Ron Franz was a rangy and rugged 6-7 forward from Kansas City, Kan., who was heavily recruited out of Ward High School. Attracted to the KU business school and wanting to stay close to home, Franz became a Jayhawk and was a three-year starter from 1964-67. He was a pivotal part of the rebirth of KU basketball, helping Kansas to a 63-16 record during his standout career, which included two Big Eight titles and three Big 8 Holiday Tournament championships. Franz was part of one of the greatest teams in KU history in 1965-66, when KU advanced to the Midwest Regional final and finished at 23-4. The Jayhawks were also 23-4 the following year, when Franz posted career highs with 12.4 points and 6.9 rebounds per game while serving as senior captain.
He finished his career with averages of 9.3 points and 6.0 rebounds while scoring 737 points. Franz remains grateful he helped KU return to national prominence.
“We brought KU back to where it had been,” Franz told me from his home in Germantown, Tenn., in 2001 for a Where Are They Now? interview in 2001 for Jayhawk Insider.
“Knowing I had some small part in KU coming back from when they were down and knowing we helped get it reestablished playing with some really good quality guys, that’s what I’ll remember. He (Ted Owens) came in when a time KU basketball was down, and he put it on a path again. He got the enthusiasm going again.”
After concluding his KU career, Franz played six years in they ABA and thrived in the up-tempo, fast-break style. He guarded the likes of Dr. J (Julius Erving), and even had some success against the future Hall of Famer.
“He was phenomenal,” Franz said. “I know he scored a lot on me, but I think I scored a few on him, too. ... Man, it (ABA) was a hoot. If they had cable then, it would have pushed the NBA off the map. It was the game they play now. The speed of the game was the ABA. It was an interesting league. You didn’t really know if your check was good every day. You took your check and ran to the bank right away to make sure it was good.”
In this blog, I recall Franz’s high school days, where he starred at Ward High School, his battles on the playgrounds playing against star players, and his recruitment to Kansas. I also republish my Where Are They now? story. It was a very enjoyable interview and something I will always remember.
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“My senior year, they used to send the letters to the high school coaches, and then they would give them to you. I remember my coach at Ward High School, Bill Samuels. He said, ‘You got some letters here to go to some schools. I think they’re recruiting letters.’ I said, ‘Gosh coach, I can’t afford to go to those schools.’ He said, ‘Hello, they’ll give you a scholarship.’ I’m going, ‘What, to play basketball?’ (laughs). I actually was naive. I didn’t think someone would give you a scholarship to play basketball. That wasn’t anything you thought about. You didn’t have the media hype that you have with the kids today. We knew about some scholarships, but you just didn’t think you’d get a scholarship. I certainly didn’t think I’d ever have one offered. Heck, I didn’t even play basketball unil my junior year of high school. I suited up, let’s put it that way. And then the Lord made a really neat thing happen. He grew me. I went from like 6-0 to 6-4 in a little over a year. I went, ‘Ok, now I can play basketball.’ We went to the state tournament my junior year and I think that’s where I got noticed a little bit. Then, my senior year, other than the one young man named Lucious Allen at Wyandotte, we had a very good team. When you have a good team, you obviously get looked at. My senior year, I think I was the leading scorer in the Kansas City area. No, they had a guy named Bob Bowers over at Rockhurst. I think he beat me. He went to Colorado. When you get that kind of notoriety and all of that, then you get people trying to recruit you, that was something I didn’t realize was available until my senior year. I finally realized, ‘Shoot, this is a good deal. Let me score a lot of points and see where I can go.’ (laughs).
"I played a little at the CYO. When I went to Ward, I was on the freshman team, but didn’t play. When I was a sophomore, I was on the JV team, but didn’t play. I grew that summer and started as a junior. When you got a guy who’s 6-4 at that time, that was pretty big for that era. By my senior year, I was 6-5. And by my freshman year at KU, I was 6-7. And by my sophomore year, I was, unfortunately only 3/4 more of an inch, a little under 6-8, and it just stopped. I really didn’t play until my junior year.
