Kentucky basketball under pressure to change Rupp Arena name

Racism Score: 1.2

Legendary Kentucky basketball coach Adolph Rupp has a racist problem. The problem Rupp’s encountering is that he lived in a time where racism was condoned. By condoned, we mean…hello early-to-mid-1900’s! His first name certainly did not do him any favors.

Rupp is famous for his superb basketball record. He is also famous for losing to Western Texas in the 1966 championship game. Western Texas started five black players.

The 1966 championship game was the first time an all-black starting five (Texas Western) played against an all-white starting five (Kentucky) in a championship game.

In 1929 Rupp received his first head coaching job in Illinois where he started a black player. Just one. He must have taken “crawl before you walk” to heart.

He also selected the first Black player, Don Harksdale to a U.S. Olympic basketball team. Ok, baby steps…progress is a slow process.

Evidence also suggest that Rupp had overt racist tendencies like the average white man in the early-to-mid-1900’s. Bob Carter explained in an ESPN Classic article that it was reported Rupp used the word “coons” at halftime of the championship game. WE ARE SHOCKED! We are confident worse was said during the early-to-mid-1900’s such as Jesse Washington from The Undefeated reported:

• …one of Rupp’s assistant coaches, Harry Lancaster, described more racist language in his book, Adolph Rupp: As I Knew Him… Rupp told people as early as 1960 that he wanted to sign Black players, and hired a white assistant coach, Neil Reed, for that purpose in 1962. He unsuccessfully recruited future stars Wes Unseld in 1964 and Butch Beard in 1965. After the Texas Western game, Rupp was under heavy pressure from his university president to sign a Black player, even for the end of the bench. Lancaster wrote that Rupp told him, “Harry, that son of a b—- is ordering me to get some n—–s in here. What am I going to do?”

• In the biography Adolph Rupp and the Rise of Kentucky Basketball, James Duane Bolin wrote that in 1948, Rupp lost a tournament and his team received belt buckles as a consolation prize. Bolin wrote that Rupp, who also owned cattle, said he wouldn’t give the buckles “to my n—– on the farm.”

If you are noticing a trend with the early-to-mid-1900’s, congratulations! We do not need documented evidence to determine if Rupp had racist tendencies in the EARLY. TO. MID. 1900’S. The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.

Rupp was one of many who were late to the sports integration party. Does that mean the basketball arena should be renamed?

We will go with Kentucky’s first Black head coach Tubby Smith’s answer from Washington’s article. “We all have a legacy to protect, but you also want to be able to speak the truth.”

We will take that non-definitive answer as a, no.

Curious to learn more about Rupp? Visit Big Blue History to learn more.