...I dug up an old Sports Illustrated article featuring Tyra Banks in bikini (oooops, that's just the cover) Gene Keady. Here are some highlights:
If you are too young to know Gene Keady,
"His [Keady's] players all say he can chew your ass and make you like it."
He teaches hard work and brings out the best in his players:
"Play till there's blood in your socks!" Keady likes to tell his players. And one day in practice a Boilermaker actually popped a blister and, scarcely believing his good fortune, came running. "Hey, Coach, guess what? I got blood in my socks!"
Despite obvious inequality he faces:
In 1981, during Keady's first trip to Assembly Hall in Bloomington, Knight shoved to the side a referee who had the nerve to obscure his line of sight. When the officials failed to call a technical, Keady erupted. "In Kansas, if you touch a referee, they'll shoot you!" he screamed. In the process of giving Keady a technical, an official told him he wasn't in Kansas anymore. "If you have any guts, you'll throw his ass out of here!" Keady yelled.
He respects his opponents and manages to overcome them:
And before one Indiana-Purdue game in West Lafayette, Pat [Keady's wife], aware of Knight's fondness for chocolate, gave him a batch of her homemade fudge. Purdue won that night, and there's a story that as the Hoosiers made their way back to Bloomington, Knight ordered the team bus to stop. He disembarked, took Pat's fudge and flung it disgustedly into the Indiana night.
And his players wholeheartedly appreciate him,
Before the Minnesota game, the Purdue players inform the assistant coaches that they are dedicating their effort to Keady. "We told the guys, 'Now don't go dedicating the game and losing it,'" says assistant coach Bruce Weber. In the locker room after Purdue's 76-62 win, Keady thanks everyone for playing so hard and then breaks into tears.
and give him the credit he deserves:
"I don't really think it's the players [beating IU]," says one of them, guard Todd Foster. "It's the coaching staff. And their scouting reports. What IU did tonight--that's what the coaches told us they'd do. And if we'd have lost, it would've been our fault."
To be honest, I didn't appreciate Keady's coaching back then when I was a student. Who the hell is this grouchy, mean-looking old man with a weird hairstyle? He was too "old school." He didn't coach a sexy uptempo offense with exciting highlight reel dunks. He didn't get us a team of McD AAs like Duke or Michigan had. And sure, we were B1G champs but we never did well in the NCAA.
But as I grow older, when I have two sons, I finally realize just how great a COACH Keady is. He gets the most out of his players: Every year just looking at the roster we were picked to finish in the bottom, and yet every year we competed for (if not won it outright) the B1G champ. He was demanding and yet his players loved him, and he actually possessed extraordinary E.Q. (unlike some other coaches who would grab his players' throat, or throw a chair like a 4-year-old when things didn't go their way).
Sure, a coach is judged by his win-loss records, but I think ultimately he should also be judged by how many boys he turned into men, and how many lives that he has touched. I am glad to have come to Purdue and I am glad they had a coach in Gene Keady, whose teaching affects even random joes like me. Fifteen years after I left school, when I play pick up games today, I still take great pride to be the hardest working player on the court. People often ask, "Why are you playing so hard, diving for loose ball and running into the fence? Look, your knee is bleeding." I didn't answer them but I knew the answer in my heart, "Because that's how a Boilermaker plays and anything less than your full effort would be a disgrace to Coach." Now, that's the power of Keady's COACHING, even if he never coached me.
Connect with Hammer & Rails