“Kansas City wasn’t really known for any great basketball players at that particular time frame when I grew up. There was a guy from my high school that played professional baseball named Ray Sadecki. He pitched for the Cardinals. As far as basketball was concerned, there were some guys that I know that I watched play over at Wyandotte. Harry Gibson, a friend of mine that was a captain of the KU team my senior year. He was about three years older than I was. The Ellison boys, Nolen Ellison, they played at KU. Wyandotte High School was the best high school program in Kansas. They had a coach named Walt Shublom. He’s still alive, and I saw him last when I was up at KU. He lived up the street from Mark Twain School in Minnesota Avenue or whatever the case might have been. All of the people would go there in the summer time and play on the asphalt. That’s where I really learned to play. I played against these guys from Wyandotte High school. There would be guys from Missouri that would come over. Warren Armstrong played at Central. His name in the old ABA was Warren Jabali. He played down at Wichita State. He’d bring his crew over there in the summer time and we’d play until it got dark. That’s really where I learned the game was on the playground there on the asphalt, sort of like being in the inner city. The brothers would come over and we’d just play. In that particular time frame, that was unusual for black and whites playing together. You just didn’t have a lot of that. You’d have a black school that would play a white school, but you didn’t have too many guys that would be on the playground playing on the same team with each other. I think that’s where my game developed, playing with these guys in the summer time before my junior year, and before my senior year. Of course, in the summer time after that, we’d play there, even when were were all in college. Or we’d used to play over at Rockhurst college. They used to have a summer league thing that we’d play at.
"As far as remembering anybody as far as basketball was concerned, they had an old ABL team called the Kansas City Steers, and they had a guy named Bill Bridges who played at Kansas. He was pretty unique in the fact for his size, he was probably one of the toughest rebounders. He played in the NBA for quite a few years. I guess if anybody that I would recall or remember or think about in that particular time frame, it probably would have been him because I did go to the old Kansas City Steers game. He was an interesting player."
Franz talked about Sports Illustrated interviewing him about the “horrors of recruiting.”
“I was being recruited by K-State, which was very good then and (head coach) Tex Winter. I had already been to Michigan, Notre Dame, Michigan State, Colorado, I think I got letters from 50 or 60 schools — small and large. Notre Dame, of course, as a good catholic boy, you had to go to Notre Dame or the nuns wouldn’t let you back in school. Then I went out to Colorado. They were good. They had just won the Big 8 then. Any way, I was going to go out to dinner with coach Winter, and he asked if they could bring a SI guy to dinner named Frank Deford. You have to remember, I didn’t know you could get a scholarship to play basketball I was that naive. By about the fourth trip and the offers of free airline and free this and free that, I’m going, ‘Hum, something’s interesting there.’ I thought this was just another guy for a recruiting thing. I went, ‘Sure, yeah, bring him along.’ So I met him and we went to the Golden Ox and had dinner. At the end of the night, they dropped me off, my mother and myself at my house. Tex, which I still have to this day, gave me an autographed, it may be worth something, the triple post offense. ...That fall, somebody came in the athletic dorm (at KU), it use to be JRP. The guy says, ‘Hey you’re in SI.’ I went,’Yeah, right.’ He goes, ‘No, you’re in SI.’ It was probably in October or November of ‘63. What it was, they did a thing on recruiting, I think with four people across the country, and I was one of them. He was just talking about how K-State was recruiting me. He wasn’t talking about the other schools and what their recruiting tactics were. Lord knows what these kids go through now. I mean, it’s just got to be phenomenal. Plus these AAU guys who have their handouts for everything. In my particular time, it was just a lot of phone calls and letters. And of course, alumni could contact you. They’d show up at games. They’d come by the house. You’d get covered up with people who were alumni of the various schools that were recruiting you. They were calling you, coming up to the games, dropping by the house, seeing if you needed anything. They cleaned that up and got the alumni out. It was an interesting article. I got it around here in one of my things somewhere. It’s always interesting to kind of pop out.
