By Bill Koch
In October 1994, a week before UC unveiled the statue of Oscar Robertson that now stands prominently on the east plaza outside Fifth Third Arena, I sat down with him in the old players lounge of Shoemaker Center, and talked about what it was like for him when he arrived at UC.
I would never have admitted this at the time because reporters aren’t supposed to be in awe of their interview subjects, but I was nervous during that interview. I was 41 at the time and should have been long past feeling that sort of thing, but I can admit it now in the friendly confines of retirement. This was Oscar Robertson, the Big O, and I was a guy who had grown up in Cincinnati following Robertson when he played for the Cincinnati Royals.
I read about him in the old Cincinnati Post every afternoon in stories written by the late Barry Cobb, who became one of my best friends when I started to work at The Post. I listened to Royals games on the radio on a regular basis, sitting at the kitchen table a few feet from the radio that sat atop the refrigerator while the rest of my family was nearby in the living room watching our big console TV.
I also had a copy of Oscar’s book, “Play Better Basketball with Oscar Robertson.” I was convinced that book would make me a great player someday if I would just follow his advice and practice the drills he demonstrated in the book’s black and white photos.
Now here I was talking to the Big O about the racism he encountered when he played at UC from 1956 to 1960. I listened with sadness as he told me he could sense from the moment he arrived at UC that there were people at the school who didn’t want him to succeed. He said he wasn’t allowed to join an honorary sports fraternity for varsity letter winners because he was Black.
Much of this is common knowledge now, but it was all new to me at the time and I didn't know how to react to what he was saying. When I was a kid listening to his games on the radio in my kitchen I was blissfully unaware of what he had gone through.
“I knew a lot of people didn’t like me,” he said. “They expected me to flunk out of school. They didn’t expect me to have the record on the court that I had. I was driven without knowing it. I was driven by something more powerful than I am.”
Robertson was an immediate sensation at UC. Freshman games that had been largely ignored before his arrival attracted capacity crowds that came to see him play at the Armory Fieldhouse. By the time he began his varsity career as a sophomore in 1957, the expectations for him were enormous.
“His reputation had preceded him,” Wayne Embry, then the general manager of the Cleveland Cavaliers, told me. Embry was a senior at Miami (Ohio) during the Big O’s sophomore year and later was Robertson’s teammate on the Royals. “We were anxiously awaiting his arrival, to compete against him, but also to watch him play.”
With Robertson leading the way, the Bearcats improved from 15-9 in 1956-57 to 25-3 in 1957-58. He was the first sophomore to lead the nation in scoring when he averaged 35.1 points per game. UC was 79-9 during Oscar’s three years and made two appearances in the Final Four.
“He was just head and shoulders above everyone else,” said Connie Dierking, an All-American center who was a senior at UC during Robertson’s sophomore year. “Everyone looked up to him. Frankly, I used to love to just sit and watch him play.”
A 6-foot-5 forward, Robertson led the nation in scoring during all three of his varsity years at UC. When he left in 1960, he was the game’s all-time leading scorer. He finished with 2,973 points and 1,388 rebounds - an average of 15.2 per game - and is still the Bearcats’ career rebounding leader. Until Sean Kilpatrick scored his 2,000th point in 2014 (he finished with 2,145), no other UC players had reached that milestone. And remember, the Big O did it in three years compared with SK’s four, and he did not have the benefit of the 3-point shot, as Kilpatrick did.
During his senior year, Robertson scored 1,011 points. Only 53 players have scored 1,000 points at UC for their entire careers. I counted 22 UC records that Robertson still holds, including a career scoring average of 33.8.
What Robertson was forced to endure seems hard to believe today. Or maybe it’s not so hard to believe. On his first trip as a member of the varsity in December 1957, he was lying on the bed in his room at the Shamrock Hotel in Houston when coach George Smith knocked on the door and told him he had to leave because Blacks were not welcome at the hotel.
“It shocked me,” Robertson said. “He said, ‘You can’t stay here.’ I said, ‘Where are we going?’ I thought the whole team was leaving. He said, ‘No, they don’t want you staying in the hotel.’”
The rest of the team remained at the Shamrock. Only Robertson had to relocate to a dormitory at Texas Southern University. Robertson was so upset he didn’t take any warm-ups before the game against Houston. A stickler for preparation, it was the only time he could remember not taking any warm-up shots. He scored only 13 points.
