, you know, our current administration would do, or, or, you know, or try to soft pedal it.
He didn't do anything. And he just got, he got shunned by the NBA. He got held out of the Hall of Fame for years because of it. It's, that's common knowledge. But he gradually started, uh, he wound up sitting on the board of a suicide, gay suicide hotline in Miami. And he started thinking about it and [00:59:00] he had friends that told him that, you know, like one of his friends said to him, but Tim, don't you understand that your goddaughter, your goddaughter, you, you, her, her godfather, she's a lesbian.
Did you not figure that out yet? Don't you see her holding hands with her girlfriend at the 4th of July picnic? And so I think Tim was really sha shamed and embarrassed about it, but he, he, his transformation was organic. True and honest. And so I, I like that book. It, it's, it's called Crossover. It's the, uh, my life on the Hard Scrabble Streets of Chicago or something like that is I've loaned it, or I, I would hold that up on to, to the camera.
But yeah. So, but recruiting Tim Hardaway was mostly an element of luck, but that there was a pi, he had a pied Piper effect because of his flamboyant game and the killer crossover that led to other players. And we had, we, for a while at utep, we had great Chicago players. A
Miguel: long time ago I worked, I was in my early twenties, this is maybe 2007, um, living back home in Southern California.
I worked at a Kinko's in Riverside, California in some tall, tall black man walks [01:00:00] in, I don't remember his name. And he, I guess he used, I can't remember it, and I remember it at the time, but he played BA college basketball at. Utep. So you probably knew him. I don't even remember his name. And he played with Hardaway and he was telling me a story.
He was a, he was like a small forward or power forward, but he was telling me the stories when I'm there.
Rus: That could, that could, that could have been Chris Sandal from Long Beach Poly or Terry Stallworth, Southern. He lived in Southern California.
Miguel: Yeah. He was telling me those stories, like, oh, what you played with.
Because I knew who Tim Hardaway was, but I remember his name and now I don't remember it anymore. It's been so long. But
Rus: it might, that might have been that, I'm gonna guess that was Chris Sandal or Terry Stalworth. They were LA guys, although they're from Long Beach, that long Riverside would've been a long way from home from them.
Lemme think. Did we have, did we have anybody from Long Beach? From Riverside Beach? From Riverside.
Miguel: But that's where he lived because I, I'm assuming that's where he lived. 'cause he came to my Kel store, right?
Rus: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's hard to know. Well, it's a, it's a mystery. I remember that
Miguel: story.
Rus: It's a mystery.
Miguel. We'll talk about it next time.
Miguel: Um, and if people don't know some of, some of you, I don't know what the age [01:01:00] of my audience, some of you might look younger than me. Um, Tim Hardaway is the father of Tim Hardaway Jr. And Tim Hardaway. Got really known on the Warriors and then he went onto the heat. Um, he was on the cover of a video game at one point, but when he was on The Warriors, he was, it was called Run TMC, Tim Hardaway, Mitch Richmond and Chris Mullen.
Um, those are the, the nineties is when I started really paying attention to basketball. And I'm a kid
Rus: and he is only, he's only five foot 11, which is what I think is what made him appealing to fans is that he was their size more or less, you know? And so, and, and he was an exciting player. The crossover dribble and his sort of fancy showmanship.
And do you remember Spike Lee got enamored with Tim Hardaway for a while. He was on those Nike commercials and that kind of thing. So he, I don't wanna say he revolutionized the game, but he certainly popularized, flamboyant, dribbling, and, you know, and, and, and skillful dribbling Yeah,
Miguel: the dribbling before like a Allen Iverson or a Kyrie Irving when he was a player that's known for dribbling.
Yeah. Um, but yeah, that was, it's good to have you on the podcast and, um, we could end it, uh, now, but anything else you wanna [01:02:00] talk about? Um.
Rus: No, but just that, that I, I, I do think, I, I, I do think, thank you for doing this, Miguel. And there is a, there is a certain power of sports and there's a, there's, you know, I think one of, one of the things I would tell my students, they say, well, why do you write about sports?
But sports, there's a story in every game, and there's a story in every season, and there's a story in every career. And so I think sports, I think we're wired for stories. We're not, I don't think we're, you know, I, I, I think if I ask you about yourself, you don't tell me you're 98% H2O and a type O blood type.
You know, you say, well, my parents did this and my grandparents did this and that. You know, you, you tell me you're, you, you know, you tell, we're wired to hear a story and within every sporting event there's a story. And I do think it's, it's a reflection of, of, of American society.
Miguel: Way to end the podcast. Um, thank you again, Rus.
Uh, Rus Bradford. Check out his book. I'll put the links. Too big time. Um, I'll even, I even found the link to the little documentary about, about your camp that I think Dave Zirin was in it. Um, I'll put that That's right, yeah. In the show notes. [01:03:00] Yep. I looked it up.
Rus: Zirin sort of a secret hero to all of us in the, it's weird to say that 'cause I'm old enough to be his father, but Zirin is a real hero to, he's been, he's blurbed the back of a couple of my books.
I'm, I'm a, I'm a huge Dave Zirin fan.
Miguel: Yeah. He was my guest about four years ago. Only one time I had him on my, but he's, he's pretty much one of my main inspirations for starting, uh, this project.
Rus: I've, I've taught his books in class and, and, and, and all that kind of stuff.
Miguel: I'll put a link to that. I'll put a link to your rich, uh, coach Richardson book.
Um, story, the way I remember Coach Richardson before we go is I'm a, grew up watching UCLA and so 1995 championship game UCLA against Arkansas. I remember that game.
Rus: Yeah. But he, he lost that one. It's the one before He lost that game. Yeah. Won. Yeah. Yeah.
Miguel: Yep. Um, so thank you again, Rus, for coming on the podcast.
I'll put the links, uh, to your books and the, something about your, uh, camp. Um, and I appreciate you coming on the podcast.
Rus: Good. Thanks so much.[01:04:00]