[Nolan Richardson:] I think my players and my coaching staff and of course the fans are the real winners. I enjoy what I had to do because all I had to do was worry about winning.
This is Ozarks at Large. I'm Kyle Kellams with me, Randy Dixon from the Pryor Center.
Randy Dixon: Thanks for having me. It's good to be here again this week.
Kyle Kellams: We heard?
Dixon: Nolan Richardson when he was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame. This is actually a part two. Hope you heard last week. If you didn't, you can go online to the Pryor Center at KUAFcom.
Kellams: That's right. And we profiled former — gosh, legendary basketball head coach of the Arkansas Razorbacks Nolan Richardson last week. We went through his career as the head coach at Arkansas through the KATV news collection, through the archives. But we did it because we have just posted a full-length — it's over four hours — interview that the Pryor Center did back in May, and it's now posted in its entirety. So we profiled his life with archives, but didn't get to hear much of his interview with the Pryor Center. So I was hoping this week we could just let Nolan talk. He was born in El Paso, Texas, in 1941, and his mother died when he was just 3. He and his two sisters were raised by his grandmother.
[Richardson:] I lived in a Mexican neighborhood. We moved there when I was about 3 years old. When the school was integrated, I went to the school that was in my neighborhood, which was Bowie High School. As a freshman, I started playing athletics at Bowie. In those days, a freshman was considered junior high. And so I actually got to play my last three years in all of the sports. And because of my athletic ability, I was able to be the best player in that area, in that city, multiple times. So you saw me in basketball — I make All-State. You saw me in football — I made one of the teams All-State. Saw me in baseball — I made one of the teams All-State. I was very fortunate to be able to leave from a segregated area into an area in which sports dominated so much that sometimes you forget what color you are.
Kellams: We're listening to an extended interview that the Pryor Center did with Nolan Richardson.
Dixon: And it's great to listen to him. He had quite a career because right after high school, he started playing college ball, first at Eastern Arizona Junior College, and then he transferred to Texas Western College. After he graduated, he coached basketball at his old high school in El Paso, Bowie High School. And he did that for 10 years and then moved to Western Texas Junior College, where he stayed for three years and he tore it up. By his third year, his season went 37-0, won the junior college national championship for 1980. And then he moved to be head coach at University of Tulsa from 1980 to '85 and there won the NIT — yes, in 1981. So in 1985, Arkansas came a-calling. And his main hesitation to make the move: his daughter Yvonne had recently been diagnosed with leukemia, and she was undergoing treatment. And her doctors were all there in Tulsa. And Nolan Richardson just wasn't sure it would be a good move for her. And she thought differently.
[Richardson:] We had a family meeting, and at the same time, Coach Stoglin was there with us. I tried to more or less convince her that she needed to stay, and I wasn't going to take the job, and she didn't think that was a good idea. And then she started pointing out the reasons, like they got built-in fans, they got students that go to the games that are exciting. And she had learned how to call the hogs because we went to a Tulsa football game. It's all kinds. Anything that she would have wanted to do, I've been in favor of doing.
Dixon: First few years were very rough. She was very sick and then passed. And then of course you have a few building seasons to get a winning team. It didn't take him long. By his third year, the Hogs were in postseason play all that time. And I think the whole time he was here, Richardson didn't feel like he was getting a fair shake from the press.
[Richardson:] The newspapers have a war. Anytime I felt — and the wife and my family felt — that to sell newspapers, you got to create a mess. And if there was something about Nolan in the paper every day, people buy the paper to see what the hell has he done now, or what is he going to do, or what they're going to do. So it constantly, constantly — no one wants to buy positive newspapers. It's pretty negative. Today that same team loses and it's like, oh, we'll be OK next year. When I lost a game, it was like somebody blew — I blew a gasket of some kind. It wasn't the same feeling. It's the same way with school. I always preached graduation regardless if they get it now. I was always on about it because I know where I came from and what it takes. On graduation, I don't hear not one single word today or yesterday about graduation rates anymore. They're nonexistent.
Kellams: So there was a lot of noise. It's a high-profile job. But he did have a place that he considered his sanctuary.
Dixon: He did. He bought a ranch. And I believe at the time it was outside the city limits — it's in the city limits now. But it's a beautiful place, beautiful tract land. And not only was it a nice place for he and his immediate family to relax and get away from that noise, as you said, it was a place for the players to come. And he and his wife Rose found that very special.
