John Thompson, college basketball coach, dies at 78.
I didn't have any great dislike for Thompson. But after years and years of poor/mediocre teams, the hiring of Thompson at Georgetown did one big thing. He almost immediately reversed the losing and transformed them into championship-caliber teams.
How did he do it?
Up until his hiring Georgetown fielded mostly all-white teams with a few black players here and there.
Thompson stopped recruiting white players and almost exclusively recruited black players. There were only few benchwarming white players on his teams over the years. As a longtime follower of college basketball, I cannot remember one decent white player on any of Thompson's teams.
Georgetown was not a poor academic school. It still has a very good rep in a number of fields.
How did all those black players manage to make it through a good academic school?
I seriously doubt more than a few them had great SATs or ACTs.
But Georgetown was not the first university that decided to become a champion sports school by recruiting athletes with questionable (to put it mildly) academic records.
Even after Thompson left Georgetown, there were few or no white players.
The present coach HOFer Patrick Ewing was hired a few years ago and started recruiting white players.
So was Thompson a racist for not recruiting white players? No matter how dominant black players are in basketball, there are still a number of good white players coming out of high schools every year.
You'd think Thompson could have found one.
