Why I Love Basketball: The More It Changes, The More It Stays The Same

The smile of a man who loves going to work, especially when he gets to write basketball. Stay tuned for a way you can join him making your picks and earn money in our brackets with Ernie.com. Cash prizes.

March Madness is here, and so is the Ernie Tourney—the first-ever intercollegiate bracket challenge! Think you’ve got the best bracket? Prove it against Bama, Auburn, Georgia, and the entire SEC. The school with the most points takes home the Ernie Cup, and the highest-scoring bracket wins $5,000! Florida fans, this is your shot to show the country who runs the SEC. Don’t let the rivals take the crown—rep your school and bring the Ernie Cup home! Download the Ernie app or go to Ernie.com to enter now!"

“All love affairs end. Eventually the girl is gonna put curlers in her hair.” – Al McGuire

Every love affair has a beginning but as my friend, the late, great Al McGuire said, so many come to an abrupt and often frivolous end over something rather trivial. My love affair with the Florida Gators began in 1960 when Ray Graves went for two and the Gators beat Georgia Tech, 18-17. That was my first college football game and it sealed me as a Gator for life. When it comes to the Gators, nothing has ever been cause for divorce.

I love Florida football, but I also love any sport in which the Gators are playing. My favorite team is the Florida Gators and whoever Georgia is playing, no matter the sport. I cheer for the Gators every opportunity. The only reason a Gator should ever cheer for the Georgia Bulldogs is if a Georgia win contributes to Florida winning a championship.

Of all the Florida sports, basketball is my favorite, but then again, it is my favorite sport even if the Gators aren’t playing. As I mentioned before, every love affair has a beginning. My love affair with college basketball began December 11, 1963, the night Dick Tomlinson went into a shooter’s coma to score 44 points, leading the Gators to a 108-75 win over the University of Tampa Spartans. It was my first college basketball game that I had attended in person. I had no clue that Tampa was absolutely terrible and would finish the season 2-24.

All I knew is that the Tampa Spartans had no one capable of contending with Dick Tomlinson, who scored practically at will. I sat on the front row of the east side bleachers at old Florida Gym, dead even with the Florida bench, which was in the north end zone. Above the bench was this overhang where Otis Boggs called the play-by-play for WRUF with a hot microphone as I would learn that picked up some of Norm Sloan’s more colorful outbursts.

Fifteen days later – the day after Christmas – the Gators were playing the Manhattan Jaspers at Florida Gym. Because I had gotten a couple of envelopes with Christmas money, I chose to spend some of it to go to my second college basketball game. I was at the end of the ticket line when this very tall guy came strolling in. I immediately recognized him as Dick Tomlinson so I rushed over to congratulate him and told him how exciting it was for me to see him score 44 in my very first college basketball game.

Some players might have brushed me aside, nodded thanks and walked on. Dick Tomlinson listened then asked if I had a ticket. When I told him I was going to buy one and the reason I was there was to watch him play, he said, “Come with me.” We walked down a hallway to where a man was taking up tickets. Dick looked at him and said, “He’s with me!”

Just like that, I was not only going to see my second college basketball game ever, but the same guy who had scored 44 points two weeks earlier got me in for free. I had money for a second drink, a second hot dog and a ticket for the next night when the Gators played Air Force. I didn’t eat the second hot dog or buy the second drink so I could treat myself the next night when the Gators beat Air Force. Three games. Three wins. My 12-year-old ego told me I was Florida’s good luck charm.

Life was good!

This is where my basketball love affair began. In the 61 years since, I’ve watched the game evolve into something no one could have imagined back in 1963. The players are taller, quicker and more athletic. The game is much more physical. There is such a thing as analytics which drives coaches to make decisions about game situations and personnel matters.

No matter how the game changes, though, the game is still about scoring on one end of the floor, stopping the opponent from putting the ball in the basket down at the other end. That will never change.

I played the game, I coached the game and I have spent endless hours writing about it. As I reflect back on this long love affair with the game, I see how so much of what I have seen and written about is intertwined with my Gator roots.

Norm Sloan was the Florida coach back in the 1960s. His daughter Leslie sat on one side of me in Mr. Hoffman’s math class at Westwood Junior High School. When Mr. Dulaney needed someone to snap the ball for his 12-year-old football team, I taught Mike Sloan how to do it. I had played tackle for Mr. Dulaney the year before when we won the county championship. I was his center because I could snap a spiral as a 13-year-old.

We moved to Mississippi where I got my start writing about sports when I was in the eighth grade at McComb Junior High School. Before we moved back to Gainesville in December of 1967, I was writing about high school and college football. I paused writing because I played on the basketball team coached by the late Bennie Kimble, who would give me rides home. Bennie became a junior college basketball coaching legend in Mississippi.

