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Pair of aces Two old warriors find a new home
Posted: Wednesday March 15, 2000 08:47 PM
"So," I say to Cazzie Russell, "where do you go from here?" The eyes squint, the mouth begins to smile. "I dunno," he says to me. "Why don't you tell me?" "How would I know?" "'cause it seems every time you come around, I get a job offer." And the laughter, as big as he is and almost as deep, begins to bounce off the dark wooden office walls. For the sake of a joke, he has stretched the truth just a hair. I had only interrupted his life once before, in Columbus, Ohio, where he was an unpaid assistant basketball coach at a high school five years ago. I had gone in search of the lost legend and told his story on the Sporting Life in March of 1995. Hundreds of miles South, the president of Savannah College of Art and Design finished watching the piece, turned off his television, and looked out his living-room window. "What if?" pondered Rick Rowan, the former Furman basketball player-turned college prez. "It's worth a phone call." Rowan had been establishing an athletic program at the diverse mid-town campus. Hardly a priority in the life of a burgeoning fashion designer or architect but an important overall selling point. And who better to help sell than someone with Cazzie Russell's credentials? Three-time Big Ten MVP, 13-year NBA veteran. A year after hiring Russell, Rowan put the second legend on his payroll, landing former Red Sox pitching great Luis Tiant as his baseball coach. He missed hiring K.C. Jones as coach of his womens basketball team "oh, by this much, by a hair.
"They kid me," laughs Rowan today. "I mentioned our soccer program the other day and someone asked when I was gonna hire Pele. Whatever works." It is an odd mix, to be sure. Here are two bona-fide former stars, who spent most of their careers blinded by the lights and deafened by the crowds, at a school which has no home field or court, whose games draw in double digits--sometimes. Russell's basketball team plays at the city civic center, Tiant's baseball team at a local park. It is a Division 3 school and thus, no scholarships. "The priorities are definitely a bit different," admits Russell. "I may not see my players for two, three days at a time. Who am I to tell them, when they've got a project due in 48 hours, that they gotta come practice? "And if I look up in the stands and don't see many people, well, they gotta be studying or something." It has been long enough for both Russell and Tiant that most of their athletes know nothing about their pasts. "Couple kids say their fathers told them," chuckles Tiant, whose trademark Fu Manchu moustache is white now. "Sometimes they bring baseball cards around for me to sign...but mostly for their fathers." So, the question again, is this just a stop along the way or where do you two guys go from here? "Long as they'll have me, I'll stay," says Tiant. "I dunno," says Russell, "You tell me."
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