On the afternoon of his 64th birthday, Denny Crum walked into a hot room lit up with TV lights to announce that, after 30 years, he was retiring as the University of Louisville's head basketball coach.
He didn't seem angry or bitter. To the contrary, he repeated that it was his decision, that nobody pushed him out, and that he was looking forward to leading a normal life after 41 years in the coaching profession.
As Crum talked, U of L president John Shumaker and athletics director Tom Jurich sat nearby. They were the ones who gave Crum a sweetheart deal by which he will get a $2 million payout on his current contract, which has two years remaining, and $5 million for 15 years as a consultant and fund-raiser.
"I want to do whatever I can do to help the university as long as it doesn't interfere with my fishing," said Crum, smiling and winking.
Whoever choreographed the news conference should be nominated for an Emmy. Crum, Jurich, and Shumaker all tried to put a fuzzy, feel-good, positive spin on what, in fact, was an acrimonious situation that threatened to tear the university community apart.
Going back to late January, when the subject of Crum's future left the realm of behind-the-scenes to become a topic of public debate, Crum's posture was to dig in his heels, fight to the bitter end, and try to rally the public behind him.
That attitude led him to release some confidential university memos to John Yarmuth, his longtime friend and business partner who publishes the Louisville Eccentric Observor, a feisty newspaper that caters to the city's counter-culture.
If the plan was to discredit Jurich as being less than candid in his dealings with Crum, it backfired magnificently. The leaks, along with some unfortunate Crum comments concerning the deficit in U of L's athletic budget, only served to make Crum appear petty.
But the turning point came when Jurich announced that he had taken himself out of the running for the Indiana AD's job and would stay at U of L for the foreseeable future.
At that point, even the stubborn Crum could read the hand-writing on the wall. Jurich had all the support he needed, both from Shumaker and the university's Board of Trustees. The ball was in Denny's court.
So last Friday, Bob Shaw, a Louisville businessman who has long been one of Crum's strongest supporters, called Shumaker to begin the process of negotiating a retirement package for the Hall of Fame coach. From that point, things progressed rapidly. Crum wanted to be handsomely compensated for his service and achievements. He also wanted the courtesy of being able to say that the decision was his when, in fact, it wasn't.
Only a few days earlier, he had been talking about the need for a contract extension.
But Shumaker and Jurich agreed to Crum's terms because they wanted to avoid the kind of ugliness that accompanied Adolph Rupp's forced retirement at UK and Bob Knight's firing last year at Indiana.
So the news conference was an entertaining bit of theater. We are left with the question: How should the Crum era be remembered?
The first 15 years were extraordinary. There were two NCAA titles, four more trips to the Final Four, and a reservation in the Associated Press Top 10. But the second 15 years of Crum's career amounted to a steady spiral downward to the mediocrity that exists today.
The turning point was Wade Houston's 1989 decision to take the Tennessee job and bring his son, Allan, who had committed to U of L, with him. It turned out to be a bad deal for everyone. Allan, who left Tennessee as the second-leading scorer in Southeastern Conference history, never played in the NCAA Tournament. Crum never replaced him. Wade was fired after five years. The program record over the last four years is 61-61 with no NCAA Tournament wins or conference championships. Makes for a bad 64th birthday bash.
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