Speaker 1: This is Eye on the Ball with Steve Ravera on
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Speaker 1: Your most Prized Possessions.
Speaker 2: I hope everybody stuck with us. We were back for
Speaker 2: a while. Let me just give you a schedule here.
Speaker 2: It's only about three forty three something like that. We're
Speaker 2: going to try to get ahold of Rocky the Rose
Speaker 2: we had around for a brief moment earlier before we
Speaker 2: went to two technical difficulties. But we'll get her back
Speaker 2: on the phone and talk more about Cedric Dempsey and
Speaker 2: the passing of Cedric over the weekend and what impact
Speaker 2: he had at the u of A that Dave and
Speaker 2: I both dealt with him, and what a great man
Speaker 2: I posted over the weekend. I think you saund for well,
Speaker 2: you saw you. He was already here, Dave Race just
Speaker 2: for a few minutes. Yeah, you know, you know I
Speaker 2: was going to bring this up with Rocky.
Speaker 3: You know, there was a so I went to San
Speaker 3: Diego State and there was a brief moment where he
Speaker 3: was the athletic director there before he went to Houston.
Speaker 4: It was really weird.
Speaker 3: I remember, I think I was an intern in the
Speaker 3: TV station in the late seventies and they had a
Speaker 3: big news conference introducing the new athletic director, Cedric Dempsen.
Speaker 3: He was there, and he was there less than a year,
Speaker 3: maybe even like six months. And I don't know if
Speaker 3: he saw the writing on the wall, but you know,
Speaker 3: eventually SDSU would would would join, would would move up
Speaker 3: into a different conference. But at the time they were
Speaker 3: in the PCAA yeah, yeah, and they eventually got to
Speaker 3: the whack when Arizona made the move, all this and that.
Speaker 3: But yeah, he was there really briefly for a little bit,
Speaker 3: and then he shows up in Tucson just before I
Speaker 3: got here. So we basically again I've kind of told
Speaker 3: the story a million times about how Lute and I
Speaker 3: got here the same year.
Speaker 4: I also got here the same year as so you
Speaker 4: were part of that magic. It must have been me.
Speaker 4: It had to have been Rocky is issue Rocky?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Hello, we're back. I hopefully will stay with you
Speaker 2: for a while. We were talking. We were talking off
Speaker 2: the air. We thought you were on the air. But
Speaker 2: let me take us back again to eighty three, eighty
Speaker 2: two on the air and just just the situation back
Speaker 2: then when Cedric came aboard.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it was a pretty remarkable time. I remember it
Speaker 5: honestly like it was yesterday, said got hired. At the time,
Speaker 5: the women's department and the men's departments were totally separate physically.
Speaker 5: The women were over in in a getting building and
Speaker 5: the men were in McHale. And even though the women
Speaker 5: sort of reported partially to the athletic director, which would
Speaker 5: have been Dave Strack and to the president's office, there
Speaker 5: was momentum to merge the programs and said did that literally,
Speaker 5: Like I think the first day he was there, there
Speaker 5: was discussions between Mary Robie and myself and the next thing,
Speaker 5: you know, we're packing up our banks and moving to
Speaker 5: Okale the sales center.
Speaker 2: So let me ask you what was his reputation before
Speaker 2: he got here, because you know, you have you hires
Speaker 2: and all that stuff.
Speaker 4: What do you say, oh, this is great or what
Speaker 4: was the thought?
Speaker 5: Yeah, it actually was because and that the University of Arizona,
Speaker 5: so people knew him around the campus, and so there
Speaker 5: was a lot of excitement. Actually, you know, it was
Speaker 5: pretty tough on him because he he has just I
Speaker 5: think he'd been in Houston less than a year and
Speaker 5: he accepted the Arizona job. So that was a pretty
Speaker 5: brave move for him back then.
Speaker 2: If I remember too in my books, uh, I think
Speaker 2: maybe you mentioned you broke up a little. He was
Speaker 2: an assistant for Larson back in the day.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, assistant basketball coach, that's right, for the University
Speaker 5: of Arizona coach Larson.
