“How old are you?” asked neighbor Sheldon Jacobson.
“Be 90 in November, if my luck holds out,” was the response.
“Must be good genes,” he said.
Yes, Sheldon, must be. Without good genes, there’d be no mini-fuss on my behalf. You see, age is not something you can control. Without trying, my numbers — 6 feet and 180 pounds — have held steady for a half-century.
My dad, John Loren, was my virtual twin in looks, and he died at age 32 in a Louisville tuberculosis sanatorium.
My little sister died when she was 1 year old.
We are all at the mercy of fate.
And so it evolved that fate landed a first grader with my grandparents in Hoopeston, and later in Monticello after my mother, having recovered from a near-death experience of her own, married my favorite guy, Darrell Tippett, there.
So it’s all happenstance … destiny … beyond human control. Tip ran a weekly newspaper, putting journalism and the University of Illinois in the forefront.
Returning from service two years later, The News-Gazette’s T.O. White alerted me to a sports writing opening in Hammond, Ind., a gig that lasted 11 years before another old friend, Illini football staffer Lou Baker, telephoned that The News-Gazette would soon have an editorial opening.
End story. That was the autumn of 1966. Except for a six-month blip in 1970 — trying to mix insurance sales with TV duties at WICD — this is it.
And now, in reflecting on 1,706 Illini basketball games and 619 football games (366 were losses), they tend to merge, mix and run together while an amazing array of issues takes center stage in the memory bank.
Some left me twisting in the wind, confused as to how to proceed. Here are 10 of the most significant topics in a 55-year career here.
Combes
The Slush Fund
In the most traumatic case in Illini sports history, the Illini lost athletic director Doug Mills, football coach Pete Elliott and basketball coach Harry Combes almost overnight.
It drew stunning headlines in December of 1966 when assistant athletic director Mel Brewer, unhappy that “Michigan man” Elliott would succeed Mills as the Illini athletic director, carried books to President David Dodds Henry showing improper payments to UI athletes.
Three funds totaled roughly $21,000 at the time, and the revelation sent the UI careening into years of football-basketball mediocrity. The sudden losses of tall starters Rich Jones (he received $35 per month) and Ron Dunlap and future Boston Celtic star Steve Kuberski ended a promising basketball run.
1947 (Front row. left to right) Coach Harry Combes, Fred Major, John mcDermott, Rod Fletcher, Ted Beach, Dick Petry, Assistant Coach Harold Jester (Back row, left to right) Bobby Clark, “Zeke” Bryant, Wayne Wells, Jim Singbusch, Norman Barnett, Joe Hallbeck, Ray Walters and Charlie Bialeschki
Harry Combes saga
It is regretful that Combes’ career ended on a sad note because, in an earlier 25-year period, he enjoyed a level of basketball success unmatched in these parts.
The Monticello Sages were 20-5, 25-2 and 27-2 in his three seasons. He was an all-star on the UI’s Big Ten co-championships in 1935 and 1937. His Champaign Maroons reached the state championship game three straight years with a title in 1946. And his Illini reached the NCAA Final Four in three of his first five seasons.
As a player and coach, Combes assembled an incredible 532-114 record (82 percent) in the first quarter-century of his basketball life. During those years, no one was more intense or innovative in perfecting the up-tempo game.
Darrell Hoemann/The News-Gazette Mark Floyd of Villa Grove’s Cub Scout Pack 50 waits the Illinois team to walk down Irwin Avenue to the stadium before the game. He was part of an estimated 4,000 scouts attending the game Ilinois versus San Jose State at Memorial Stadium in Champaign, IL on Saturday, Sept. 10, 2005.
Chief Illiniwek
We witnessed the slow death of a longtime university symbol.
It was a winning 10-year march for activists and bitter disappointment for committed supporters. The Chief’s ouster, forced upon the UI by the NCAA, can now be viewed by some as a precursor for the social justice movement sweeping the nation.
