historyI am posting something that was written on a KU message board. Most message board postings are garbage, but this is the greatest posting ever. A little insight into the tradition, myth and history of the Kansas basketball program. Also, a little insight into the people that follow and love the Kansas basketball program. Enjoy!
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I'm a history buff. I like KU hoops history. I like hoops history generally. I began trying to make sense of the tradition of basketball by thinking in terms of coaching trees--geneologies of coaches and their assistants who became head coaches--25 years ago--before it seemed to be fashionable to think about it. I like it when Mayer, or anyone, holds up a historical mirror to what is going on with the present team, if they do it cogently. He did with this story about the 1952 team—the true greatest college basketball team of time.
Because of the above, I'm not one of those who rails about comparing Self and Roy, recently; Self and Brown, less recently; Self and Owens, far less recently; and so on back through Harp, Phog for a long hitch, Hamilton (maybe the least understood of KU coaches), Phog briefly, and Naismith. I actually wish someone had the historical chops to compare and contrast Hamilton with Allen, or Hamilton with Self. I'd love to read either.
Frankly, any KU fan that chooses not to dive into the richness of KU basketball history, at least occasionally, is cheating themselves out of a marvelous opportunity. KU basketball is that rarest of sports phenomena--a team with a verifiable historical continuity between the inception of an activity--basketball, or the picky might say basketball coaching--and its uninterrupted evolution to the present.
Compare other major sports' and the stories of their origins of their teams with that of KU basketball. Baseball's and even baseball managing's origins are hopelessly lost in the mists of the past. And, besides, baseball likely evolved from cricket, the origins of which probably reach even farther back. Football's origin is slightly more trackable—the first official game was played in 1869, but not precisely to one man that created it and to one place offering a single continuity at that institution. Football coaching? Same problem though one might argue Amos Alonzo Stagg was the first really great football coach—a pigskin analog of Allen in hoops, but UChi gave up football, so no continuity. Regardless, football was a bastard child of rugby and so lacks the crystal clear genesis of basketball and of KU basketball.
KU basketball and its tradition just are a unique resource of sports history and sports culture and I would argue to a significant but modest extent to the broader society as well. KU basketball is a continuous historical record that can tell us much about the evolution of basketball, basketball coaching, sports, the university, Kansas, America and ourselves, if we care to examine it since 1898.
The KU basketball tradition is not just a history of a recreational activity, or past time, either. It is also a record of a civilizing force on a certain part of society. By this I mean it has come to have an ordering function beyond its own purpose that is more or less constructive. Just as we live in a society ordered by governments, churches and firms that hopefully span many generations and order and channel our lives (hopefully with our endorsement and hopefully for the better), so too does Kansas basketball for quite a few of us. From October 15 to the end of March Madness, the axis of my life, and of many others’ lives, tilts nearly as much as it does for the Christmas/New Years holidays, tax season, spring and fall. Maybe it shouldn't, but it does. 
Kansas basketball is a civilizing force and it is so whether you choose to philosophize about it, as I am now, or not.
No, it is NOT a religion, but, like religion, it is a kind of institution with a mythology and a history all its own that orders a part of society. We can observe that this is so, because it allows all manner of otherwise disconnected persons to interact in meaningful ways given certain shared symbols, mythologies, language, memories and rituals year after year after year. And this is so whether one chooses to be a gym rat interacting within this tradition, or an old duffer with a long, nostalgic memory, or a bitter, disillusioned fan who thinks the coach should never have been hired, or a cool professional who's company has the clout to wangle the best tickets in the field house, or the descendants of Naismith, or of Allen, or you're a superstar like Wilt Chamberlain with conflicted feelings about KU. All these types are partaking in the tradition. When Wilt put on the letterjacket in the field house one last time, he resumed his interaction with the tradition as certainly as when inconsequential me pulled away for 8 years, because I thought I was too cool for hoops, and then came back because my life was so much the poorer for KU hoops being absent. And the humble likes of me and the great Wilt Chamberlain were no different than Phog Allen, when he left Lawrence for Warrensburg, MO, from 1909 to 1919 and came back for the rest of his career. Why was even Phog like us all? He was like us, because Naismith is where it all comes from. Naismith started it and we all know it, and so we, like Phog, all have a basketball Daddy...whether some of us like Daddies or not...whether some of us ignore Daddies or not.
To reiterate: Naismith was the "Daddy." He was the "Daddy" of the game. He was the "Daddy" of Kansas basketball. We have a "Daddy" with all the pros and cons that brings. We always know where we came from, but sometimes we might wish the origin were somehow different. And sometimes we are too smug with our knowledge of where we came from.
Most sports and sports programs, can't say what Kansas can about knowing its origins. Among basketball programs, they can at most say they descended as extended family, and as relatives, of the Kansas "Daddy," or they just don't really know who their Daddy was.
