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Remembering Al McGuire on Jerome Whitehead’s Birthday
Fifty-one years ago, Jerome Whitehead was born in Waukegan, Illinois.
OK. Who is Jerome Whitehead? And even if you are familiar with Whitehead, you may be wondering what’s the relevance here as the big man was primarily a journeyman in the NBA, playing for six teams in a decade in the league.
Whitehead was the starting center on coach Al McGuire’s 1977 Marquette Warriors team that beat North Carolina for the NCAA title, and his birthday provides a wonderful opportunity to talk about one of the great personalities in the history of the game.
A character and consummate showman on the sidelines, McGuire and his triumph over Dean Smith in the 1977 NCAA Championship Game not only brought the only men’s college basketball title to Milwaukee but also marked the end of a great yet controversial coaching career and the beginning of a most memorable one as a color commentator.
After Butch Lee, Bo Ellis, Whitehead, Bill Neary, current Chicago Bulls Assistant Coach Jim Boylan and Bernard Toone delivered McGuire a much-deserved national title in 1977 at The Omni in Atlanta, Georgia, the fiery coach went out on top and walked away from coaching. While a great like Michael Jordan couldn’t resist the urge to come back to the game after retiring twice following championships or a Roger Clemens seems to retire every offseason only to come back to the highest bidder, the incomparable McGuire said that was enough and never looked back.
McGuire would simply move behind the scorer’s table, where he would join Dick Enberg and Billy Packer on NBC and later CBS, and become one of the most unique, insightful and memorable color commentators of all time. McGuire would help call the classic 1979 NCAA Championship Game between Indiana State and Michigan State, more commonly known as Larry versus Magic in reference to the first of what would be many battles between Sycamores senior star Larry Bird and Spartans sophomore sensation Magic Johnson.
McGuire would describe and then twice repeat one of the most famous moments in NCAA Tournament history when Georgia Tech’s James Forrest won a 1992 second-round game against USC with a buzzer beater in two words: “Holy Mackerel, Holy Mackerel, Holy Mackerel.”
When Syracuse advanced to the 1996 Final Four after a thrilling regional championship victory against the Kansas Jayhawks, there was McGuire in the midst of all the post-game chaos, dancing it up with Orangeman stars John Wallace, Otis Hill, Lazarus Sims, Todd Bergan and an NFL quarterback by the name of Donovan McNabb, who was a reserve on that team.
Who could forget McGuire’s reaction to an outstanding play during a 1999 Regional Final game between the Duke Blue Devils and Temple University Owls? When Duke freshman sensation Corey Maggette came out of nowhere for an incredible tip-in dunk, McGuire declared, “Uh, oh, Maggette-ios.”
In simple terms, McGuire was one of a kind. As a coach, he liked to recruit kids from downtrodden and downright poor neighborhoods. McGuire would often comment that if a kid had grass in front of his house, he wasn’t a right fit for Marquette. In other words, McGuire liked those kids who had “cracked sidewalks” in front of their homes and were from the streets.
While coaching, McGuire spoke what was on his mind and never backed down from expressing his opinions or slamming the hypocrisy or favoritism of college basketball. When he felt that Marquette didn’t get a good geographic location in the NCAA Tournament one year, McGuire turned down the invitation and simply brought his team to the National Invitation Tournament (NIT). How many coaches would do that today? None of them in this era when politicking to make the field of 65 or expand the whole NCAA Tournament is a part of the job description for some college coaches.
McGuire often said that the best education a person could get was working six months as a bartender and six months as a cabbie. McGuire brought such toughness and knowledge of the streets to the game of college basketball, where he often used his slickness to his advantage. There are many stories of McGuire having one of his players fall to the ground and scramble around for a “missing” contact so that he could use the break to his advantage after burning through all of his timeouts.
McGuire once punched a Marquette player, Toone, in the locker room during halftime of a game in the 1977 NCAA Tournament after he wasn’t happy with the forward’s first-half performance. Could you imagine the uproar such an action would cause nowadays? McGuire’s punch actually sparked Toone, who had a great second half and helped propel Marquette to victory and eventually the 1977 Final Four.
While some college basketball coaches nowadays display a slickness that borders on sleaziness, McGuire was as slick as they come; yet he did things with integrity. Even when he was ejected from games, McGuire often did so to prove a point and take a stand for his players. McGuire was piss-and-vinegar, one who would never back down from an opponent, whether it was the five athletes on the court against his Marquette athletes, an opposing coach, the men in stripes or the bureaucracy that is the NCAA.
Known for his fiery personality as a coach, McGuire became even more revered for his wisdom and unique philosophies on life while calling college basketball games. McGuire’s unusual statements typically connected objects that most people wouldn’t necessarily associate together or grasp in terms of a larger picture.
To McGuire, “seashells and balloons” stood for victory and happiness. “Go barefoot in the wet grass” was McGuire’s way of saying to enjoy the moment while “congratulate the temporary” was his way of urging people to “live in the moment.” A “Dunkirk” stood for an extremely poor performance while a dance hall player came to symbolize a player who was short on talent, but long on effort.
Such “McGuirisms” came to represent a man who was more than a basketball coach and rather an introspective visionary, philosopher and analyst of not only the game but also mankind.
When McGuire passed away from a long bout of leukemia near the end of 2001, the game of basketball and the world lost one of the most beautiful people to have ever graced its grounds.
For more information about Al McGuire’s life, read Al McGuire: The Colorful Warrior. Written by Roger Jaynes, a sportswriter for the Milwaukee Journal who covered McGuire’s final three seasons at Marquette, the book provides a wonderful look at McGuire during that tumultuous 1977 championship season while also delving deep into the inner workings of this great mind.
And for more “McGuirisms”, check out Cracked Sidewalks and French Pastry: The Wit and Wisdom of Al McGuire. Written by Tom Kertscher and featuring a forward by Dean Smith, this compilation of McGuire quotes will spark thoughts, smiles and tears along the way.
Here are just a few examples of McGuire’s wonderful insight and outlook on life.
“I want to keep the pulse of the parking-lot attendant—the country club or golf course is not where it’s at. The pulse is on the cracked sidewalks. If you lose that, life’s not worth living. As a person, I hope I never change.”
“To me, even the worst college cheerleader is better than the best pro cheerleader. The pro cheerleaders put on a little too much rouge and seem to have many places where you can hang your hat. But in college, they just seemed to be turned on. It seems to be a legitimate genuine concern. They don’t seem to be looking for the red light on the camera.”
“Call the athletic director at the University of Wisconsin and tell him to take my name off the short list.” –A dying McGuire to his son, Al, in 2001 while the Badgers were looking for a new Head Coach.
Posted by Chris Maynard, chris@hoops4thesoul.com
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Fifty-one years ago, Jerome Whitehead was born in Waukegan, Illinois.
A character and consummate showman on the sidelines, McGuire and his triumph over Dean Smith in the 1977 NCAA Championship Game not only brought the only men’s college basketball title to Milwaukee but also marked the end of a great yet controversial coaching career and the beginning of a most memorable one as a color commentator.