Speaker 4: So he knew.
Speaker 2: He knew all about Arizona from back in the day
Speaker 2: bear down and all that.
Speaker 5: He sure did. Yeah, he was. He said, this was
Speaker 5: his first choice to come back to. He loved Tucson,
Speaker 5: he loved the University of Arizona, the campus. Uh So
Speaker 5: he was anxious to get back.
Speaker 3: Plus he went to the same university or same college
Speaker 3: as pot McHale.
Speaker 4: Right, I mean that's I.
Speaker 1: Know, isn't that?
Speaker 5: The Star and Davey too, They all three of them
Speaker 5: went to Albion, which is where where is that axe?
Speaker 4: Does anybody? Yeah? Okay, yeah, I know, so I know
Speaker 4: you were posted him.
Speaker 2: I actually posted a photo of you guys with me
Speaker 2: and my other show back in the day.
Speaker 4: How did this hit you?
Speaker 5: Oh? You know, it's a man. It just takes you
Speaker 5: back to First of all, how grateful I am for
Speaker 5: him and forgiving me the opportunities he did for what
Speaker 5: he did for the University of Arizona, which is our love, right,
Speaker 5: and the athletic department and this community, and so all
Speaker 5: those memories just come flooding back. They truly do.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 5: It's a sad day. But he lived a long, happy, fruitful,
Speaker 5: rewarding life, and so that I think we're all grateful.
Speaker 4: And he was a tough dude. He was a tough dude.
Speaker 2: And I say this, you know, you never kind of
Speaker 2: just because he was a nice guy, and nice guys
Speaker 2: are what they are. But he you know, survived cancer
Speaker 2: and two or three times, right, and.
Speaker 5: Just a tough Oh more than that, he is a
Speaker 5: tough dude. You're absolutely right. What a remarkable human being.
Speaker 5: He Actually, one of the last times I talked to him,
Speaker 5: he had added up that he had been in chemotherapy
Speaker 5: over nine years of his life, off and on over
Speaker 5: his life. Isn't that something? Yeah? Amazing, amazing.
Speaker 3: Talk about his role with the NC double A because
Speaker 3: that was a big deal when he got that job.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't know if you watched the women's
Speaker 3: game yesterday, but they did a moment of silence for
Speaker 3: him right before the National anthem, So you know, he's
Speaker 3: obviously remembered at the NCUBA level. How important was he
Speaker 3: to that organization?
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, I mean, if you'll note at halftime today
Speaker 5: in the men's game, they're going to give him a
Speaker 5: lifetime achievement of more So, how amazing is that they
Speaker 5: had hoped they'd actually had selected him almost a year ago,
Speaker 5: but had planned to do it at Final four, which
Speaker 5: is kind of just a heartwarming because one of Said's
Speaker 5: favorite times of the year was the Final four. So
Speaker 5: it's very touching. But well, you know, we always knew
Speaker 5: Said had an interest in national I mean, he always
Speaker 5: wanted to be on an NCAA committee, He always wanted
Speaker 5: to lead an NCAA committee. He loved legislation because he
Speaker 5: knew that was the foundation of where athletics grew or
Speaker 5: at least went in the right direction as he saw it.
Speaker 5: So we always knew he had an interest, And yeah,
Speaker 5: it was wonderful because he was an athletic director, he
Speaker 5: had been there, and for him to be the executive
Speaker 5: director president of the NCAA having been on a campus
Speaker 5: was really I think what a lot of the athletic
Speaker 5: directors and presidents quite frankly of the universities were hoping for.
Speaker 2: He when talked without the South the year, he had
Speaker 2: a lot of secret sauce to him. Right, he brings
Speaker 2: in the big domino that led to a lot of
Speaker 2: other dominoes.
