Photograph by Dan Marshall

His guests this day are former Gopher basketball players John Kundla (B.A. ’39) and Grant Johnson (B.A. ’39, M.A. ’45)—both 91 years old and the only surviving members of the 1937 Big Ten championship team—and their families. It’s impossible to tell who is more honored to meet whom. Smith’s eyes gleam as he pulls his glasses out to read aloud the fine print on a plaque on a wall in the arena’s concourse. “You coached the [Minneapolis] Lakers to six world championships!” Smith announces, turning to Kundla. “Wow.”

When Smith, veteran coach of one of the most venerable college basketball programs in the nation, accepted Minnesota athletics director Joel Maturi’s offer to coach the struggling (9–22, 3–13 last season) Gophers in the Big Ten, he instantly became the state’s biggest coaching star. Even sports columnists seemed to universally applaud the move.

But not even Maturi, who silenced his own critics with the hire, initially grasped exactly how far Tubby Smith’s impact stretches beyond his 73 percent (387–145) winning percentage. He started to suspect it, however, when his phone began to ring incessantly. Smith’s minister called. The person who built his house called. Everyone said the same thing to Maturi: “You don’t know how lucky you are.”

A new test

Former Kentucky coach Rick Pitino, who is currently the head coach at Louisville, has said the highest-pressure jobs in college sports are coaching Notre Dame football and Kentucky basketball. Smith doesn’t directly agree, but sitting in his corner office overlooking Bierman Track, he offers this:

“In Kentucky, there’s an article written about basketball every day of the year. There are probably three talk shows—a day.”

At Smith’s first head coaching stop, Tulsa, he compiled a 79–43 record from 1991 to 1995. In two seasons at the University of Georgia, he led the Bulldogs to their first back-to-back seasons of 20 victories or more.

But Kentucky is the nation’s winningest basketball program in history, a place where fans demand near perfection, where merely winning is not enough. When the Wildcats lost 10 times in a season, fans dubbed the coach “10-loss Tubby.” Last season, the Web site firetubbysmith.com peddled T-shirts that read “2006 SEC East 2nd Runner-Up.”

Many observers surmised it was that never-ceasing pressure that sparked Smith’s move, which came with four years left on his contract and required a pay cut (although he’s earning $1.7 million a season at Minnesota, more than any other coach at the University, ever). Smith, 56, puts a slightly different spin on it:

“Where do you go from Kentucky?” he says. “Do you stay there for the rest of your career? Or do you say, do I need a change? I’d been there 12 years, and really only worked in that region. This is the Big Ten, it’s north, it’s a new test, a new measure of myself against other great programs and other great coaches.”

A community coach

In addition to coaching the Wildcats to one national championship (1998), five Southeast Conference championships, six Sweet Sixteens, and four Elite Eights, Smith permeated the state in ways so deep that a 2004 poll by the Louisville Courier Journal found that 98 percent of respondents had a favorable opinion of the coach—making him the most popular person in Kentucky.

More recently, P.G. Peeples, president of the Lexington Urban League, speculated during a June meeting about how his departure might affect local race relations. “When Tubby Smith was hired as a coach, it was a galvanizing moment in the state of Kentucky,” he told the Lexington Herald-Leader. “His departure has left a lot of concern in the minds of African Americans as to whether he was ever truly supported during his tenure.”

Smith’s response to his friend is diplomatic. “I think he felt like he lost someone who worked to improve the community,” Smith says. “Race is always an issue. You can’t get past your color. But, that’s the reality until we get to a point where all men and women are equal.”

As Kentucky’s first black men’s basketball coach, Smith felt it was his duty to give back to the community, which he did through extensive outreach programs, most famously his Tubby’s Clubhouse programs that worked to bring technology to disadvantaged students, and by modeling the type of behavior and work ethic he learned growing up on a farm in a large family. “Most people would rather see a sermon than hear a sermon; that’s how I try to influence people,” Smith says.

As the fourth African American head coach in any sport at Minnesota, Smith says he plans on maintaining the same type of community leadership here. So far, he’s been grand marshal of the Minneapolis Aquatennial parade, lent his voice to the Twins broadcast booth, and toured the state with a contingent of Gopher coaches.

Along with Donna, his wife of 31 years, Smith is settling into a home near campus—a priority, Smith says, to establish themselves as a local presence for the team, the

Tubby Smith played host to Gopher greats John Kundla and Grant Johnson in Williams Arena. Smith holds a photo of the 1937 Big Ten championship team Kundla and Johnson led. Click image to go to Gopherssports.com story on the meeting. Photo courtesy of Univeristy of Minnesota.