When my dad was transferred back to Gainesville, I played basketball as a GHS junior for Garnie Hatch. Our assistant was Edd Poore, who was a sophomore reserve for the Gators on that 1963-64 team. Coach Hatch left after my junior year to become Gary Colson’s assistant at Pepperdine and Coach Poore became our head coach at GHS. I tore a meniscus in the spring of 1968 so I didn’t play my senior season. Just to show how valuable I was, the Purple Hurricanes won the state championship when Eddie McAshan banked in a 30-foot shot at the end of overtime. Eddie fainted when the horn sounded. We thought he had suffered a heart attack! Fortunately, he just passed out briefly.

Franz getting the scoop from Billy Donovan (Photo by Tim Casey)

I saw that game and that shot from mid-court. By that time I was working for Jack Hairston and the Jacksonville Journal. How that happened is another story for another day, but my association with Jack was almost father-son and lasted for more than 40 years.

During my family’s 3-year exile in Mississippi, I went to the Press Maravich basketball camp at LSU, 62 miles southwest of McComb. Press had been the basketball coach at North Carolina State but he went to LSU because he couldn’t get Pete into school at NC State. Press was replaced at NCSU by Norm Sloan, who didn’t want to leave Florida and would have stayed if Coach Graves (also the AD) had given him new carpet for his office. That’s a true story.

When we moved back to Florida in December of 1967 I got to see Pete hang 50 on the Gators, two of which came on a layup that he headed into the basket. Had there been a 3-point shot he would have scored 65 per a computer whiz who has superimposed a 3-point line on the film of every college game Pete ever played.

Three years later, Pete was an Atlanta Hawk. The Hawks held training camp in Savannah where I was writing for the News-Press. One of my close friends was Lou Bello, one of the best referees in the country in his prime. Through Lou I got to be friends with Pete. Lou was Pete’s history teacher at Needham Broughton High School in Raleigh. When the Hawks came to train in Savannah, I covered practice daily and saw Pete make unbelievable passes to Lou Hudson, Walter Bellamy and Julius Erving. Julius was a Hawk for about 10 days until the courts made him go back to the ABA. Through Pete these guys became my friends.

In the summer of 1973, I became the sports editor of the Rocky Mount Telegram in North Carolina. During the 1973-74 college basketball season I covered every game North Carolina State played. Norm Sloan was the coach; David Thompson, Tommy Burleson and Monte Towe the star players. I was center court for the greatest college basketball game ever played, the 1974 ACC Tournament championship game, won by State 103-100 in overtime. Both teams shot 60 percent and yet the defense was phenomenal. There wasn’t a single walking call, 3-second violation or charging call. Two weeks later in Greensboro, North Carolina State beat UCLA in double overtime in the semifinals to end Coach Wooden’s string of seven straight national championships. On Monday night, the Wolfpack beat Al McGuire and Marquette for the national title.

Because Al was a close friend of Jack Hairston, my mentor, I developed a marvelous friendship with him starting at that Final Four. Al was an incredible basketball coach, but a better human being who told stories of going into the heart of some of the worst neighborhoods in America to recruit. Usually when he departed, he had made dozens of new friends, especially the moms of the players he was recruiting.

“If you can’t sit on the side of a bed where four kids sleep that doubles as the sofa and drink from a jelly jar in an apartment that’s in a building where you can smell the urine in overflowing toilets, knowing this is the best they have and they’re offering it to you, how are you going to convince a mom who works three jobs that you’ll take care of her son?” Al asked me.

I understood right then and there why Maurice Lucas’ mom thought Al McGuire was an angel sent from heaven.

Al would send post cards from his vacations. He went solo for 30 days every summer, claiming it was what kept his marriage together. Al signed all his post cards the same way: Seashells, balloons, blue skies and rainbows. Al.

That same year, I was there in Chapel Hill to see the greatest 18 seconds of coaching the world has ever seen. North Carolina was down eight points to Duke at Carmichael Auditorium, 18 seconds remaining. Dean Smith had his team huddled around him and as Mitch Kupchak revealed, “He’s telling us how we’re going to win the game.”

Eight points became six, six became four and four became two.

“He’s grinning during time out and asking us ‘isn’t this fun’ and he was serious,” Kupchak said.

Walter Davis hit this 35-foot bomb as the horn went off to send the game into overtime where Carolina won the game.

Dean was a brilliant coach, a better person and a marvelous friend.

At an AAU tournament in 2009 Charlie Scott, the first black athlete to sign a basketball scholarship at UNC, was there to watch his son Shannon play for an Atlanta-based team. Charlie revered Dean Smith, so much Shannon’s middle name is Dean. Charlie told me how Dean Smith picked him up on a Sunday morning to take him to church. Instead of dropping him off at a predominately black church, they took him to the lily white Baptist church and the two of them walked down the aisle to a prominent pew in the front of the church.

“That told me everything I ever needed to know about Coach Smith,” Charlie said.