Speaker 5: That's right, Yeah, you know that. I talked about the
Speaker 5: first move, which was moving the women over into the
Speaker 5: Cail Center, But his biggest mood move, no doubt, was
Speaker 5: hiring coach Loudolph, and that changed the whole culture, the
Speaker 5: whole atmosphere in Mcial Center. And boy, we took off
Speaker 5: after that. I mean, think of all the national championships
Speaker 5: that came in after that. I mean, of course Jerry
Speaker 5: Kendall had won one before Lude arrived, but after that
Speaker 5: we totaled up to twenty two now, so it's pretty amazing.
Speaker 5: It just there was just a winning culture with Luke there,
Speaker 5: and the coaches all bonded together. And that's all because
Speaker 5: said set had this vision. He wanted to bring in
Speaker 5: a coach that was successful, and he knew that continuity
Speaker 5: and consistency is what brings the victories. And so with
Speaker 5: through said, we were able to hold on to a
Speaker 5: lot of coaches for a long time.
Speaker 3: Not only that the notoriety brought to the University of Arizona.
Speaker 3: I mean, for many of us, we didn't know anything
Speaker 3: about the University of Arizona until we got to Tucson,
Speaker 3: but specifically, like I mean, you know, I certainly learned
Speaker 3: about it, but before I got here, there was not
Speaker 3: much news about the u of A. But when he
Speaker 3: got here and took him just a few years to
Speaker 3: get to the final four, what did that mean? You
Speaker 3: think maybe to the overall campus and the recognition that
Speaker 3: the school got nationally.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, I mean we had a study A, missions
Speaker 5: went way up, people trying to get into the u
Speaker 5: A went way up, Fundraising dollars went way up. So uh,
Speaker 5: it impacted you know, the university greatly, and not only that,
Speaker 5: just our spirit and you know, our enthusiasm and everything
Speaker 5: else about it.
Speaker 4: You Yeah, so you're talking about the Domino. I want
Speaker 4: to go to the other ones.
Speaker 2: You've got Kendrea, you got Frank Bush, Dick Tomy, and
Speaker 2: you know I mentioned, and not even the women women's side.
Speaker 2: You don't have the Joan of course, and some you
Speaker 2: know Fred Harvey, he's got a lot of these powerful.
Speaker 5: Dave Rubio, Yeah, we all, yes, that night. Yeah, Grave Rubio, Yeah,
Speaker 5: what do you what do you look for?
Speaker 4: What did he look for?
Speaker 5: Well, he looked for tenacity, dedication. He liked the young,
Speaker 5: the young bucks, so to speak. And I say that
Speaker 5: women and men. He liked those that had a fire
Speaker 5: in him. And I don't you know, people have asked
Speaker 5: me that too. You know, what do you see? And
Speaker 5: it's just a gut feeling when you talk to coaches,
Speaker 5: when you interview them. I think also you have said,
Speaker 5: was under the philosophy that you traveled with teams because
Speaker 5: you were looking at the other coaches, whether it be
Speaker 5: assistant coaches or not, because you never knew when you
Speaker 5: were going to lose your coach, Right. So he had
Speaker 5: this a list literally of coaches that he would watch,
Speaker 5: that he would put on his list, and so he
Speaker 5: was always ready.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, it was, it was. It was a great.
Speaker 3: It was really fun to just kind of watch all
Speaker 3: these people come in and have such great success one
Speaker 3: after another. I mean that those years really, really the
Speaker 3: whole nineties basically once he got rolling, that was quite
Speaker 3: a run for that program.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there's no doubt built the foundation for our future success.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, You've been an ad for a number of years
Speaker 2: under him, in fact, Bockgrath and all these people. What
Speaker 2: did you take away from him?
Speaker 5: Well, what I what I loved about said is that
Speaker 5: he truly demanded excellence in all areas of our department.
Speaker 5: So academically, he wanted our athletes to succeed in leadership
Speaker 5: and personally, and of course winning athletically. And you know,
Speaker 5: he was the one who assigned me to build a
Speaker 5: program that would encompass all three of those things and
Speaker 5: would touch on things that athletes wouldn't get in a
Speaker 5: traditional classroom. So that was the Cats program. And how
Speaker 5: about that? That went national? You know, we built that
Speaker 5: program and next thing, you know, the NCAA adopted it
Speaker 5: and required all Division I schools to have a program
Speaker 5: similar to our Cats program. Well that was because of said,
Speaker 5: he truly had this educational component in him and believed
Speaker 5: that athletics was a part of the educational learning of
Speaker 5: an individual. So I love that about said.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's funny.