George Will, who grew up in Urbana when the Chief’s halftime dances and banquet appearances were widely accepted, drew positive nods from supporters with words that ring loud even today: “One of America’s booming businesses is the indignation industry that manufactures the synthetic outrage needed to fuel identity politics.”
He added: “When, in the multiplication of entitlements, did we produce an entitlement for everyone to go through life without being annoyed by anything?”
Rival points of view remain, with losers convinced that he who is offended (and loudest) tends to outrun the quiet majority.
0830 spec- QBs then- Dave Wilson
Dave Wilson case
A law degree would have helped to decipher this legal entanglement.
The trouble began when Wilson’s grades in a California junior college were confused with another student named Wilson. This was resolved but left doubt with Big Ten enforcers.
Long story short, Wilson was denied the right to play in 1990, via a ruling that his one-game appearance in 1979 (he was injured) could not be considered a redshirt season.
As a result, attorney Bob Auler went to court and won an injunction for Wilson to play (he set an NCAA record with 621 yards in a 49-42 loss at Ohio State).
Rather than engage in another legal wrangle, Wilson turned pro after one UI season, and we were left with a better understanding of how rapidly the appeals process can work if pressed, or how slow legal wheels might otherwise turn.
It was eye-opening to watch the splendid efforts of UI Chancellor John Cribett and President Stan Ikenberry, but my favorite memory is Judge George Miller tossing a “self-righteous hypocrite” dart at Big Ten attorney Byron Gregory.
UI Basketball Banquet, April 5, 1982 Back: Perry Range, Craig Tucker Seated: Lou Henson, Neale Stoner
Neale Stoner ousted
The Illini athletic director hired Mike White, helped fill Memorial Stadium, initiated popular tailgate events and was great fun … until he wasn’t.
The firing of weight training coach Bill Kroll started the downward slide.
An unnamed assistant sent The News-Gazette a list of 18 questionable activities within the department — improper work on Stoner’s home by stadium laborers … double-dipping on golf trips. The problems “ran deep in the organization,” said Chancellor Morton Weir, referring to others in Stoner’s orbit.
Weir noted that “disgruntled employees blew the whistle,” and he pointed out further that in the 1980s the UI had been placed on probation twice by the NCAA and once by the Big Ten. It was an uproarious period of success and failure.
Jesse Jackson fudged
When Jesse Jackson was running for president in 1988, he made news with his claim of mistreatment by the UI in 1960, and in particular Pete Elliott’s refusal to employ an African-American at quarterback.
This despite the fact that Illinois had a Black starter at quarterback (Mel Meyers, 1959 and 1960), and it was furthermore proven (in 1987) that Jackson had left school after his freshman year when he turned in a paper plagiarized from Time Magazine. This was confirmed by a former secretary, Glenna Cilento, who told me that she typed Jackson’s paper from the magazine.
At very least, Jackson would have been on probation if he had elected to return to the UI. But it’s treading in deep water to become engaged in presidential politics, and some people undoubtedly still believe his claims.
10/28/83 file photo by Brian Johnson- UI/Mich.- Ui football coach Mike White celebrates after illinois win over Michigan,sending Illinois to the Rosebowl.
Mike White’s forced resignation
While White’s 1983 Illini were defeating No. 6 Ohio State (17-13), No. 8 Michigan (16-6) and the other seven Big Ten members, it would soon fall apart under the weight of junior college prospects Elton & Delton and infamous Texas receiver Hart Lee Dykes.
Elton Veals and Delton Edwards were improperly paid for a second plane trip from California to the UI campus. Veals later testified they were “given a job when all they did was run around on a snowmobile.”
The Illini were placed on two years of probation, and a 7-4 team was banned from postseason play in 1984.
