When the NFL season kicks off each fall, I usually become a football widow of sorts.
Since I'm pursuing my master's degree in education, I typically spend quite a bit of my time off on Sunday and Monday studying, reading and going online to classes during the football season. I also tutor an undergraduate student on the weekdays and weekends.
Well, my usual tutoring session was canceled this Sunday and if I hadn't been alternating between watching football and ESPN SportsCenter late Sunday night I wouldn't have found out that part of my past had died.
The part of my past who died Sunday afternoon was legendary University of Texas at El Paso basketball coach Don Haskins, and I can say I knew who he was - sort of.
Known as "The Bear," Haskins, 78, who died in El Paso, is credited with breaking the color barrier in college basketball when he started five black players in the 1966 NCAA championship basketball game against an all-white, heavily favored Kentucky team coached by Adolph Rupp and won. To this day, UTEP is the only school in Texas to ever win an NCAA basketball championship.
Haskins had a 719-353 record, won seven Western Athletic Conference titles, took UTEP to 14 NCAA tournaments and the NIT seven times. After 38 seasons at the El Paso university, he retired in 1999.
Everyone who has ever lived in or gone to school in El Paso knew who Don Haskins was, and I wasn't any different.
My senior year at UTEP, I worked for the campus paper, The Prospector. I had recently become interested in sports writing, thanks to my husband, Craig.
As a result, in the summer of 1994 I was asked to do a story about Haskins being once again passed over for induction in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. I don't recall interviewing Haskins, but I did interview the assistant coaches and his basketball players.
Haskins was finally inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1997.
So, how do I know Haskins, you ask? I continued working for The Prospector as the copy editor in the fall of 1994 (I graduated from UTEP with a bachelor's degree in journalism in December of 1994) and had an opportunity to cover sports because the sports editor had quit. However, I didn't get to interview Haskins because another guy with more experience writing sports came and took over as the sports editor before basketball season, and I regret never getting to interview Haskins.
The closest I ever came to knowing Haskins was a few years ago when my husband and I had gone to El Paso to watch a football game as we usually do every year. We saw Haskins driving down I-10 in his truck, drinking a beverage in a Good Times cup, and as I sit here writing this column, I vividly picture Haskins doing just that.
Good Times has convenience stores in El Paso, and Haskins was in their commercials for the store's beverages.
Of course, when "Glory Road," chronicling the true story of Haskins' greatest triumph, was released in 2006, I once again had a chance to reconnect to how I sort of knew Haskins and how the gruff basketball coach was a piece of my past. For one of my education classes, I did a book review on the novel "Glory Road," written by Haskins and Dan Wetzel.
In honor of Haskins, my husband and I plan to watch "Glory Road" on DVD sometime this week. I have put a permanent hex on every college basketball team from Texas because UTEP can be the only school from Texas to ever win an NCAA championship.
A public memorial for Haskins will be held at 6:35 p.m. today at the Don Haskins Center on the UTEP campus, and I will be there in spirit.
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