Hooker told that story as a cautionary tale about athletics decision-making on a campus where the basketball coach is regarded with considerable awe. If Smith couldn’t actually walk on water, he certainly could make raging waves subside.
A lot of Tar Heel fans wish that Hooker had short-circuited that decision and insisted on the kind of broad search the university would launch for, say, the dean of its law school or the head of its hospitals.
By not rejecting Smith’s recommendation and ordering up a formal search to get the best coach available, Hooker set in motion a series of unconnected events that culminated recently in the forcing-out of a former Tar Heel star, Matt Doherty. Guthridge coached three years but failed to recruit top talent.
When Guthridge retired three years later, UNC Chapel Hill athletic director Dick Baddour and incoming chancellor James Moeser, who acquiesced in Doherty’s hiring even before moving to Chapel Hill, made another mistake. They should have insisted on a proven veteran with a record of accomplishment, running a clean program and exhibiting the values for which Dean Smith was best known. They didn’t.
Smith, the unflappable strategist and highly regarded teacher who taught that basketball was only a game, is partly responsible for UNC Chapel Hill’s reputation as a university that does things right. But he is also partly responsible for the administrative mess that ended with Baddour and Moeser forcing Doherty’s resignation.
Many Tar Heel alumni are deeply conflicted over the question of replacing Doherty. Many messaged Moeser in support of Doherty. Many felt that Doherty was having a better year than Moeser, in fact. Many felt that even with Doherty’s obvious problems with his players, he deserved another year.
Moeser thought otherwise after spending months listening to players and insiders talk about how the coach treated his own assistants, players and athletic department employees. He did not like what he heard, didn’t think Doherty measured up to the standard Smith had set, wasn’t the kind of coach Moeser wanted heading up UNC Chapel Hill’s most visible endeavor.
The process Moeser and Baddour followed to make their final decision appeared to be unfair and it looked godawful. It appeared that players and parents had too much say in whether a coach stayed or went.
Chapel Hill officials have worried about the proper role of athletics for more than 70 years. The late UNC President Frank Porter Graham was so concerned about athletics in 1934 that he proposed to abolish financial aid for athletes, require them to disclose their sources of income and prohibit postseason contests. His plan ultimately failed.
In the 1950s, UNC President William C. Friday recognized that recruiting and point-shaving scandals were tainting the academic reputations of both UNC and N.C. State College, as they were called then. In May 1961, Friday canceled the Dixie Classic Tournament in Raleigh, the hottest holiday basketball tournament in the land, and sharply restricted the schools’ basketball activities. The cancellation of the Dixie Classic so annoyed the N.C. General Assembly that an attempt was made to revive the tournament, but Friday refused to change his mind.
Three months after Friday canceled the Dixie Classic, Frank McGuire quit, and Chapel Hill got a new basketball coach. He was not well known. He sounded like the head of an academic department. Many were surprised to learn that Dean was his first name, not his title: Dean Smith.
The remarkable thing about Smith was that, after a couple of rocky first years, he stayed as head coach for 36 years. He sometimes made mistakes in coaching games, but his players revered him for teaching them about life and for being loyal to them all their lives. For most of them it was a binding commitment between respected teacher and pupil, not just coach and player.
It’s not that Smith didn’t get angry. His sarcasm would cut his players to the bone. But he also sought to build his players into better performers and into better persons as well. He was interested in the whole person. He wanted them to do well long after the last cheer fell silent.
Matt Doherty was the ideal Dean Smith player. He rebounded, blocked out, played defense, hustled after loose balls, picked up for his teammates and helped maintain Smith’s reputation for coaching excellence.
But somehow he didn’t absorb Smith’s most important lessons — that basketball is a just a game, but a university is a place where students must be able to learn, to grow and to prepare for the rest of their lives.
