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 Remembering Ricky Byrdsong's senseless death more than another wire story
Posted: Saturday July 03, 1999 09:39 PM
By Stewart Mandel, CNN/SI Covering sports for a Web site can often feel like you're reporting on names and numbers, not people. Our typical day's work usually includes a healthy plate of pitchers' winning streaks, golfers' par scores and some basketball phenom's propensity to "let the game come to him." But for this journalist in particular, the senseless shooting death of former Northwestern basketball coach Ricky Byrdsong served as a reminder that there are definitely human lives involved in all this. As a former reporter for the Daily Northwestern, I covered two of Byrdsong's more miserable clubs. In 1995-96 and 1996-97, they went 7-20 and 7-22, respectively. Nonetheless, through it all, he never hesitated to take time out of practice and off-days to talk with a clan of student reporters who a year earlier probably weren't qualified to sit in the bleachers, let alone on press row. In doing so, he provided me with invaluable lessons in reporting I make use of today, and gave a life-long college hoops junkie his first glimpse into the inner-workings of a program. Unfortunately for Ricky, if I was interviewing him, more often than not it was under less-than-desirable circumstances. Besides the repeated 25-point butt-whippings at the hands of the Purdues and the Michigans, he was dealing with a new athletic director not impressed with Byrdsong's work, a recruit, Nick Knapp, who sued the school for not letting him play with a heart condition, and a star player, Geno Carlisle, who was accused of assaulting a woman and later transferred to Cal. Even after Byrdsong's departure, the bad news followed him in the form of a nasty point-shaving scandal involving his 1994-95 team. Yet it didn't take much time around the program to realize Byrdsong was as perplexed about his rash of misfortune as anyone outside of it. Byrdsong was a deeply religious and a family man. Energetic little son Ricky Jr. sometimes accompanied him to his post-game press briefings. Always humorous, Byrdsong showed up at a news conference following his firing holding a "Will work for food" sign. In the often cut-throat, corrupt world of college basketball, Byrdsong seemed to remain human throughout. Of course that's probably why he didn't win many Big Ten basketball games. As recent headlines have shown, he was competing against coaches prone to accosting restaurant patrons, encouraging tutors to write players' papers and standing by as players accepted cash and cars. Byrdsong's legacy in Evanston is mostly that of weirdness and bad luck -- and now, that extends to the sick circumstances surrounding his death. But rather than dwell on the ugly image of a man I respected being murdered, I'll choose to remember my last image of him alive. It was when Byrdsong came back for a game during current coach Kevin O'Neill's first year. Despite having been basically run out of town, Byrdsong eagerly shook hands, hugged and high-fived his old acquaintances from the media. Somehow, still human even then. Stewart Mandel is the college sports producer for CNN/SI.com.
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