This blog is full of excerpts of my 82-page honors thesis I wrote in 1988 at the University of Kansas. My adviser Norman Yetman interviewed Ted Owens in the 1980s after he was fired after 19 years as KU head coach. Yetman gave me FULL and COMPLETE permission to use Owens' quotes in my thesis. At one advising meeting, Yetman told me he "loved the way I milked" Owens' quotes throughout the thesis. This tape of Owens and all his wonderful quotes added so much to my thesis and really helped bring it to life.
Ted Owens’ values and racial tolerance were instilled in him by his loving parents growing up on a cotton farm in Hollis, Oklahoma.
Owens’ parents taught him and his siblings to accept all people, regardless of their race.
Despite growing up without much contact with blacks, Owens developed much respect for African Americans, which he’s carried with him today. Contrary to many people in the South, Owens and his family did not view blacks on the basis of their skin color, but by their character.
Owens stated in an interview with my college adviser at KU Norman Yetman in the 1980s after he was fired after 19 years as Kansas head coach:
“We admired the field workers. ...We judged people on the basis of their performance and the kind of persons they were.”
After a standout high school and college career at Oklahoma, Owens opened doors for African Americans at Cameron Junior College in Lawton, Oklahoma, from 1956-60, where he coached the basketball and baseball teams. He recruited the first black player, Homer Watkins, in Oklahoma junior college history in 1958 and even invited Watkins to stay at his home at this predominantly white campus to make his new player feel more comfortable and welcome.
Owens signed three more black players the following year. In my 82-page honors thesis at KU in 1988 on “Racial Participation and Integration in University of Kansas Men’s Basketball: 1952-75,” I wrote that Owens was criticized by the white players’ parents, who did not like the fact that three blacks were playing ahead of their sons. However, Owens reiterated that he did not experience much outside pressure, as “we just didn’t let it become a problem.”
After receiving his big break in 1960 when KU coach Dick Harp hired him as assistant coach, Owens found himself coaching seven African-American players on the 1960-61 team. Owens said that KU was known then as the “blackhawks.” This racial slur hurt Kansas in recruiting, as its Sunflower rival Kansas State would use this term to scare off white recruits from going to KU.
“To recruit against Kansas State, you always had to deal with that problem,” Owens said. “If you were recruiting a white player in the state of Kansas, invariably Kansas State had made a big pitch of that, and you had to deal with that with them.”
Owens stressed that Kansas State boosters and alumni were most responsible in intimidating KU’s recruits, as he did not think the coaches themselves had anything to do with these actions.
Indeed, the KSU coaches had nothing to do with this. Kansas State head coach Tex Winter was a very tolerant and open-minded man who embraced blacks. K-State was actually a forerunner in the recruitment of blacks in the Big Seven, signing the first black basketball player in the league in 1950 with Gene Wilson, the same year KU’s Phog Allen signed his first African-American player in LaVannes Squires. Earl Woods (Tiger’s dad) was also KSU’s first black baseball player in 1951, while Harold Robinson became the Big Seven’s first African-American scholarship athlete (football) in 1949. Robinson later received a congratulatory letter from Jackie Robinson, who integrated major league baseball in 1947 with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Soon after Owens was hired at KU, Harp sent him to recruit at the National Negro High School Tournament in Nashville. At the time, 16 states were still segregated so the top black high school players in the South convened at the Nashville tournament.
Owens related what a positive experience he had at the tournament. Although he felt a little conspicuous being one of the only whites in the stands with coach George Ireland of Loyola of Chicago, black recruiters made him feel quite welcome. This tournament had traditionally been a hotbed for black colleges, as they had their pick of an abundance of black talent. However, these black coaches were extremely supportive of Owens and his efforts to recruit the black players. Owens stated that the black coaches were so glad that KU and Loyola of Chicago would give these players a chance to play at a major university. Because of their warmth and hospitality, Owens respected the coaches greatly and viewed them as his “heroes.”