“Actually, (KU) did a damn good recruiting job on my family. Mr. (Roy) Edwards, a fine man, one of the finest families I ever had the pleasure to come across, an avid KU man. At that time, KU basketball was down. K-State basketball was big. Colorado basketball was big. Michigan basketball was big. Kansas basketball was going down the tubes. I guess it was the proximity for one thing, I just didn’t want to be that far away from home. I had a good family support group. Again, KU recruited my family very well. I went up for one weekend on my own. I enjoyed it. I liked the campus. I think one of the first things I was impressed by the fact, my recruiting weekend, of course, it also happened at K-State. They took me, the first thing they did, they took me to the business school, which was what I wanted to major in. I thought that was pretty good because the other schools, that was a secondary thing. When I went to Michigan State, I was interested in hotel management, and they were one of the only schools in the country at that time that had a hotel management school. That was like later, the primary thing was basketball. (At) KU, Keith Wetmore was my advisor and he was a gentleman. We met at the B-School. He took me around the B-School. I thought that was pretty cool, because that’s what I wanted to major in, and that’s what I was going to school for, to get a degree and play basketball. Not to play basketball and hopefully get a degree. That was something. All the guys I played with got a degree. I got a call from coach Winter when I announced I was signing with Kansas. He called and wished me the best of luck, and was sorry that I didn’t go to Kansas Sate. And he would try everything he could to show that I should have gone to Kansas State. I think we were 6-1 against them my three years. I thought that was really classy of him, too.”
Here is my Where Are They Now? story on Franz from 2001 in Jayhawk Insider.
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Ron Franz still gets chills when recalling one of the most thrilling moments of his life. It was the 100th-year anniversary reunion of Kansas basketball on Feb. 7, 1998. Franz was back in Allen Fieldhouse playing the game he loved with former teammates and legends from yesteryear.
“You went out on the court, and it was like time had stood still,” Franz said. “The place was sold out. When you started to warm up, 30 years had passed but it just didn’t seem like that. The band was playing. People were cheering. You saw some of the old guys not only on the floor, but in the stands. That was probably one of the best experiences I’ve ever had.”
For Franz, it was an opportunity to relive his glory days. A rugged and rangy 6-7 forward from Kansas City, Kan., Franz played a prominent role in the rebirth of Kansas basketball in the mid-1960s. Franz was a three-year starter who shined on teams that went 63-16 from 1964 to 1967. In the three preceding years, KU stumbled to a 32-43 record under Dick Harp. With coach Ted Owens taking over in 1964, Franz was a part of two Big Eight championships and three-time winners of the Big Eight Holiday Tournament. Moreover, KU advanced to the Midwest Regional Finals in 1966, and was ranked in the top four during the 1965-66 and 1966-67 seasons.
“We brought KU back to where it had been,” Franz said recently from his home in Germantown, Tenn. “Knowing I had some small part in KU coming back from when they were down and knowing we helped get it reestablished playing with some really good quality guys, that’s what I’ll remember. He (Owens) came in when a time KU basketball was down, and he put it on a path again. He got the enthusiasm going again.”
Franz has especially fond memories of the 1965-66 team (23-4) that lost in double overtime to Texas Western in the Midwest Regional finals. With guard Jo Jo White joining the team at mid-semester, KU became one of the elite squads in college basketball. Joining White and Franz (9.6 ppg) were All-American center Walt Wesley, crafty point guard Del Lewis and second-leading scorer Al Lopes.
“That was probably one of the better teams that Kansas has had in its history,” Franz said. “We’ve had a lot of great teams, but that team could do a lot of different things and knew the fundamentals of basketball. We could shoot from the outside, rebound, and get up and down the floor. ... Coach Haskins (of Texas Western, which eventually went on to win the NCAA title) said that was the toughest game (against KU) they played all year.”
Franz said White added a lethal dimension of speed and quickness to a balanced and patterned KU offense.
“He was very quick, very agile,” Franz said. “He brought a fluidness to the game that we probably hadn’t had prior to that. ...We got up and down the floor. We ran a pretty doggone good fast break. He created the speed that we needed. We were all pretty fast guys.”
Franz was both fast and tough. He demonstrated a physical presence who played the game with high energy and passion.
“I was the guy that did the dirty work so to speak,” Franz said. “If I could kind of push you out of bounds and not get caught, I kind of liked it.”