Speaker 2: We talk about this all the time, Dave, and you
Speaker 2: know Jay and Greg, how the nineties, the mid nineties
Speaker 2: and early nineties were just the glory years and it
Speaker 2: kind of has a sense of trying to come back.
Speaker 2: But I don't know, do you feel the same way.
Speaker 2: Back in those days, it was like a lot of winning,
Speaker 2: a lot of fun.
Speaker 5: It was a lot of fun.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no questions. We were all young.
Speaker 5: We were young, but dang, we had some fun. You know.
Speaker 5: You know, I'm thinking of tonight with that doom, and
Speaker 5: I think you're going to have Rhino on the show.
Speaker 5: Ryan Hansen and Ryan and I worked very closely together
Speaker 5: when we would go to final fours or you know,
Speaker 5: Elite eight, Sweet sixteens, but the big days were when
Speaker 5: we went to the final four and just having flashbacks
Speaker 5: of those days and how much work it was, but
Speaker 5: yet how much fun it was. My goodness, we were
Speaker 5: rolling and it felt really good.
Speaker 2: I think one of the things that I said, I
Speaker 2: called him a very good man, great man in fact,
Speaker 2: is that he was so he didn't really show emotion,
Speaker 2: at least not with us, right. He was kind of
Speaker 2: very stern, are very very dignified, and his you know,
Speaker 2: like you were speaking to your grandfather with all due respect,
Speaker 2: but you didn't want to piss off your grandfather.
Speaker 5: Well that is true, It is true. You had a
Speaker 5: lot of respect, per said, but honestly, he had a
Speaker 5: very kind heart. He'd walk around the Chale Center and
Speaker 5: make sure he said hi to everybody. So he was
Speaker 5: really engaged in all the various departments. I'll tell you
Speaker 5: what happened to me. That was just which kind of
Speaker 5: bonded us. We've laughed about it our entire lives. But
Speaker 5: I had gone in there, and you know, when you
Speaker 5: move into the men's side of athletics, all of a
Speaker 5: sudden you're like, oh, my goodness, there's all these opportunities
Speaker 5: for women. And so I went into Said's office just
Speaker 5: as a little baby, and I said, I want to
Speaker 5: talk to him about being an athletic director and what
Speaker 5: he would think about that. And he was waiting on
Speaker 5: a call from the president of the university and he
Speaker 5: was President Coffler at the time, and he said, so
Speaker 5: I may get interrupted, and he said, it's a really
Speaker 5: important call because we're talking about some subsidies and redoing
Speaker 5: some of Arizona Stadium and stuff. And he said it's
Speaker 5: a really important call. I said, okay. So I sat there.
Speaker 5: Sure enough, the phone rang, said, picked it up, said
Speaker 5: hello President, and all of a sudden, this cricket was
Speaker 5: coming towards me and said, kind of stuck his leg
Speaker 5: out and his foot out and leaped forward to kill
Speaker 5: the cricket before it came to me. And he unplugged
Speaker 5: the phone and hung up on the President.
Speaker 4: How did you explain that one I got a car?
Speaker 5: Yeah, then he couldn't get it plug back in, and
Speaker 5: pretty good about that.
Speaker 4: The good thing Coufflor didn't look for a new a D.
Speaker 5: So, yeah, he had a good humor aside to him
Speaker 5: as well, and and he was just he was a
Speaker 5: good guy. We all enjoyed working for him.
Speaker 2: So today's point, when he left to the n C
Speaker 2: double A, what was the what was the thought because
Speaker 2: he had done so well. I know you got Jim afterwards,
Speaker 2: but what was the thought in him leaving you thinking, oh, no,
Speaker 2: what's going to happen?