The tournament paid great dividends for Owens as he recruited and signed Walt Wesley from Fort Myers, Florida, who would become an All-American in 1966 and enjoy a long NBA career.
When Owens replaced Harp as head coach in 1964, his first team in 1964-65 had just two black players, followed by four African-American players (starters Wesley, Jo Jo White, Al Lopes and reserve Bob Wilson) on the great 1965-66 team which lost to Texas Western in the Midwest Regional final. Texas Western made history that year with an all-black starting lineup beating all-white Kentucky for the national championship.
Owens refuted the notion what many historians say that the 1966 national championship was a watershed moment in opening doors for blacks in recruitment.
“They attribute that game to the breaking of racial barriers. The truth of the matter is when I came here in 1960, which was six years before then, we were starting four black players at that time,” Owens said. “They didn’t break the racial barrier. There were a lot of us who had done that before. Even (Texas Western coach) Don Haskins, which is the way we should all have have looked at it, he said, ‘I never thought about breaking racial barriers, I thought about winning basketball games and I wanted to get the best players that I could get.’ And of course, that’s the way it should have been all the time.”
However, while Harp, Ireland and a few others were pioneers in the recruitment of black players, all one has to look at the national average of black participation to see how Owens’ statement about the 1966 game may not be fully accurate.
In 1966, the national average of the country’s teams with blacks was 58 percent with 16 percent of black players representing all players. In 1970, four years after Texas Western’s defining win over UK, 80 percent of the country’s teams now had blacks on their roster with black players representing 27 percent of the total number of players.
The recruitment of blacks after 1966 was especially widespread in the South, where the SEC integrated in 1968 with Perry Wallace the first African-American scholarship athlete at Vanderbilt.
As Neil Issacs noted in All The Moves: A History of College Basketball, “By defeating Kentucky, Texas Western had finally gotten a lesson across to the SEC, the ACC, and the world: since that time no pretender to basketball eminence has ever drawn a color line in its recruiting.”
The SEC had no blacks before 1966. With Wallace’s arrival that year on campus at Vanderbilt (he had to sit a year as a freshman and became eligible in 1967-68), more African-American players flocked to the conference, other southern leagues, and throughout America. Stanley Eitzen and George Sage reported in Sociology of North American Sport that “by 1975, black athletes were common in the SEC and in all the other athletic conferences. The transition from a segregated program to an integrated one is perhaps best illustrated by the University of Alabama; in 1968 there were no blacks on its teams, but its 1975 basketball team had an all-black starting lineup.”
Owens kept recruiting more black players as the years evolved. While his 1966-67 team had just three black players, there were five African Americans in 1968, six in 1969, four in 1970, five in 1971, four in 1972 and seven each in 1973,‘74 and ‘75. 1975 was the year “stacking” ended in college basketball, a sociological phenomenon where it has been documented that black players were overrepresented at forward and underrepresented in the outcome control positions of guard and center, which were considered central positions of leadership and intelligence.
...
Scholars Norman Yetman and Forrest Berghorn wrote in 1987 that “considered the team quarterback or ‘floor general,’ the guard or point positions requires the qualities of good judgment, leadership and dependability...The center or post position was portrayed as having the greatest amount of outcome control because it is the position nearest to the ball. Finally, because the purely physical attributes of speed, quickness, strength and rebounding ability have been considered most important at the forward or wing, it has been referred to as the ‘animal’ position."
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As KU black players increased their prominence on the roster, outside pressures from fans and alumni did not disappear. Jack Olsen of Sports Illustrated wrote in 1968 that “the pressure has relaxed a little at KU, and Coach Ted Owens has occasionally used four Negroes at once without incident.”
While there might not have been as much pressure as in the early 1960s, Owens still encountered problems about playing too many blacks. Owens recalled the time when an alumnus told him that he was “playing too many damn n----s.” Furthermore, Owens referred to an incident when a booster approached him and stated:
“’Ted, I really like you ... but the minute you start five of them (blacks) you lose me.’”
