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Came across this interview of our former coach
Posted on: August 22, 2016 at 09:57:46 CT
FIJItiger MU
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Bob Vanatta from back in 2010 when he was 91 (he is 97 now).
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/sports/commentary-ncaas-popularity-notwithstanding-even-e/nL5yJ/
A record 72,922 spectators poured into Detroit's Ford Field to watch college basketball's 2009 championship game.
Maybe that number gets topped at Saturday's Final Four semifinals in Indianapolis, but it hardly matters. Half of the people will get their best view of the action by staring at the stadium's massive video screens anyway.
"The whole game has changed," said Bob Vanatta, 91, who will see just as much on the TV in his Jupiter condo. "It's all money."
Vanatta, who actually is in favor of the NCAA tournament's expected expansion from 65 teams to 96 next year, can take us to a different time.
In 1955, he coached Bradley against rascally Abe Lemons' Oklahoma City University team in a first-round NCAA tournament game that, by Vanatta's estimation, was watched by no more than 600 fans in a small-town Oklahoma high-school gym.
"We were going to play in the big arena in Oklahoma City but they found out somebody else already had it booked," said Vanatta, a member of the Palm Beach County Sports Hall of Fame. "It was just a regular little high school gym where we ended up playing. It was a big humpty deal, really."
So was the entire 1955 tournament, by today's standards.
There were 24 teams in the field that year, up from eight in 1950. The championship game, won in Kansas City by Bill Russell's San Francisco Dons, drew a rowdy crowd of 10,500.
Vanatta and Bradley, meanwhile, reached what nobody at the time would have thought to call the Elite Eight round. Not bad, but something that happened a few years later made a louder splash.
Vanatta coached Memphis State to the NIT championship game in 1957. Now, we're talking.
Madison Square Garden. Five chartered buses hauling Memphis State students on the 17-hour drive to the Big Apple. First time on national television for a program that was just starting to take off.
When it was over, with an 84-83 loss to Vanatta's old Bradley team in the title game, there were several thousand fans waiting at the Memphis airport to welcome the Tigers home.
"We came back late, around midnight," Vanatta said, "and the singer was there with his girlfriend."
The singer? Oh, wait a minute. We're talking about Memphis in 1957 here.
"One of our players, Orby Arnold, was good friends with Elvis. He told me, 'Coach, Elvis is here.' Now he wasn't quite big-time yet but he was big-time to our kids, so I said, 'Go get him and have him come on up with us.' He was a great guy, just a good ol' country boy."
Fact is, Presley already had taken "Heartbreak Hotel" and six other songs to No. 1 on the U.S. pop charts by that time, but a trip to the NIT finals by his hometown team? That was enough to send a charge through the King, and he wasn't alone.
"The NIT, to a lot of coaches, and I mean the big coaches, was THE tournament at the time," said Vanatta, who ended his coaching career at Missouri in 1967 with an overall career record of 212-158 and a pair of NAIA national titles from his days at Missouri State.
"When I was at Bradley, if you got an invitation from the NCAA or the NIT, you could take your choice. For three years at Bradley, I went to the NIT over the NCAA."
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/sports/commentary-ncaas-popularity-notwithstanding-even-e/nL5yJ/
A record 72,922 spectators poured into Detroit's Ford Field to watch college basketball's 2009 championship game.
Maybe that number gets topped at Saturday's Final Four semifinals in Indianapolis, but it hardly matters. Half of the people will get their best view of the action by staring at the stadium's massive video screens anyway.
"The whole game has changed," said Bob Vanatta, 91, who will see just as much on the TV in his Jupiter condo. "It's all money."
Vanatta, who actually is in favor of the NCAA tournament's expected expansion from 65 teams to 96 next year, can take us to a different time.
In 1955, he coached Bradley against rascally Abe Lemons' Oklahoma City University team in a first-round NCAA tournament game that, by Vanatta's estimation, was watched by no more than 600 fans in a small-town Oklahoma high-school gym.
"We were going to play in the big arena in Oklahoma City but they found out somebody else already had it booked," said Vanatta, a member of the Palm Beach County Sports Hall of Fame. "It was just a regular little high school gym where we ended up playing. It was a big humpty deal, really."
So was the entire 1955 tournament, by today's standards.
There were 24 teams in the field that year, up from eight in 1950. The championship game, won in Kansas City by Bill Russell's San Francisco Dons, drew a rowdy crowd of 10,500.
Vanatta and Bradley, meanwhile, reached what nobody at the time would have thought to call the Elite Eight round. Not bad, but something that happened a few years later made a louder splash.
Vanatta coached Memphis State to the NIT championship game in 1957. Now, we're talking.
Madison Square Garden. Five chartered buses hauling Memphis State students on the 17-hour drive to the Big Apple. First time on national television for a program that was just starting to take off.
When it was over, with an 84-83 loss to Vanatta's old Bradley team in the title game, there were several thousand fans waiting at the Memphis airport to welcome the Tigers home.
"We came back late, around midnight," Vanatta said, "and the singer was there with his girlfriend."
The singer? Oh, wait a minute. We're talking about Memphis in 1957 here.
"One of our players, Orby Arnold, was good friends with Elvis. He told me, 'Coach, Elvis is here.' Now he wasn't quite big-time yet but he was big-time to our kids, so I said, 'Go get him and have him come on up with us.' He was a great guy, just a good ol' country boy."
Fact is, Presley already had taken "Heartbreak Hotel" and six other songs to No. 1 on the U.S. pop charts by that time, but a trip to the NIT finals by his hometown team? That was enough to send a charge through the King, and he wasn't alone.
"The NIT, to a lot of coaches, and I mean the big coaches, was THE tournament at the time," said Vanatta, who ended his coaching career at Missouri in 1967 with an overall career record of 212-158 and a pair of NAIA national titles from his days at Missouri State.
"When I was at Bradley, if you got an invitation from the NCAA or the NIT, you could take your choice. For three years at Bradley, I went to the NIT over the NCAA."
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Came across this interview of our former coach - FIJItiger MU - 8/22 09:57:46