[Richardson:] It didn't only serve the family, but my family was humongous because it was players and friends, and everybody had a chance to enjoy what we had out here. The animals — you name it, we had it. Well, we had llamas, horses, pigs, goats, lambs, a tremendous amount of birds — all over 50 birds of all types. Being able for their brothers and young sisters and cousins to see and to participate with what we have. We never had to worry about having an outing or bringing in a player to try to show him something that wasn't there. Our ranch, our family, our players represent all those things, especially when we got all of us out here together and having a great time listening to music, dancing or whatever they wanted to do, away from everything. We look forward to those weekends that we had where recruits would come in. That was tremendous weekends. And it all took place right out here.
Kellams: And he still owns the ranch?
Dixon: Yes he does. And that's where we went to do the interview. And it's a little less crowded these days — he doesn't have all the animals that he listed off there — but he still loves being there on the ranch with his family. And he has what he calls his Hall of Fame room, and it is impressive. You want to talk about awards, pictures, memories on a wall — it's covered. But let's get to basketball. Anyone who knows anything about the Hogs knows that we won the national championship in '94. Even if we didn't get what Richardson thought was the respect we deserved.
[Richardson:] That's what every coach dreams of — winning a national championship. That's the ultimate goal. You know, you can set goals, conference champions. It's funny — we won four in a row Division championships. Everybody knows that. I didn't even know it. So you won four of them. I said, what's four? Because we changed the format. We had a team with the least respect that ever went to the NCAA Tournament with my Razorbacks. But we had to prove each game, boy, and it got to the point that the way it turned out — you like I spot you 10 points and I started a kid that didn't even start and we won. That's the only gratification that you could get out of it. And we beat you in North Carolina. So all of those things, when you talk to your players, then it makes them feel really good because you did some things that are almost impossible to do. You got things stacked up against you.
Dixon and Kellams: So the coach is also known for his playing style, also known as "40 Minutes of Hell." It's a sort of a frenetic, chaotic, always in-your-face defensively, looking for the fast break, running you to death — a very high pressure. And it was a style that was so different from Eddie Sutton's that not only sports writers and critics, but fans weren't too sure about this style.
[Richardson:] They called it street ball. They called it, if you want to see a bunch of guys just run up and down the floor — I never saw that in my games. Anytime you have pressure on a consistent basis — once in a while — but if you got pressure all the time, you start making mistakes. Sometimes those mistakes multiply. When you play the kind of game that I want to play, I want you to make mistakes. It's not so much that we're trying to steal the ball. Make a mistake and it'll be stolen. You make a mistake, and I identify that — making the pass to a certain person that's not there. But he was there a few minutes ago. Yeah, but we ran him off of that spot. Making decisions is what happens to the game. We want to make you make more decisions than you ever made, and you can't emulate what we do, even though you work out with seven against five in your practices, because it seems like we got seven on the floor — we only have five.
Kellams: Winning changes everything. Fans suddenly became OK with "40 Minutes of Hell." You saw T-shirts with "40 Minutes of Hell." It became this sort of cliche around Northwest Arkansas.
Dixon: It was definitely the slogan of the decade. But throughout his career, Richardson has always felt he didn't get a fair shake — that he and other Black coaches didn't get the respect they deserved. And at one point during a postgame press conference in 2002, Richardson openly complained about racial divides in Arkansas and at the university, and he even challenged Frank Broyles. He said, "If they go ahead and pay me my money, they can take my job tomorrow." Well, it wasn't the next day, but within a few days the university took him up on it and he was fired. Richardson in turn sued the university for racial discrimination.
[Richardson:] Me thinking that I worked hard all through all my coaching, that I would end up getting dismissed for something I said. And so going into the trial, it was a hard decision to make, but I couldn't have slept with myself had I not tried to do what I thought was right.
[Tim Hamilton]: When Judge Wilson ruled against you in that lawsuit, there was a comment from him I want to read and just get your reaction to. This is Judge Wilson — not when he ruled, but years later when they were talking with him. And this is from the Democrat-Gazette. He said he was treated very poorly by Frank Broyles, but he was not treated unconstitutionally. Wilson said: "I hated to rule against him. I think he's a fine guy and a great coach. I'm satisfied that Coach Richardson believes, without any doubt in his mind, that he was fired because of his race and because he spoke out on that subject. Although I found against him on those points, his belief was clearly not unreasonable."
