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gvt11 wrote:

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And Finally,

No. 1 - Rupp worked behind the scenes to make sure that Spencer Haywood was not accepted for admittance at Tennessee in 1968. Haywood would have been the best player in Tennessee history to that point and would have given Tennessee a critical edge in recruiting black athletes before anyone else in the SEC. I still maintain that was the single biggest setback to the program in its history, other than maybe the tenure of Wade Houston.

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gvt11 wrote:

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Seattle Post Intelligencer story

A Mississippi native raised as a teen in Detroit, Haywood accepted a scholarship offer from Tennessee, supposedly making him the Southeastern Conference's first black basketball player. When Kentucky's Adolph Rupp interceded, suggesting his program would decide when and where the league became integrated, Haywood fled to Trinidad State Junior College near the Colorado-New Mexico border, where he averaged 28.2 points and 22.1 rebounds.

Maybe apocryphal, maybe not. I know Mears and Rupp were in some bitter competition back then and the "rules" weren't as hard and fast.

If either of them could have exercised influence to keep a key recruit off the other's team, I believe they would have.

FYI, I spoke with the writer of that article after that was published. He basically wrote whatever yarn Haywood told him without finding any supporting evidence/corroboration/documentation or doing any research on his own. The author also refused to have the article amended after I pointed out numerous examples mentioning Haywood not being academically eligible (including by Haywood himself in earlier years). Sadly, that's apparently the nature of 'journalism' today.

Haywood has made various claims over the years, much of it contradictory and off-the-wall, with very little of it actually backed up with hard evidence. I think that in this particular case, Haywood's first biography (written in 1972) mentioned his time at UT and did acknowledge he was not academically eligible. He didn't mention anything about Rupp (this during a time when Rupp was alive and no doubt would have been happy to set the record straight).

This is what Haywood said then:

In fact, what Haywood didn't mention is he took off in the middle of the night without telling anyone.

Only after Rupp died (and therefore not in a position to respond) did Haywood start making claims about him. I don't think that's a coincidence. In addition, as time has passed more and more Haywood seems to have 'forgotten' that he wasn't eligible.

I'm not a psychiatrist but I think it is instructive to note that when reading about Spencer Haywood and what he's claimed over the years 1.) he rarely takes personal responsibility for anything he's done and 2.) he does seem to want to make himself larger than life. For example I truly do believe that he did want to be a racial pioneer. He just didn't have it in him (ie the work ethic, the grades etc.) to actually be in a position to accomplish that. Maybe that goes to explaining some of the later (unsubstantiated) claims he's made ?

Again, if you have actual information from that time period which supports this theory that Rupp somehow was able to influence Tennessee not to enroll Haywood, I'd like to hear it. Not only that it happened but HOW it could happen if Haywood was indeed eligible. (which there's no evidence to suggest he was.)

Jon