Owens responded: ‘’Well, I’ll have to lose you if they end up being my five best players. If you think I could ask a young man to come here and play and not be given the fairest opportunity to start...’”
The former KU coach talked about a time in 1971, when some friends of his told him about what one of the fans said during a game. KU had just won 21 straight games, as the fans were all proud of the players when they came out for the starting lineup introductions. However, as the players came on the court, a fan stated: “I didn’t realize they started four blacks (Roger Brown, Bud Stallworth, Pierre Russell and Aubrey Nash).”
From Owens’ accounts, it seems clear that he experienced outside pressures from boosters and fans about recruiting and playing a large number of blacks. When asked whether the pressures were so great that he would be compelled to recruit more white players, Owens candidly replied:
“I think there was always that possibility and I tried to deal with it. I tried not to let it become a factor, but that possibility always existed, because even though they weren’t terribly vocal about it, there was still some feeling (about recruiting and playing too many blacks.)”
However, while Owens felt the pressures of race, he stated that he “tried over the years never to let race be a factor on my team, and never let it enter into (any basketball related decisions).”
Owens commented on the time when he could have succumbed to the pressure and started a white player, Bob Kivisto, over a black, Nash. In 1971, Kivisto and Nash were battling each other for the starting point guard position. As Owens decided about which player to start, he faced the dilemma of Kivisto’s father, Ernie. He was a prominent high school coach in Illinois who Owens thought could greatly help KU’s recruiting.
Owens felt it would been very easy to start Kivisto over Nash. Although the two players were very close in ability, Owens started Nash, as he felt that Nash deserved the honor, for he was a tremendous competitor. While Kivisto’s father never made Owens’ decision into a racial matter, he became irate and threatened to take his son out of school. Owens knew this was one time in which he could have let outside pressure influence his decision-making ability.
“If there ever was a time, that would have been easy to play the white,” Owens said, “because there wasn’t much different in the two, but I just believed in Aubrey Nash.”
As point guard and gritty player and defender, Nash helped lead KU to the 1971 Final Four and a dream 27-3 season.
Throughout his coaching career, Owens was consciously aware of the problems which could arise between white and black players, and he tried to create an atmosphere of harmony between his players, whereby the players would be judged on and off the court by their character and performance, and not by the color of their skin, just as Owens and his family viewed the field workers on his cotton farm growing up in Hollis.
Owens related that he never participated in the racial banter between his players and even coaches, for he felt this would disrupt the racial harmony between blacks and whites, and players would misinterpret Owens’ beliefs.
“I never wanted to be misunderstood,” Owens said. “I thought that people who joke about that sort of thing, that deep down there is some feeling there or they wouldn’t be (involved in the racial banter).”
Furthermore, Owens was quite conscious that he didn’t have any black assistant coaches before hiring Lafayette Norwood in 1977. In fact, the lack of black assistant coaches caused Owens to worry that his black players might feel they weren’t given an equal opportunity to succeed.
Owens used to tell his staff:
“‘The thing that I don’t want to ever hear out of one of our meetings, or anything connected with this organization, is for you to say anything about race or anything that would give a youngster a feeling that he wasn’t given the fairest opportunity.’”
Overall, in reflecting on his 19 years as KU head coach, Owens felt that there was a “great feeling racially on our teams. ... I have always taken pride in that race, or racial conflict, hasn’t been a big factor on our team.”
Owens, who believed strongly in racial equality from his early beginnings growing up on a cotton form in Oklahoma, commented on the benefits that he had experienced in his involvement with blacks through basketball.
“It helped a little bit to open doors or to make some things possible that wouldn’t have been,” he said. “... What’s happened to me has benefited me a great deal. ... I can look more in making judgments and make them not on a racial standpoint."
Thank you Ted Owens for making the world a better place.
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