Gilbert and the Bruins

[SWC75]

An excerpt from Seth Davis' new book on John Wooden. Sounds like an interesting read. This is about Sam Gilbert's involvement with the program and it touches on current issues about schools making money off of athletes.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/co...excerpt-sam-gilbert/index.html?xid=nl_siextra

In the same E-mail from SI was this:
http://tracking.si.com/2014/01/21/n...r-deal-largest-college-sports/?xid=nl_siextra

 

[rstone7727]

UCLA in the Wooden era was a dirty as it gets. They were first in wins and first in stipends for employees um' players. Sam Gilbert was the original World Wide Wes.

 

[LennX6]

Great post. UCLA was the devil incarnate to me as a kid growing up, and no two players did I despise more than Allen and Alcindor. That was more how I root for teams .I needed a villain to knock off the top of the mountain. And growing up I had no shortage. Penn St Football, UCLA Basketball , Green Bay Packers, Boston Celtics, Montreal Canadiens. Believe or not, the two most hated were Montreal and UCLA. Made for a lot of passion but much much disappointment.

 

[SWC75]

It's interesting that Michigan State "took care of it's players" and Gilbert allowed UCLA to keep up with that. I suspect any successful program takes care of it's players a little more than than the NCAA would like.

Wooden reminds me a lot of Bud Wilkinson, who excluded class while beating the pants off all his rivals because the Oklahoma oil men were funding the program. Both Wooden and Wilkinson were, indeed great coaches but they were given everything they needed to succeed whereas other coaches were not. Wooden had a 32-4 record in the Final Four. It took more than Sam Gilbert, (who didn't even really show up until they'd already won three titles), to accomplish that. Wilkinson's successor, Gomer Jones, had a losing record.

It's still disturbing to see headlines that alternately tell us of new bonanzas for the schools and of the NCAA cracking down on the players.