Ted Owens grew up on a cotton farm in Hollis, Oklahoma, where he was raised by his parents to know right from wrong, to treat people with kindness and deep respect, to always listen to others, to show great empathy, to have profound faith, to have a strong work ethic, to treat people of color on the basis of their character and performance, and to always be a good person.
Owens carried these invaluable life lessons throughout his life, reinforced to him by his Oklahoma Hall of Fame basketball coach, Bruce Drake, and then KU head basketball coach Dick Harp — a man of impeccable values and strong moral fiber —when Owens served as a loyal assistant to Harp as an assistant coach from 1960-64.
In his nearly 91 years on Earth, Owens has learned from these instrumental people in his life and touched and impacted countless people, beginning as head basketball and baseball coach of Cameron Junior College in Lawton, Oklahoma, from 1956-60, and then as a KU assistant for four years before serving as KU head basketball coach for 19 years, still the second-longest tenured coach in the rich Kansas basketball tradition.
After KU, he continued impacting people’s lives as Oral Roberts head coach, Fresno Flames coach, Tel Aviv Maccabi coach, development director and basketball coach at Metro Christian Academy in Tulsa, athletic director at St. Leo University near Tampa, Florida, and all his other jobs and pursuits.
Above all, Owens has been a true loving and consummate family man, devoted to his wife, Michelle, and his children. He has also stayed in close contact with those players he coached decades ago, including many from Cameron and at KU, and those he also mentored like Joey and Stephen Graham, former Oklahoma State basketball players from 2003-05.
Owens’ daughter, Taylor Owens O’Connell, talked about her dad’s love and influence of people in his 2013 book, At The Hang-Up.
“I am beyond blessed to have a father who loves me endlessly. It’s amazing that a little boy from Hollis could grown up to have such an impact on so many lives,” Owens-O’Connell said.
Owens’ former players deeply love him, just as he loved them.
“The most important thing to my dad today is his meaningful relationships with his players. Every July 16 when 7 a.m. hits, Tommie Smith calls to wish him a happy birthday,” Owens’ son, Teddy, said. “Shortly afterward, David Magley will call, or Bud Stallworth, or Roger Morningstar, or Al Lopes. They call every year, never missing his birthday, because he loved them and believed in them. He continues to do so, and anytime they achieve something he always calls me and update me on their success off the court.”
As soon as he became KU head coach, you knew Owens would be something special—as a person and as a coach.
After Harp resigned under pressure in 1964, the KU players petitioned for the popular Owens to take over the head-coaching job. Owens had great admiration and respect from his players and KU alumni.
“Owens is the best basketball coach I know for talking to high school boys and recruiting them,” a top KU booster said. “He and Jack Mitchell (then-KU football coach) are in a class by themselves in the field. Owens has also had a hand in recruiting most everybody now in the KU basketball program and they like him and respect him a great deal.”
Owens, who coached at Mount Oread 19 years until being fired in 1983, won six Big Eight Conference Championships, eight Big Eight Holiday Tournament titles, one Big Eight Tournament Championship, advanced to the NCAA tournament seven times, and earned Final Four berths in 1971 and 1974. He was named Big Eight Coach of the Year five times and selected as National Coach of the Year in 1978 by Basketball Weekly.
Owens, who also coached five All-Americans, ranks as the fourth-winningest coach in Kansas basketball history behind Phog Allen, Bill Self and Roy Williams with a 348-182 (.657) record.
But beyond the wins is the many lives he influenced and impacted. Just listen to former star forward David Magley, who played at KU from 1978-82 and then briefly with the Cleveland Cavaliers as a rookie. Magley and his wife, Evelyn, have always been very close to Owens; they used to babysit Owens’ kids when Magley was in college.
Magley truly admired and loved Owens.
“Of all the lives that Coach Owens has touched over the years, I have to believe that I am the most fortunate,” Magley said in At The Hang-Up.
“He taught me how to compete. He encouraged me and rewarded when I earned it. He showed me how to be a champion with grace.”
Just listen to countless other Jayhawks and coaches, including Riney Lochmann, who played at KU from 1963-66 and then in the ABA.
“The bottom line is that I would run through a brick wall for Coach Owens,” Lochmann said. “I have nothing but great memories from my time there. Kansas has retired many jerseys that hang in the rafters of Allen Fieldhouse. My hope is that Coach Owens will also be honored so his name can hang up in Allen Fieldhouse with the rest of his players.”
Just listen to Dave Robisch, the high-scoring forward and All-American who starred at KU from
1968-71.