Assistant coach Rick George paid $100 to stash Dykes in a hotel on the day before signing in 1985. That ultimately played a part in White’s resignation, but $100 was chicken feed compared to the amounts Dykes was offered (or received) when, as the NCAA’s Typhoid Mary, he received immunity at Oklahoma State to provide testimony that led to probation for Texas A&M, Illinois and Oklahoma. It was reported that Dykes received $5,000 in cash with a booster guaranteeing a $17,539 loan on his car (with $340 monthly payments) and $125 for monthly living expenses at Oklahoma State.
John Dixon/The News-Gazette Feb 23, 1990, Deon Thomas and attorney Stephen Beckett during in an interview at Beckett’s Urbana office.
Deon Thomas besmirched
It was nonsensical from the beginning.
Iowa assistant coach Bruce Pearl, working closely with a friend at the NCAA office, used improper telephone calls to entice Thomas’ sleepy acknowledgment that he had received an offer from Illini assistant coach Jimmy Collins amounting to $80,000 and a Chevrolet Blazer.
To believe this, you’d have to think payments to Kenny Battle and Nick Anderson (his mother had hospital bills) were off the charts. You’d have to explain how Marcus Liberty was hit with bills for a damaged apartment.
Just as athletic director-football coach John Mackovic was overseeing the transfer of the old Athletic Association into the university, he and Weir were also presented claims of improper inducements (later dropped) by Notre Dame’s LaPhonso Ellis. So Collins underwent 17 months of investigative harassment, Thomas sat out his freshman season, coach Lou Henson lost key recruits (like Juwan Howard) due to reduced scholarships and the Illini entered the 1990s with a black mark by their name.
Unable to establish major infractions, the NCAA saved face by handing down penalties for minor UI infractions of a bookkeeping nature.
Heather Coit/The News-Gazette Former Illini coach Lou Henson, right, talks with Loren Tate before the game at Assembly Hall in Champaign, Ill on Thursday, December 21, 2006.
Lou Henson era
It was once speculated that Henson used up his good fortune in winning 14 of 16 overtime games.
When it really counted, in postseason play, Henson was the unluckiest of coaches.
This is the same guy who, in his early 30s at New Mexico State, throttled Texas Western repeatedly after their 1966 championship … only to see two of his title-worthy teams run afoul of John Wooden’s UCLA powerhouses.
And later on, when the 1980s belonged to Henson and the Illini, they lost NCAA and NIT games by margins of 2, 5, 3, 3, 3, 8, 2,1, 3, 2 and 2 points.
Yes, there were many wins along the way, but the narrow losses to Kentucky, Villanova, Austin Peay and Michigan won’t be forgotten because those particular teams had the potential to go the distance.
Through it all, Henson never lost his drive or his nerve.
Barred from the NCAA tournament due to sanctions in 1991, Henson never quite recovered and retired after the 1996 season, only to return to New Mexico State for $1 per month that first year and continuing until 2005.
He settled for 779 wins even though 18 were struck from his record due to sanctions imposed at New Mexico State before he returned there.
Heather Coit/The News-Gazette Illinois Athletic Director, Josh Whitman, left, introduces the Illinois football coach, Lovie Smith, at a press conference at the Bielfeldt Athletics Administration Building in Champaign on Monday, March 7, 2016.
The Lovie Smith venture
Josh Whitman, anxious to make a splash in his early days as Illini athletic director, believed that a former Chicago Bear coach with Super Bowl background and multiple NFL-backgrounded assistants could turn a troubled football program.
It didn’t work for Lovie Smith. The defense was porous under Smith’s favorite, Hardy Nickerson, who retired along the way.
And it wasn’t much better when Smith took over the job himself. Then too, Smith’s first offensive coordinator, Garrick McGee, gave way to Rod Smith as Illinois added five losing seasons to a growing list.
Smith dove heavily into the transfer market while prep recruiting suffered, particularly in the home state. In baseball terms, the Smith era was a swing and a miss.
And that brings us to more bubbling issues around the corner.
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