University, and the community.

“Winning is important, but it’s more important to do things the right way,” Donna says. “These kids are students first, athletes second. You have to keep that in mind, that you’re helping young people grow into responsible young men.”

Guardian of the game

College basketball commentator Dick Vitale called the Tubby Smith hire “one of the greatest steals” in NCAA coaching history.

“So . . . how in the world did you get him?” That’s the question Maturi has been asked countless times.

However it happened, fans responded immediately: Since Smith was hired in March, the Gophers have sold 1,000 new men’s basketball season tickets, raising the total to 10,000. Minnesotans are wearing “Chubby 4 Tubby” T-shirts.

Smith offers perhaps the best answer to the perplexing question: “Why not Minnesota?”

Then he plunges into a talk about lofty ideals, about basketball in a broader context, about the impact one coach can have on a game that influences legions of young people, and about why, at his first press conference for Minnesota, he referred to himself as a guardian of the game.

“Once you reach a certain level you look for ways to influence more people and to have a positive influence on others and to touch more people,” Smith says. “Not just in college but in global basketball. I want to keep it a great game.”

In addition to his community work, Smith serves on so many basketball committees it’s hard for his assistants to keep track of his schedule: the USA Basketball Selection Committee for Youth Teams, the Board of Directors of the National Association of Basketball Coaches, NCAA President Myles Brand’s Partnership of Basketball Committee, and the Black Coaches Association, of which he is a charter member.

In those capacities, he helps analyze rules and make subtle changes to the game, ranging from widening the lane to requiring American NBA players to be a year removed from high school and at least 19 years old to be eligible for the NBA draft.

Farm values

But perhaps the reason Minnesota seems like such a comfortable fit, why Smith looks natural leading former Gopher players around the Barn wearing a Gopher polo shirt neatly tucked into shorts, goes back to his roots.

“I think I easily relate to people because of the diversity in our family,” says Smith, one of 17 kids who grew up in tiny Scotland, Maryland. “You learn about sacrificing, waiting your turn, getting your job done. Everyone can’t be in the bathroom at the same time.”

He tells his players stories about getting up at dawn to feed chickens and milk cows, about earning his nickname from the galvanized tub he bathed in. He tells them that you can’t miss bringing the water in the house or you’re not going to have water. Smith notes that he never even missed a day of school.

“That’s what’s given me the consistency in being able to do it at this level for so long,” he says.

His upbringing also gave him a thick skin that seems to shield him from criticism. His teams are known, for example, for their defensive-minded, team-oriented style of play not always popular with fans. That won’t change much here, he says.

Smith’s ability to recruit also raises questions from critics, especially in Minnesota, where fans are eager to retain local talent.

“There are few better at teaching defense and getting players to perform with effort,” says Sporting News college basketball writer Mike DeCourcy. “But . . . Kentucky was struggling to recruit against other elite programs. . . . Tubby has to get the best in-state players to make this work.”

The Gopher coaching staff says keeping local talent is a high priority. That’ll become easier with time, says top assistant Ron Jirsa, who also coached under Smith at Tulsa. “At Tulsa, when we did well it benefited the whole school,” Jirsa says. “Enrollment and applications went up. He had that effect at Georgia and everywhere he’s been.”

Smith hopes that a similar effect at Minnesota will imbue the team and turn the program into one nationally recognized for its values as well as its success on the court.

“After 30 years, you don’t worry about wins and losses,” Smith says. “Wins are going to come if you do the right things and recruit well, get the right kids here. And when you’re successful, people will listen. Kids will listen.”

Abnormal behavior

It remains to be seen whether the Barn will be full when the Gophers play their first home game under Smith, how much improvement will follow last year’s 9–22 season, how many top in-state recruits will don Minnesota uniforms.

But at least a couple signs indicate that people believe Smith could propel Minnesota back onto the national basketball scene. For one, assistant coach Vince Taylor left the Minnesota Timberwolves to join Smith’s staff, crediting the University with taking a huge step forward with the hire.

And then there’s the hoopla that Gopher center Spencer Tollackson saw on the way to Williams Arena for Smith’s first press conference. “We were driving here from class, and people were walking down University Avenue in Gopher basketball shirts,” Tollackson told the Associated Press. “That’s just not normal around here right now.”

Under Smith, however, that might just become the new normal.

Sheila Mulrooney Eldred is a Minneapolis-based freelance writer.