TV Review: "40 Minutes of Hell"

ESPN has recently aired a number of short documentaries about the history of the SEC, under the title "SEC Storied." The other day, I saw a one-hour program about Nolan Richardson and the Arkansas basketball, which was called "40 Minutes of Hell." The title, of course, comes from Richardson's term for the pressure defense his Razorback teams used to run.

Personally, I found the documentary to be both boring and fascinating. On the one hand, as a basketball fan who followed Richardson's career pretty closely, I really didn't learn very much about Richardson or his great teams -- although it was fun to see some of the old clips. On the other hand, I was fascinated to see how a story that I know so well was simplified for purposes of television.

Richardson's story is amazing, and would make for a great movie. Consider the following facts:

1. His mother died in 1944, when Richardson was only three years old. His father was an alcoholic.

2. Richardson was raised by his father's mother, whose own parents had been slaves.

3. Growing up in El Paso, he eventually played for Texas Western. He graduated the year before Texas Western won the national championship.

4. He spent 10 seasons coaching high school basketball in El Paso, before finally getting a chance to coach at West Texas Junior College when he was 37 years old.

5. In 1980, he led West Texas to the National Junior College Championship. Soon afterward, he was hired by the University of Tulsa.

6. In 1981, he led Tulsa to the championship of the NIT.

7. In 1985, he agreed to become head coach at the University of Arkansas -- largely at the insistence of his teenage daughter. Two years later, that daughter died of leukemia.

8. In 1994, he led Arkanas to the national championship, and took them back to the final game in 1995.

9. He never got close to the Final Four again, and was fired in the middle of the 2002 season, in large part due to remarks he made after a loss to Kentucky. (Richardson was asked by a Kentucky reporter whether his job was in jeopardy, and Richardson said something like "they can have my job any time they want it." I would be willing to bet money that Jerry Tipton was the reporter who asked that question.)

10. After eight disappointing seasons, Arkansas hired Richardson's long-time assistant and close friend -- Mike Anderson -- to take over the program.

Now that's quite a story. But it's not enough for ESPN, which constantly tries to make things more dramatic by telling us that Richardson's team was criticized for running the same type of fast-break offense as Kentucky, that no one believed in Arkansas before the 1994 tournament, that everyone thought Duke would "outsmart" Arkansas in the 1994 title game, and that the "pressure" ultimately got to Richardson. To be fair, ESPN didn't make up these claims -- Richardson seems to believe them himself.

And here we see why no history book can ever tell the whole story. The Arkansas teams of the early- to mid-1990's were extremely popular in Kentucky, and they are just about my favorite non-Kentucky teams ever. To Kentucky fans, Arkansas was one of the few teams who really played basketball the right way -- they got after you on defense, moved the ball quickly on offense, and almost never made stupid plays. In almost 40 years of watching Kentucky basketball, I can honestly say that Nolan Richardson's Razorbacks were pretty much the only team who Kentucky fans regarded as worthy opponents. And I don't remember any major writers or reporters ever seriously criticizing Richardson.

So to me, the idea that Nolan Richardson and Arkansas faced unusual levels of hostility just isn't true. In fact, there are obvious explanations for many of Richardson's complaints:

1. Pitino got more support for his up-tempo style from Kentucky fans because Kentucky has almost always played an up-tempo style since Coach Rupp built the program. Richardson, by contrast, took over from Eddie Sutton, one of the most boring of all coaches, and so Arkansas fans had very different expectations. For the record, Arkansas fans gave Richardson and his teams enormous and tumultuous support every time I saw them play.

2. Everyone was down on Arkansas before the 1994 tournament because they lost to UK in the semi-finals of the SEC tournament.

3. Everyone thought Duke would outsmart Arkansas because the national media always expects Duke to outsmart everyone. And, in fact, the Blue Devils did outsmart Arkansas. The Razorbacks had a much better team than Duke, but Coach K and Grant Hill took them down to the wire -- and almost won the game.

4. There's no evidence that Richardson was under more "pressure" after he won the national title. If anything, it looks as though he took things easier after winning it all. Certainly his recruiting dropped way off, and his teams lacked the fire and talent they had once had. Not surprisingly, after seven years there were Arkansas fans who were frustrated by all the losses. But this is hardly unique to Richardson. Almost the exact same thing happened with Gary Williams, whose Maryland teams were never the same after he won it all in 2002, and who ended up having major problems with the Maryland administrators.

5. Even the question from the Kentucky reporter about Richardson's job isn't surprising -- that's exactly the sort of thing Tipson does all the time.

But who am I to say that Richardson doesn't know his own story? He was there, and he knows what happened a lot better than I do. Furthermore, he seems to interpret everything through the prism of the racism and hostility that he experienced from the 1940's to the 1970's. And as a Southerner, I have to admit that history plays a major role in anyone's life.

It makes me very, very sad that all the cheering and all the warm feelings that so many of us had for Richardson and his team didn't really get through -- that Richardson will apparently go to his grave convinced that everyone was out to get him. But I can't blame him for not forgetting all of his bad experiences. All I can do is say that I thought, and I still think, that Nolan Richardson was a great, great coach, and that his teams were some of the best I have ever seen. And I hope they are remembered and cherished for a long, long time.