A senior captain in 1966-67 (KU went 23-4 again), Franz led Kansas in rebounding (6.9 rpg) that season and finished third in scoring (12.4 ppg). Franz, who had been accepted into KU Law School, said he had no illusions of playing professional basketball. After playing in a postseason All-Star game in Albuquerque, N.M., Boston Celtics coach Bill Russell asked Franz if he was interested in playing in the NBA.
“I went, ‘Huh,’ Franz said. “That was not a job or career then. Those guys weren’t getting paid anything. It was nothing I was concerned about.”
Franz was eventually drafted by both the NBA’s Detroit Pistons and ABA’s Oakland Oaks. After negotiating a lucrative $16,000 contract, Franz had a change of heart about professional basketball and joined the Oaks. He played just one season in Oakland before he and Steve Jones were traded to New Orleans for Larry Brown (future KU basketball coach and current head man of Philadelphia 76ers) and Doug Moe.
“I can always get tickets from Larry. That’s always good for a free something with Larry if I say, ‘Do you really want people to know I got traded for you? How many tickets can I get?’” Franz said, laughing.
In all, Franz played six seasons in the ABA for Oakland, New Orleans, Floridians, Memphis and Dallas. Franz, who thrived in the fast paced, open-court game of the freewheeling ABA (career averages of 11.7 points and 5.3 rebounds), loved playing against such superstars as Julius Erving and Rick Barry.
“He (Dr. J) was phenomenal,” Franz said. “I know he scored a lot on me, but I think I scored a few on him, too. ... Man, it (ABA) was a hoot. If they had cable then, it would have pushed the NBA off the map. It was the game they play now. The speed of the game was the ABA. It was an interesting league. You didn’t really know if your check was good every day. You took your check and ran to the bank right away to make sure it was good.”
After concluding his ABA career with Dallas in 1973, Franz played a year in Europe before opening his own home building contracting business (R.S. Franz Construction) in Memphis, Tenn. Franz builds large custom homes in Tennessee, Florida and Arkansas.
“I sell dreams,” he said. “That’s a dream house. That’s what I do. I try to fulfill the dream that they have of the house that they want. ...Wherever they want me to build, that’s where I go and build.”
Franz says he has no regrets about not going to Law School after graduating from KU in 1967.
“I’m able to do something that I enjoy,” he said. “Every house that I do, that’s a part of me in that house. ... I met a lot of wonderful people through basketball and still have continuing relationships with those people from basketball as well as the building business I’ve been in for 30 years. It’s something the Lord has blessed me with. I’ve been very fortunate.”
Franz feels blessed to be a Jayhawk as well. He remains in awe of the 100th-year anniversary reunion of Kansas basketball in 1998 and talking to such childhood heroes as B.H. Born and Clyde Lovellette.
“It was a neat, neat deal,” Franz said. “KU basketball is very special in my heart and I know to all the guys that I played with in my era. We’d all like to put our shorts on and play again.”
A Closer Look at Ron Franz:
Years at KU: 1963-67
Career Notables: Three-year starter...Captain of 1966-67 team and led squad in rebounding (6.9 rpg)...Career-best 23 points and 17 rebounds vs. K-State on Feb. 20, 1965.
Family: Wife, Georgia, and two daughters — Tara, 30, and Shawna, 28.
Education: 1967. B.S, Business Administration.
Since Leaving KU: Franz spent six seasons in the ABA and one year in Europe before opening his own home building contracting business in Memphis, Tenn.
Currently: Franz is the owner of R.S. Franz LLC. Construction.
Hobbies: Golf and following Kansas basketball.
Favorite Memories: “I think it was the camaraderie of all the guys that I played with and how I’m still in touch with all of them. ... Every one of those guys that I played with, they may not have got their degree in four years, but they got their degree. That’s what you went to school for.”...Beating K-State seven out of eight games. “In that particular era, that was THE game because both teams had a lot Kansas natives on the team.”
On the Jayhawks Today: “He (Roy Williams) gets young men that represent the university and what it’s supposed to be about. He’s somebody that I respect and I think all the former players respect. He’s brought quality to the program and quality to the university.”
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