What They Don’t Tell You About Coach John Wooden

What does this have to do with Kentucky? I’ll get to that later.

This piece is to by no means
portray John Wooden as a bad person. However, the facts are what they are.

What they, the media and people around him, do tell is John Wooden is one of the nicest, most genuine people there ever was. I never met John Wooden, but when you haven’t heard one bad thing about his personality you can only assume that the afore mentioned kindness is true, and I truly believe that it is. They also tell you that he is one of the best coaches to ever live; winning 80 percent of his games and 10 national titles would certainly make one believe that. But, what don’t they tell you?

Lets look at a couple facts. John Wooden started his coaching career in 1946 with Indiana St. He took the UCLA job two years later in 1948. It took Wooden 15 years to win a Nation Championship in 1963, when his team went 30-0. What was Woodens career record before that? 200-143. Which means he only won 58% of his games. Does that not seem odd to you? After going 200-143 in his first 16 seasons, Wooden and UCLA go undefeated. After that they would go on to win 9 more championships, winning a record 38 straight NCAA Tournament games in the process. Plausible? Yes. Probable? No. At least not to me, and if you have any common sense you can clearly see where something happened in 1963 and agree with me.. What happened?

Enter Sam Gilbert.

Sam Gilbert. A business man, who owned a very prosperous construction company in Southern California. Building custom homes and commercial buildings. He was extremely wealthy. Lived like a king. How does Sam Gilbert fit in all this? Gilbert came onto the scene at UCLA somewhere around 1963. Wait, that’s when Wooden and UCLA won their first title. Exactly. If it seems suspicious, that’s because it is.

Gilbert, through the years, paid players, provided players with cars, apartments and things such as jewelry. Also, paid for clothes, paid for prostitues and weird enough, paid for some of their girlfriends abortions. All the while John Wooden knew that Gilbert was doing these things, matter of a fact that’s what he wanted and why he brought Sam in.

You see, Wooden was and is viewed as a saint by the general public. That couldn’t be further from the truth. The wife of UCLA great Bill Walton, Susie, expressed that the discipline minded coach allowed her husband and Wooden’s star play player to freely smoke marijuana. Not the average players… Just Bill, the star player. John may have been doing the average players or lesser in ability, a favor in not letting them smoke. But, that’s not the point.

If you’ll think back, back to the 1970’s a college named, SMU. Now, SMU’s football program received what we call the “death penalty” from the NCAA. Why? For paying players under the table. In more recent years, I’m sure you’ll remember the University of Miami scandal. For the same such violation of rules. Why did the NCAA just look the other way when it came to Wooden?

The NCAA and John Wooden in theory may have cost Kentucky and Adolph Rupp more championships and ultimately the championships lead.

Rupp had the point shaving scandal in 1951, but you know what? He and Kentucky were punished for it. Paying players, in my eyes is a little worse than some point shaving scandal. Even with being punished by the NCAA, Kentucky could have possibly won about 3 to 4 more championships through that span. That’s not to say they would have won those, but they would have had a significantly better chance, and with Rupp, anything was possible.

You can go on and on about how corrupt and hypocritical the NCAA is, but this one always gets me. Everyone always says that Wooden was a saint and a “great coach”. Which, in fact, he wasn’t that great of a coach, but more of a great cheater.