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Football’s Jim Brown and
basketball’s Bill Russell spoke out against oppression,
injustice and racism and spent time with protesters, such as
Ali, seconding his calls for change. Years later, Russell
and Brown, both in their pro sports’ Halls of Fame, are
remembered fondly for their athletic exploits as well as
their involvement in various causes.
However, for John Rudley
and his teammates, who formed the core of a University of
Toledo basketball team that would go 23-2 in 1966-67 and win
the MAC Championship, no such future athletic plaudits have
been forthcoming. Indeed that 1966-67 team, during Rudley’s
sophomore year, has been called the best team that has ever
taken the court at UT and, for too many at the university,
it’s as if they never existed.
Rudley, a point guard and
team captain, one of his teammates, an sat out a game, in
1969, his senior year to protest the actions of their coach,
Bob Nichols, who suspended a teammate, Bob Miller, for
missing class. Nichols was white and had been struggling for
several years with that team, says Rudley, trying to balance
the playing time of his white and black players – a very
tricky proposition in the 60’s.
Bill Russell, who became
player coach for the Boston Celtics in the late 60’s was
heard to say about a coach’s dilemma on playing those black
athletes who were superior to their white teammates – “play
three [blacks] at home, four on the road and five when you
fall behind.”
For Nichols the dilemma
was particularly poignant because he was the one who
recruited Rudley and the other black players and then tried
over time, as the black players saw it, to minimize their
playing time, catering to the sensibilities of the time.
Nichols brought in Rudley,
an outstanding point guard from Benton Harbor who had led
his team to two undefeated seasons and two Michigan state
championships; John Brisker, from Detroit, who would go on
to play professionally with the ABA along with a brief stint
in the NBA; Calvin Lawshe from Macomber; Bob Miller from
upstate New York and Steve Mix, a standout at Toledo’s
Rogers High School who would eventually play in the NBA for
14 seasons, including on some championship teams. All but
Mix were black.
Those Super Sophs, when
they won that championship in 66-67, frayed a bit by the
time they were seniors. Brisker, a volatile mix at best with
Nichols, says Rudley, had left the team. Lawshe had suffered
a serious knee injury and his career was over. In early
1969, the coach learned that Bob Miller had been skipping
classes, confronted him on that fact, ordered him to start
attending and suspended him from the team when he learned
that Miller had skipped again.
Rudley joined protesters
at mid court before the next game – several dozen black
students and teammate Jim Miller – and walked out of the
gym, missing one game. The team finished in the doldrums –
13-11 and fifth in the MAC.
Rudley went on to graduate
school, a career as a certified public accountant, a second
stellar career in academia as the interim president of the
University of Houston and then an eight-and-a-half-year
tenure as president of Texas Southern University, retiring
three years ago.
Bob Miller did not
graduate – deprived as he was of about two dozen credits;
Rudley, despite his outstanding years as team leader, point
guard, impressive scorer and assist leader, (“one of the
best point guards I ever had a chance to play with,” said
Mix), never made the UT Hall of Fame – a Hall with about 300
members – and the 1966-67 teams does not even have its
photograph posted.
Rudley returned to Toledo
and attended this year’s Unity Day event at UT with two
local supporters who are pushing the case for his inclusion
into the Hall this year – Vince Davis, State Farm insurance
agency owner, and former Toledo Mayor Carty Finkbeiner.
Finkbeiner was a student intern in the UT Athletic
Department during Rudley’s years there.
The following day, a
larger group of supporters gathered at the African American
Legacy Project to voice their concerns about a 50-year old
slight and to put a plan into action to correct the
oversight.
“It is 2020,” said Davis,
“you’d expect we would have come somewhere – but here we are
… John Rudley exemplifies everything we would want a
student-athlete to be. If they can’t correct this, there is
a problem.”
“We’ve got a lot of work
to do,” said Finkbeiner. “The athletic director is not being
as broadminded as he should be. But the light has not shown
any brighter on a former athlete than it has shown on John
Rudley.”
About 25 supporters
attended the event at the Legacy Project and were treated to
Rudley’s account of the events of that fateful January 1969.
“[Coach] Nichols wasn’t
used to the type of guys he had,” said Rudley of the man who
brought him into the university. During the group’s three
year-tenure on the varsity, the team became very popular
within the community, the black community , he noted.
Nichols, however, felt the pressure in dealing with a
firebrand such as Brisker while also trying to balance the
court time of the black and white players so that the white
community would not feel alienated.
After Brisker left the
team, said Rudley, Nichols “took it out on Bob [Miller.]”
As he recalled, “there was
a lot of resentment in the community for what happened and
from a team standpoint, dysfunction set in – we lost our
enthusiasm, we lost Bob Miller and his 12 points and 12
rebounds a game. This wasn’t what I had signed up for.”
After Rudley left Toledo,
diploma in hand, he didn’t return for decades and didn’t
speak with Nichols for over 30 years. Reconciliation did
arrive in the early 2,000s, and the pair stayed in touch.
The Nichols family have become champions of Rudley’s
induction into the Hall.
The group gathered last
week are also taking up the cause, following the lead
provided by Davis and Finkbeiner. They will be speaking with
UT staff, faculty and board members, and most critically,
the committee members who vote for the Hall of Fame
admission.
The first mission is to
get Rudley into the Hall of Fame and gain greater
recognition for the greatest UT men’s basketball team of all
time. The second mission is to get Miller’s credits restored
so he can finally receive his diploma. More on that later.
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