But Kansas basketball has another kind of mythological figure, the oldest son, the first born, Phog Allen. If you really know anything about the evolution of the game and of coaching, you know Allen was the first born coach of the Daddy, James Naismith. Yep, KU has the eldest son of college basketball coaching, too. Every basketball coach who blows a whistle is in part Allen's kid brother. Allen's role in the evolution of the game was that central. You youngsters: don't let anyone tell you differently. Many other coaches were Allen’s sibling rivals. Many coaches other than Allen made important contributions to making basketball coaching and basketball what it became, but Allen is the eldest son of the Daddy--the first great basketball coach born to the Daddy.
Almost never in life do we really know where anything that we truly love came from. We can't know our mates the way they really were before we met them. We can't know our parents' pasts with more than superficial insight. We can't know our own family tree's origins, because the gene pool ultimately just goes too far back in the mists--unless you can be satisfied by basic science explanations like our mitochondria all trace back to somewhere in East Africa. I'm glad to know that, but it doesn't really slake my mythical thirst, if you know what I mean.
The mythical power of KU basketball is that in this one case we can know exactly where basketball came from--James Naismith. And for whatever reason, he came to KU and he started a college basketball team. And I don't know exactly why, but he was followed by a coach named Allen who eventually became the first truly great basketball coach. Of course as with all sons inheriting the mantle of the Daddy, it did not go smoothly and Hamilton replaced Allen for a time; then the first born returned to claim his birth right. In this one case, then, we get to know how something started and who started it and the begats of what followed. And what we know is not something nebulous. Not something uninteresting. Not something that lead to cruelty and suffering. Not something that punished humanity or held it back. No, we get to know the start and subsequent evolution of something that is fun; that is wonderful; that has heroism, drama, tragedy, camaraderie, and playfulness; something that invites people into it; something that says be as good as you can be at it, whether as a coach, player, or fan; something that says no matter how the money men and bureaucrats try to make a business of it and market it and spin it and monetize it and poison it with racism and gambling and even succeed in partially corrupting it; that there is something at its core that is inviolable and knowable. And this "inviolability" and "knowability" is not naive delusion. All who hang around the game know the game's capacity for exploitation and corruption and cruelty. We know it isn't perfect and never was perfect, except in terms of the lines on the floor and the most basic rules of play. The basic rules came from the Daddy immaculate. The rest has often been an evolution as messy and irrational as life is in general.
In fact the game and Kansas basketball is inviolable in part, because we do know its imperfections and failings and we do know the begats. You can’t tell me James Naismith wasn’t the Daddy. I know that he was. You can’t make me believe any lies about how this game began. I know how it began. You can’t disillusion me by telling me they weren’t all angels, because I know they weren’t. Yet we choose to partake in it rather than believe in it. For this reason, it is a mythology and not a religion, no matter how seriously anyone of us takes it; no matter how obsessively some of us think about it.
In this sense, Kansas basketball tradition is vitally important and real in a historical/mythical sense, whether you acknowledge it or not. Kansas basketball is the real deal that the movie "Field of Dreams" was pretending about when it had James Earl Jones' character Terrence Mann, comment about the importance of baseball. Substitute Kansas basketball, the inviolable and knowable parts of Kansas basketball, with its warts and all of its shabby treatment of certain coaches and players, with the mistakes made about how to make money with the sport, with the unfortunate academic favoritism shown the players in certain classes in the old days, with the overzealous alumni, with the Jim Crow apartheid that prevented African Americans from playing for so long, with all the wrongs you can recall; then substitute "Kansas basketball" for baseball and "since 1898" for through all the years and then the movie quote transforms from a film fantasy to a truth about a small, precious slice of reality in the America that I have known.
"The one constant since 1898, Ray, has been Kansas basketball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But Kansas basketball has marked the time. This court, this game: it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good and could be again."
With all due respect to the film makers, and to the remarkable author, W.P. Kinsella, who wrote a great short story, they made the movie and short story about the wrong game. They set it in the wrong state. Had Kinsella or Phil Robinson, the director of the film, grown up in Kansas, the error doubtless would not have been made.
But that's okay, because the Kansas basketball tradition is independent of books and movies and, yes, even of television and all its advertisers. It is its own myth, a living, breathing myth plopped down right in the American heartland in the midst of an increasingly mythless 21st Century. Kansas basketball is a myth in the true sense of the word and the only way to harm it is to drag it too far from its roots. Its a myth and the only way to kill it is to start believing in it and stop partaking in it. Go to certain great basketball schools around the country and you can feel the religion of the game, but come to Lawrence and you can feel a living, breathing myth. Religion is about believing, come what may. Myth is about partaking, come what may. You decide which is more miraculous.
