Dick Harp: "A great man"

Edgar Wolfe with the Kansas Alumni Magazine wrote this beautiful and eloquent profile of KU head coach Dick Harp in the Feb. 1958 issue. Headlined, “The Whole Man: A Day in the Life of Dick Harp,” I included a portion of this in-depth story. This feature gets to the heart of the real Dick Harp, his brilliant basketball mind and impeccable character, someone who former KU forward Bill Brainard called “a great man.” The University of Kansas has been blessed with some extraordinary people, and we cannot ever forget what Richard “Dick” Harp contributed to his alma mater, his players, basketball, and perhaps above all, to society.

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“Actually, it would be hard to imagine a coach whose players believe in him more than the KU squad believes in Dick Harp. His knowledge of basketball, his power of instant analysis, as if he had six eyes in his head instead of two—those go unquestioned. When I spoke of them once to Bill Brainard, forward during the 1954-56 seasons, it almost seemed that I was being reproved by stating the obvious.

 

“'Not only that,” Bill said quickly. “Dick is a great man.'”

 

"A great man? Can a basketball coach be a great man? His job, as we know, to teach a certain few selected young men to play the game selectively well, for the glory of their college and the delectation of thousands of cash customers. The delectation in the long run depends on winning. It’s strictly winning that makes a coach a great coach. It doesn’t make him a great man.

 

"Only character can do that, and I understood that it was to Dick Harp’s character that Bill Brainard was paying tribute. Some coaches are opportunists and exploiters, perhaps not many, but some. Dick Harp is not one of them. What the experience and honor for playing for Kansas means to and does to his players matters to him supremely. He is concerned with their welfare and (this follows) their conduct. He realizes the influence for good or evil which both he himself as a winning coach and his greatest stars, like Wilt Chamberlain, can have on hero-worshipping youth. He is candid and honest, friendly, and reasonable in his dealings with his players. More typically, it is the appeal to reason which he uses to inspire his players. In doing so, he taps emotion, but he places responsibility where it is best to use it, upon each individual. If the boy responds, he grows. If he can discipline himself, the boy becomes a man.”