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, you're always worried, right about what the heck?
Speaker 5: I now? Who am I going to work for? And
Speaker 5: you know, we had had such a great relationship and
Speaker 5: you know, we had things going and yeah, so it
Speaker 5: was a scary time. It's always a scary time. But
Speaker 5: then we got Jim. Yay. Jim was terrific, of course,
Speaker 5: and built on that foundation and it all worked out great,
Speaker 5: thank goodness, And of course I knew Jim from Washington State,
Speaker 5: so that was a real joy. But boy, let me
Speaker 5: tell you, every time there's an ad change, the staff
Speaker 5: is worried, sick because you just never know. Y, you
Speaker 5: never know, speaking.
Speaker 3: Of which we've experienced that here, you know, in the
Speaker 3: last two years or so, and all kinds of changes
Speaker 3: going on in athletics. Are you glad to be away
Speaker 3: from it and kind of looking in now as a fan?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Are they asking you for any advice? I mean, what's
Speaker 3: your involvement now?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 5: Well, I do have my toe still kind of stuck
Speaker 5: in there. I chair the Sports Hall of Fame Committee,
Speaker 5: and I always joke that's because I'm history and you
Speaker 5: can take that anyway you want, right, But I enjoy
Speaker 5: that because a lot of our inductees are athletes that
Speaker 5: I was there when they were competing. So it's fun
Speaker 5: to still have that connection. The other way I have
Speaker 5: my little toe in there is I chair actually the
Speaker 5: President's Committee, the Faculty Committee on Athletics. It's called the
Speaker 5: Intercollegiate Athletic Committee. It's a committee that's required by the NCAA,
Speaker 5: and so I report to the president for that. We
Speaker 5: meet once a month with Desiree and her staff, and
Speaker 5: our committee is made up of faculty members from the university.
Speaker 5: So that's exciting for me because I get to, you know,
Speaker 5: hear a lot about what's going on and the changes,
Speaker 5: and I am forever grateful that I'm on the sidelines by.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I wouldn't want to be Desiree, no, no question,
Speaker 5: my respect to her.
Speaker 4: I hope you will hang with us for a little bit.
Speaker 2: One of the things that I was shocked about I
Speaker 2: heard a few months ago that I guess, did the
Speaker 2: thing get passed this morning?
Speaker 4: The twenty million.
Speaker 2: I haven't tried, but let's assume it gets past, which
Speaker 2: I'm sure it will be. And I heard that the
Speaker 2: women's sports are going to get very little percentages, and
Speaker 2: I'm thinking that's not going to happen.
Speaker 4: That's not true. I guess it's true.
Speaker 2: And I was like shocked because in the time of
Speaker 2: title line equity and all that, what are your thoughts
Speaker 2: on that?
Speaker 5: Well, it's a late and see right, I think the
Speaker 5: schools are trying to figure this out too, And I
Speaker 5: don't know specifically what the University of Arizona is going
Speaker 5: to do at this point. What I have heard nationally
Speaker 5: discussed is that it will be based on the revenue
Speaker 5: that teams bring in. So that's how they came up
Speaker 5: with yes of seventy five percent for football, because typically
Speaker 5: most football programs bring in the biggest revenue. Basketball men's
Speaker 5: basketball will be second, and then they'll divide the rest
Speaker 5: amongst the remaining sports. So now whether or not, you know,
Speaker 5: the University of Arizona does follows suit, the other thing is,
Speaker 5: no one's real sure how this actually, this twenty point
Speaker 5: five million that can be paid directly to student athletes,
Speaker 5: how that is going to be looked at by Title nine.
Speaker 5: And so you know, no doubt there's going to be
Speaker 5: more court caated that go forward, you know, because it
Speaker 5: is money that's being distributed by universities, and therefore Title nine,
Speaker 5: if you're receiving federal money, you have to be equitable
Speaker 5: in that lane. But they're also literally just basing it
Speaker 5: on the revenue that sports are bringing it in. But
Speaker 5: then they're going to determine them