“Coach Owens is more than a coach. He has been a part of my life since 1967,” Robisch said. “Our relationship has grown stronger over time. I look back now and understand so much more about what went on at KU than I did when I was going through it. He has been there through 42 years of my marriage. He has watched my kids grow up and I have watched his kids grow up. This type of thing does not happen very often. We have a very special friendship that continues to grow as we both get older.”
Just listen to Delvy Lewis, who was a star KU guard and All-Big Eight in 1966.
“I just have nothing but great words to say about Ted Owens as a coach,” Lewis told me in 2003. “He was a gentleman. I just feel badly, because I think he’s kind of gotten a bad rap, as far as perception. He still has a tremendous winning record. I just hope he gets some credit for what he did, because I think he did a lot more than people realize. To this day, I have the greatest respect for him. He’s just a neat, neat man.”
“I think Riney and I were his favorites on that (great 1965-66 squad, which won the Big Eight title and lost to Texas Western in the Midwest Regional final) team, because he just appreciated the ‘roll up your sleeves and work,’ and that’s pretty much what Riney and I did,” Lewis added. “I hustled and gave it all I had every game. Everybody did. We had a group that pretty much got after it. We were pretty no-nonsense. “
Just listen to Bud Stallworth, who starred at KU from 1969-72 and is another of the five All-Americans (also an Academic All-American) Owens coached at Kansas.
“What I first noticed is that Coach Owens cared about his players beyond just playing sports,” Stallworth said. “He was more like a parent, wanting his players to be more than successful basketball players. He emphasized that we had to be well-rounded on the court and even better better people off the court.”
Just listen to Jo Jo White, still another KU All-American who is enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
“Ted is like a second father to me, he and coach (former longtime KU assistant Sam) Miranda,” White said after his jersey retirement at Allen Fieldhouse in 2003. “They were more than just coaches. They were friends to us, they were our confidant. Our relationship continues on, far beyond the KU days.”
White also raved about Owens in
www.celtic-nation.com on April 7, 2003, just hours before KU played Syracuse in the national championship game.
“He was a very astute coach, and a great teacher of the fundamental,” White said. ”He was also politically involved within the college basketball community and well-versed when it came to the issues surrounding the game. Coach Owens contributed greatly to my growth as a basketball player. I enjoyed playing for him and I learned a lot from being a part of his program.”
And then listen to what White said about Owens in At The Hang-Up:
“Coach Owens was always open to sit and talk with individuals about how to be a better player and a better team. He wasn’t concerned about players approaching him to talk about the team. To me, he was a great coach—always sincere, honest and open with all of us. I absolutely adored the man and my time at KU.”
Owens not only had great respect from his former players, but from his peers in the coaching profession. Just ask Washington Wizards head coach Scott Brooks, who played under Owens with the WBL Fresno Flames in 1988.
“Coach Owens is a man of integrity; he is a sincere, honest person who treats everyone with a great deal of respect—which is something that I’ve carried with me throughout my life on and off the basketball floor,” Brooks said. “Coach Owens has had a great impact on me as a person and a coach. To this day, every time Coach Owens is around it seems that a memory is made.”
Just listen to Hall of Fame Kentucky coach John Calipari, who received his first coaching job under Owens as a graduate assistant at KU in 1982.
“He gave me an opportunity to coach at one of the greatest programs,” Calipari said. “Coach Owens has always handled himself with class. Whether we won or lost, he was just a classy, upstanding gentleman, and he did it at a hard place to coach, but a great place to coach. I will always be indebted to him, and Coach Owens knows that.”
Just listen to Hall of Fame coach Larry Brown, who succeeded Owens at KU for five seasons.
“(Owens) told the players he’d been here 23 years, 19 as head coach,” Brown said after the Legends of the Phog exhibition game at Allen Fieldhouse in 2011, during which he and Owens served as honorary head coaches.
“He was in tears talking to everybody about his love for the school.”
Owens recruited players like Ron Kellogg, Calvin Thompson and Greg Dreiling (Owens coached Kellogg and Thompson for one season), who became vital senior cogs on Brown’s 1986 Final Four team.
“Ted left me with a pretty good group,” Brown said. “I was blessed with a really good team. And the values those kids have because of their relationship with him was pretty neat. He (also) left me with some good coaches. I was fortunate to have Bob Hill, Calipari ... It was a remarkable staff. Ted had a lot to do with this program, and to see his feelings about it is pretty remarkable.”
At age 82 then, Owens still had a strong competitive fire.