During the 1970s, Florida’s basketball coach was John Lotz, who had been Dean Smith’s No. 1 assistant. Coach Lotz’s top assistant was Dick Grubar, a former UNC player. When Dick decided to take a lucrative business offer, he left coaching and that was the beginning of the end for Coach Lotz.

Coach Lotz was succeeded by Norm Sloan, who returned to Florida and took the Gators to their first NCAA Tournament bids. Norm’s top assistant was Monte Towe, who I wrote about so many times in 1974 and again in 1975. Monte, who still lives in Gainesville, is only 5-5 but he was an undefeated high school quarterback and while at North Carolina State made All-ACC as a second baseman for two ACC championship teams.

Lon Kruger was Florida’s basketball coach from 1990-96, taking the Gators to the Final Four in 1994. He left UF for Illinois after the 1995-96 season, disillusioned with recruiting after Vince Carter of Daytona Beach signed with North Carolina. Lon was quoted by friends as saying Florida would never win a national championship because the Gators couldn’t attract national championship caliber players.

Shall we say I was pleasantly amused when the Gators beat Lon and Illinois on their run to the NCAA championship game in 2000?

Billy Donovan succeeded Lon Kruger and for 19 years took the Gators to previously unimagined heights. I was there every step of the way in 2006 and 2007 when the Gators won back-to-back national championships. No one will ever convince me the 2007 team, in particular, wouldn’t have beaten any team of the past three or four decades.

At the 2006 NCAA semifinals in Indianapolis, my press seat was beside Jerry Tarkanian. Tark was almost tearful talking about Florida point guard Taurean Green. Taurean’s dad, Sidney, was a UNLV All-American and one of Tark’s favorites. Tark had tears in his eyes when the Gators beat George Mason that day. Seeing Taurean was like watching one of his grandchildren.

Two nights later, I watched Billy Donovan pull off one of the great coaching feats I’ve ever seen. UCLA was convinced the way to shut down the Florida offense was to neutralize Taurean. So, Billy ran the offense through Joakim Noah instead. Jo was Florida’s point center. Someone forgot to memo Ben Howland that Jo was a point guard before his growth spurt.

A year later in Atlanta the Gators repeated. I remember it well because I got to spend time with the late, great John Thompson, the former Georgetown coach. John Thompson and Dean Smith were like brothers. Coach Thompson is the one who told me that Dean Smith had Alzheimers and warned me that when I approached him, he might not recognize me.

I was prepared for the worst, but instead I got a warm smile, a handshake and “Hi Franz, how have you been doing?” I cherish that moment.

When the Oh-Fours held their farewell press conference a couple of weeks later, I sat in the back with Sidney Green. Big Sid was 6-10 and probably 300 pounds. He put his hand on my shoulder. I looked at him and said, “Don’t you go crying on me Sid!” He replied, “Well, we gonna do it together.”

And we did.

I will go to my grave believing the Gators would have won the 2011 national championship. At the Elite Eight game in New Orleans, Butler coach Brad Stevens jumped all over referee Jamie Luckie. It was 10 feet in front of Marty Cohen and me on press row.

“You’re a better official than that,” Stevens said after a very bad call. Luckie lit him up with a T and then proceeded to make the next several calls in Butler’s favor, turning a double-digit Florida lead into a deficit from which the Gators never recovered.

Zebras do affect games when they get a serious case of the red ass. I am friends with enough referees who have admitted that under the promise that I would never give out their names.

I think I am still the only AAU coach to ever get tossed from a game at the nationals. Put me in the same situation with the same zebra and I would do it again. That was in 1981 when I was trying my hand at coaching. My Florida team finished fourth in the nation and would have won it all if the coach had done a better job. On my team were Tammy Jackson, one of Florida’s greatest women’s players, and Roonie Scovel, another former Gator who won six junior college national titles at Gulf Coast Community College in Panama City.

Always there with the tools of his trade when there's a story about the Gators to be written. (Chris Spears Photo)

I’ll close this lengthy piece about my love affair with basketball with commentary about the current Gators and Todd Golden. I walked away from his introductory press conference in 2022 thinking this guy had something special about him and I haven’t been disappointed. In his three years on the job, he has rekindled my love affair with the game of basketball.

He has done it by treating his players like men and never letting his ego get in the way of letting his coaches coach and teach the game. I see in him a little bit of Bruce Pearl, his mentor who is like a second father. I see things that remind me of Al McGuire, Dean Smith, Bill Self, John Calipari and some other coaches I’ve been able to call friends. The great ones all have one thing in common which is to treat people with respect and never think you have all the answers because you don’t.

I believe the Gators could win the national championship this year but even if they don’t, I’m going to remember how Todd Golden built a team and then got the most out of them. Years from now, few of us will remember the scores, but we will remember the people who made the scores possible.

I guess that’s why I love basketball so much. I’ve seen so many games I can’t count them all. I remember only a handful of scores but I remember the people I got to write about. The people are what matters, particularly if they are Gators.