Adolph Frederick Rupp

Background

Adolph Frederick Rupp was born in Halstead, Kans. , one of six children of Henry Rupp and Anna Lichti, farmers who were immigrants from Austria and Germany, respectively.

Education

After playing high school baseball, Rupp entered the University of Kansas in 1919. While an undergraduate he played guard on the basketball team coached by Forrest ("Phog") Allen, whose record of most collegiate games won was to be surpassed by Rupp himself in 1968. While at Kansas, Rupp studied the sport with James Naismith, who had invented the game of basketball and was on the faculty, and who had been the university's first head coach in the sport. He graduated with a B. A. degree in 1923. Later he worked on his masters degree in educational administration at Columbia University in New York City. He received his masters in 1930.

Career

After his graduatiion, Rupp taught high school at Burr Oak, Kans. (1923); at Marshalltown, Iowa (1923 - 1926), where his first wrestling team won a state championship; and at Freeport, Ill. (1926 - 1930), where his basketball teams were consistent winners. In 1930 he was hired by the University of Kentucky as its head basketball coach. He remained in this position for forty-two years until the university's mandatory retirement regulations forced him, despite his public resistance, to retire in 1972 at the age of seventy.

Rupp brought the University of Kentucky into prominence in collegiate basketball. He won his first game in 1930 by a wide margin and never looked back. In the course of his career his teams were known for the up-tempo, fast-break playing style that Rupp popularized. He recruited principally in the hills of Kentucky and surrounding states, and he benefited by the then-unusual adoption of athletic scholarships by the Southeastern Conference (SEC) early in his career. This enabled him to attract youths from small towns who otherwise would have been unable to attend the university. He taught them on the court, and because of his faculty appointment he helped keep many of them in school. He unabashedly gave all A's to his players when they enrolled in his classes, saying that to do otherwise was to admit that he had taught them nothing.

In the late 1940's during the basketball point-shaving scandals, Rupp professed that such activities were impossible in his program. Subsequent investigations revealed that some of his players not only shaved points but purposely lost games, that the university had given illegal cash payments to basketball players, and that Rupp had used ineligible players in games. These revelations caused the NCAA to penalize Kentucky for rules violations and the SEC to suspend his program for the 1952 season, which the university subsequently canceled. That he survived these scandlas was a measure of his popularity.

Like other coaches in both the SEC and the Atlantic Coast Conference, Rupp consistently resisted the recruitment of black basketball players until the late 1960's. The consequences of this decision were most apparent when an all-white Kentucky team, ranked number one in the country, lost to Texas Western University with five black starters in the 1966 NCAA championship game. The contrast between the two teams changed the game, and within five years both conferences were fully integrated.

Throughout Rupp's career, his teams were known for their intense play and their close man-to-man defense. He achieved results by rigorous preparation that included practices during which no one talked except the coach and players were expected to give their best effort at all times. Rupp ran a disciplined organization dominated by his own egotism and an iron fist.

In later years, however, as his health began to deteriorate due to a heart attack and chronic diabetes, he began to project a more caring image, at least in the press. On his death, John Wooden called him "an amazing man" and Bear Bryant said that he was "a legend. " Lou Carnesecca, the coach at St. John's University, summed it up best: "Hey, down in Kentucky, he's as famous as the Derby. "

After his retirement in 1972, Rupp, who authored Championship Basketball (1948 - 1956), became President of the Memphis Tams and subsequently vice-chairman of the board of the Kentucky Colonels in the American Basketball Association. He died in Lexington, Ky. , about a year after the dedication there of the Rupp Arena, which stands as a lasting monument to his accomplishments.

Achievements

• Rupp was a legend in the basketball world. Over his career he won 879 games. His teams won twenty-seven SEC championships and one National Invitational Tournament title. In compiling a winning percentage of . 825, Rupp went to the NCAA tournament on eighteen different occasions and won the championship four times (1948, 1949, 1951, and 1958). He produced seven Olympic gold-medal winners, twenty-four All-Americans, and twenty-eight professional players. He also co-coached the American Olympic gold medal team in 1948. His career accomplishments, which included SEC Coach of the Year (1963-1966, 1968 - 1972), and UP/API National Coach of the Year in 1951, 1959, and 1966, were recognized by his election to the Kansas Hall of Fame, the Helms Athletic Foundation Hall of Fame, and the Basketball Hall of Fame.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Rupp's Championship Basketball for Player Coach and Fan

    (Adolph Frederick Rupp (1901 - 1977) was one of the most s...)

  • Adolph Rupp's basketball guidebook : basic plays and techniques for boys 9 and up,

Connections

On August 29, 1931, Rupp married Esther Schmidt. The couple had one son.

Father:

Henry Rupp

Mother:

Anna Lichti

Spouse:

Esther Schmidt

References

• Adolph Rupp: Kentucky's Basketball Baron
• Coach Adolph F. Rupp: His Legacy and Wit
• The Rupp Years: The University of Kentucky's Golden Era of Basketball
• Beyond the Baron: A Personal Glance at Coach Adolph Rupp
• Adolph Rupp As I Knew Him