“He wanted to beat my (butt), I can tell you that,” Brown said in reference to the exhibition game, where Owens’ White team tied Brown’s Blue squad, 111-111.
Just listen to KU coach Bill Self, who has endless admiration for Owens.
“He comes back (to Lawrence and KU) all the time,” Self once said. “We take golf trips together every summer. We bunked together in Scotland (in 2009) for a week. I’ve gotten to know coach real well. He’s been really good to me and my family. When you’ve (coached here) 19 years, he’s kind of the coach that sometimes get lost, but he went to two Final fours and won an awful lot of games.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever been around a coach that takes more pride in what his ex-players are doing than what he does,” Self added to the Lawrence Journal-World on July 16, 2019 when Owens turned 90.
“But it’s also easier to do that because he’s older and he’s seen his guys grow up to be 60-year-old grown men.”
“He’s an amazing guy,” Self said.
Even the legendary Hall of Fame UCLA coach John Wooden greatly admired Owens. Wooden won 10 NCAA titles in 12 years, including a record seven straight.
Owens wrote about his friendship with Wooden in his book:
“Toward the end of John Wooden’s unparalleled career at UCLA, Wooden and I had established a strong-enough friendship that we exchanged notes at the beginning of each season. Wooden sent this note to me in his first year of his retirement.”
It was dated on March 2, 1976.
“Thanks Ted,
Keep your chin up. Our profession needs more men like you.”
Sincerely,
John Wooden
One of the highest compliments, indeed, from arguably the greatest coach in basketball history.
As the Journal-World reported in 2019, Owens has taught the “games he loves” at such faraway places as Japan, China, Spain, Italy, Belgium, France, Switzerland, the Philippines, Korea, England and Israel.
During a speech in Oklahoma around that time, which the Journal-World wrote that The Oklahoman's Berry Tramel called “one of the best speeches he had ever heard” and “refers to Owens as a American treasure,” Owens spoke about his life in basketball.
“I had some time to dream while I was hoeing cotton back on that farm in southwest Oklahoma,” Owens said. “But my dreams were never so great as to imagine what I have been privileged to do during my lifetime, playing college basketball for the great Hall of Fame coach Bruce Drake at OU, coaching at the University of Kansas, where James Naismith was the first coach and Phog Allen coached and promoted the game, and to coach in the St. Andrew’s of college basketball, Allen Fieldhouse.”
“I have learned that as a coach, your success will be measured by the productive and successful lives of those young men and women for whom you were responsible,” Owens added with great meaning. “A chaplain at the NCAA Final Four was speaking to the coaches at a Sunday church service (years ago) and he said it best: ‘You should always remember that you are not using young men and young women to win a game but that you are using the game to win young men and young women.’”
Owens, who is enshrined in the KU Athletics Hall of Fame, Cameron University Athletics Hall of Fame, the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame and Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame, did just that with young men in his long and storied coaching career. From humble beginnings in Hollis, to playing at OU, coaching at Cameron Junior College, to then getting the biggest break of his life as head coach at KU for 19 years, Owens has touched countless lives beyond measure.
While his KU coaching career ended on a bitter note with his firing in 1983, Owens still revels in returning to Allen Fieldhouse and seeing KU basketball games while catching up with former players and close lifelong friends. He has such fond memories of his time at Mount Oread.
“Coaching in Allen Fieldhouse is like no other experience I have ever encountered,” Owens told Jeff Bollig and Doug Vance in their 2008 book, What IT Means TO Be A Jayhawk.
“Just running out onto the court before the games — and the anticipation of a noise level unknown to most places — was electrifying. Our fans are pretty knowledgeable about basketball and pretty fair about recognizing the great plays of opponents. It isn’t just a game, but an event — the ‘Rock Chalk Chant,’ the pep band, the pompom squad, and the cheerleaders all add significantly to the game. When I go back to games, I can still sing the same songs and chant the same chants as if it were yesterday. That is tradition.
“It is something that stays with you forever. You can walk into a sports apparel store in almost any city and buy a Jayhawk cap. There aren’t any other Jayhawks. It is a unique name with a unique history. I live in Tulsa, and I see people wearing Jayhawk caps and shirts all the time. You can be proud of being a Jayhawk because it represents more than athletic victories. It represents great academics, great tradition, from Dr. Naismith and Dr. Allen and so many great achievements in politics, aerospace, and other professional areas. Being a Jayhawk fills you with pride.
“I stay as close (to the program) as I can while living in Tulsa. ... I love to come back every time I can and see my former players and coaches. It is one of the great joys of my life.”