[Richardson:] How do you interpret that? I'm your boy as long as I'm winning and shut up and keep your mouth shut and stay in the background so nobody know you're here. That's not me.
Kellams: Now, you mentioned last week when we heard one or two clips from this long interview you can find at the Pryor Center website — the man doing the interview is someone you know pretty well.
Dixon: Good friend of mine, former colleague Tim Hamilton, who was probably around Nolan Richardson as much as Paul Eells, the sports director and voice of the Razorbacks at KATV. They got to be very close. After Paul Eells passed away and Tim left Channel 7, he taught at Harding University, taught broadcasting, and then retired a couple of years ago. But when we wanted to interview Nolan Richardson, he was the first person we wanted to go to. He was very excited about doing this interview and, boy, did he do his homework.
[Tim Hamilton:] This was the hardest thing I've ever done. And obviously it was because I wanted it to be great. I didn't want to miss anything in his story. And as I really got ready to do my research, it hit me again. I thought, this story is so complex. There are so many incredible roads that you can go in his story and it was kind of overwhelming. Anything and everything that I could ever think of video-wise, anything in print I'd read or something I'd saved — I just tried to think about all of it and go back and revisit it, listen to it, watch it, read it and make notes. By the time I did all that, which took me about two weeks, maybe a little less — I mean, I just really got on it every day. And when I ended up doing my research, I had taken notes in almost six yellow legal pads.
Kellams: After the University of Arkansas, he wasn't done with his career.
Dixon: No, he wasn't. And he did some interesting things. I think he did it to sort of challenge himself. He agreed to — he did three different gigs, I guess you'd say. Head coach for the Panama national team, then coach of the Mexico national team, and then finally he did a short stint as head coach and general manager of the WNBA team, the Tulsa Shock.
[Richardson:] That era became a fun area for me because I was no longer coaching in the college ranks. I had had a wonderful time with my Panamanian team, who had not been to a tournament. And see how hard they were working for me, had given me a chance to finish out my career doing something worthwhile. And during that period, we were good enough to get the Panamanian team qualified for the World Games. The next period was to try to get the Mexican team to the Olympics and I enjoyed it. I enjoyed that immensely, the coaching of it. It's a different brand. I've been able to go back to my old days at Bowie High School and have fun with the players, and maybe teach them some of the things that I hope would stick. And then in comes the WNBA. Now, I didn't really want to do that, but because I knew nothing about female basketball — I knew about it since I'd been in Tulsa and had coached in Tulsa, and I had a lot of friends and fans and all that. When I left, it was like they can't be another Tulsa anymore. And now I'm back, but in a different capacity. But I'm back in Tulsa.
Dixon: What a life. What a career. What a guy.
Kellams: All right. I love those long-form interviews. You can find that one and so many others at the Pryor Center website.
Dixon: And he is on the front page of the website — it's a good listen if you got a little time. Just relax and hear about the Hogs and Nolan.
Kellams: The Pryor Center also has a brick and mortar, a physical place. And on Tuesday the 21st, you and some guests will be in that physical space.
Dixon: It's going to be a lot of fun. If you know anything about Little Rock television from the '70s and '80s — Steve Barnes, Amy Oliver Barnes, who were the main anchors at KATV from the mid-'70s until the early '80s, and Bob Steele, who was not only a reporter but a sports anchor and news director. He was my boss for a while. And then he's moved on and done many, many other things. But the four of us are going to be on a panel. You are going to moderate, and we're going to show some really cool items out of the KATV archives of them when they were reporting back in the day, and some of the really big stories that the four of us worked on together there at Channel 7. So there was a period of time, about five or six years, that all four of us worked together. Very exciting.
Dixon: All right. That's on Tuesday the 21st, and it's at the Pryor Center on the square. Free. Just come on in. It's from 6 to 7. And if there are a lot of questions, we may just go over a little bit.
Kellams: We've been known to do that. Free on Tuesday the 21st. You and I back together here a week from today. Don't know what we're going to do, but we'll do something.
Dixon: It's going to be marvelous.
Kellams: Randy Dixon is with the David and Barbara Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral Visual History. Thank you, Randy. See you next week.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