I have written all this solely with the intention of calling persons’ attentions to this amazing phenomenon of KU basketball. In no way do I mean to denigrate or lessen the stature of any other of the great and storied programs of college basketball. There are schools that have won more games than KU. There are schools that have won many more rings. Hopefully we will remedy both in due time, but for now such is the case. Regardless of all that, I do honestly believe that KU and its fans have shepherded well, and will continue to shepherd well, the heritage of the game for all the rest of the schools great and not that suit up and play one of the greatest games ever invented. I believe the spirit of KU has never let the game down and has served as a reputable standard against which the programs that eclipse us and the programs that we eclipse can long measure themselves against. And I believe Kansas has done its best, to carry forward the fundamental decency of the man, James Naismith, and the game he created; that decency is central to the myth. It does not stem from Midwest wholesomeness (he came from Canada and New England), or from bible belt humility (though he was a religious man), but both these attributes of local culture in Kansas have buffered it at times. No, the myth stems from something deeper, something that came with the man who brought the game, something I am, frankly, unable to explain yet even after considerable contemplation (as is often the case with myths).
Finally, I think every Kansas person, all the way from the chancellor down through the faculty, the athletic department, the coaches, players, former players, students and fans, ought to remind themselves from time to time that how they conduct themselves regarding all aspects of the game matters. We are hardly angels. Sometimes we behave badly as fans. But always as we stray, there is the Daddy and his essential dignity and decency that bids us back, that “reminds us of all that once was good and could be again,” if we listen.
I had a dream once, an amusing and haunting dream, that under center court in Allen Field House there was a cavern and in the cavern was a trophy cup—an ancient trophy cup—not an NCAA or conference trophy cup—but a sacred kind of cup having something to do with the essence of the game itself. In the dream several ancient-beyond-imagining Jayhawk mascots, a bit moth eaten, actually, and manned by weary old men and women graduates from an ancient past, stood guard beside the trophy cup. As I walked in, one of them died and the others asked me to put on the suit. I asked for how long? One said: until its your turn.
When I awoke I felt quite foolish for having had such a dream as an adult, yet I could not help but notice a similarity between my dream and the grail legend, which I had studied while in an English class at Kansas long, long ago.
In the Grail Legend, if I still recall it correctly after all these years, St. Joseph tended the suffering Christ on the cross with a bowl called a grail-- and then was entombed himself with the bowl for having done so. The grail sustained him several years until he escaped and carried the grail with some followers to England (it was a very Anglo-centric myth, wasn’t it?) where the grail was set in a castle and guarded by “grail kings.” Over time the location of the castle and the grail was forgotten to everyone, but still the grail kings assigned by St. Joseph to guard the grail kept up the vigil. They never wavered in their looking out for its safety. The legend of course goes on to the story of Arthur and the round table, but I think you get the idea.
Sometimes I think the people of Kansas basketball are a little like the grail kings. The game changes. It forgets its origins. It loses many of its old fundamentals and morphs into a game of incredible athleticism, skills and, less fortunately, roughness. Those who manage the business of the game transform it into an entertainment that sells everything you can think of. The athletes of each succeeding generation are hyped more than the previous generations’ were. Many are better. Some are not. The coaches’ earnings grow astronomically. Some deserve it. Some do not. The big TV revenues and almost nightly televising of games make high paid celebrities of color commentators and fleeting stars of student athletes. Some deserve it. Some do not. The gamblers make so much money off the game that the line on the odds is as important as the box score to too many. The professionals skim off the great young players before they’ve even had a chance to have a college romance and a submarine sandwich at Joes Bakery, or skinny dip in Potters Lake at 3AM. The game morphs in the pros into something barely recognizable as basketball, except for the last two best-of playoff series. Scandals about illegal payments and drugs and gambling flare up from time to time. NBA players take to the stands and beat the daylights out of loudmouthed fans hurling racial epithets at them. Probably 80-90 percent of basketball fans around the USA and the world in this still growing sport probably don’t even know about KU’s seminal role in the origins of the game that KU played; don’t know anymore than I did before my father, who himself had grown up while the game was just reaching its own puberty, so to speak, sat me down and told me why it mattered. Yet all the while in this crazy world, the persons of Kansas basketball, wherever they may live, stand guard like the ancient Jayhawks of my dreams, like the grail kings in the grail legend, and watch after the forgotten cup that still holds the essense of the grace and beauty of the game.
People say some of us are naïve. People say the game many of us talk about has disappeared and been replaced by something else that we really don’t understand. And yet to the extent that we of any age keep partaking in the KU basketball tradition, we are in a real sense, standing guard humbly simply by doing what we love…if we comport ourselves in the spirit of the game we love and not in the spirit of the game recreated by the packagers; those who do not truly love the game; those who value it little but for what it can sell. Don’t get me wrong. The business of basketball has its place in the order. You wouldn’t be reading this were it not for a business trying to make a buck off KU basketball. And that’s okay. Basketball was not an immaculate conception (the idea for the game, Naismith said, came from a game from his childhood—it did not come from god—at least directly) and it is not a metaphysical proposition. But the place of business, gate receipts, TV revenues, and media advertising should never be near that ancient trophy cup in the cavern under center court—the cup is still, and I hope always will be, being guarded by the ancient Jayhawks that I dreamed of once.
So in closing I say keep partaking and Rock Chalk, Jayhawk, Go KUUUUUUU!