The following year, when UC played in the Dixie Classic in Raleigh, N.C., Robertson again was reminded that Blacks weren’t welcome in the South.
“This was the worst,” he said. “When we went into the airport they had colored and white drinking fountains. Then we couldn’t stay in town. We stayed in a fraternity house.”
During the game against Wake Forest, Robertson said he was called names such as “porter” and “redcap.” Smith had tears in his eyes as he walked into the locker room after the game, even though UC had won by 24 points.
“It was one of the most difficult things in the world,” Smith said. “Sure, it got to him. But he was a big man. He was able to take it and still go ahead and do the job, reach the goals he had in mind.”
Robertson said he was careful about how he conducted himself in college and about what he said publicly. He was serious about his schoolwork, determined to get his degree so he could handle his own affairs when his playing days were over. (He graduated in 1960 with a degree in business administration.) He said he didn’t have much of a social life at UC.
I asked Robertson, who was 55 when the statue was unveiled, if he was bitter about the way he was treated. “It doesn’t matter whether I’m bitter or not,” he said. “I’m here and I’m involved in the statue. If I were really bitter, I wouldn’t do this.”
But he hadn't forgotten what it was like to be a Black athlete at UC in the late 1950s. Not even a statue could wipe away those memories.
“You don’t forget anything in life,” he said.
The $100,000 statue, which was sculpted by artist Blair Buswell of Highland, Utah, was paid for by J.W. Brown, Robertson's long-time attorney. When the press conference was held the previous year to announce that he would be honored with a statue, the Big O cried.
NEXT: Sitting next to Robertson at UC games
In October 1994, a week before UC unveiled the statue of Oscar Robertson that now stands prominently on the east plaza outside Fifth Third Arena, I sat down with him in the old players lounge of Shoemaker Center, and talked about what it was like for him when he arrived at UC.
I would never have admitted this at the time because reporters aren’t supposed to be in awe of their interview subjects, but I was nervous during that interview. I was 41 at the time and should have been long past feeling that sort of thing, but I can admit it now in the friendly confines of retirement. This was Oscar Robertson, the Big O, and I was a guy who had grown up in Cincinnati following Robertson when he played for the Cincinnati Royals.
I read about him in the old Cincinnati Post every afternoon in stories written by the late Barry Cobb, who became one of my best friends when I started to work at The Post. I listened to Royals games on the radio on a regular basis, sitting at the kitchen table a few feet from the radio that sat atop the refrigerator while the rest of my family was nearby in the living room watching our big console TV.
I also had a copy of Oscar’s book, “Play Better Basketball with Oscar Robertson.” I was convinced that book would make me a great player someday if I would just follow his advice and practice the drills he demonstrated in the book’s black and white photos.
Now here I was talking to the Big O about the racism he encountered when he played at UC from 1956 to 1960. I listened with sadness as he told me he could sense from the moment he arrived at UC that there were people at the school who didn’t want him to succeed. He said he wasn’t allowed to join an honorary sports fraternity for varsity letter winners because he was Black.
Much of this is common knowledge now, but it was all new to me at the time and I didn't know how to react to what he was saying. When I was a kid listening to his games on the radio in my kitchen I was blissfully unaware of what he had gone through.
“I knew a lot of people didn’t like me,” he said. “They expected me to flunk out of school. They didn’t expect me to have the record on the court that I had. I was driven without knowing it. I was driven by something more powerful than I am.”
Robertson was an immediate sensation at UC. Freshman games that had been largely ignored before his arrival attracted capacity crowds that came to see him play at the Armory Fieldhouse. By the time he began his varsity career as a sophomore in 1957, the expectations for him were enormous.
“His reputation had preceded him,” Wayne Embry, then the general manager of the Cleveland Cavaliers, told me. Embry was a senior at Miami (Ohio) during the Big O’s sophomore year and later was Robertson’s teammate on the Royals. “We were anxiously awaiting his arrival, to compete against him, but also to watch him play.”
With Robertson leading the way, the Bearcats improved from 15-9 in 1956-57 to 25-3 in 1957-58. He was the first sophomore to lead the nation in scoring when he averaged 35.1 points per game. UC was 79-9 during Oscar’s three years and made two appearances in the Final Four.
“He was just head and shoulders above everyone else,” said Connie Dierking, an All-American center who was a senior at UC during Robertson’s sophomore year. “Everyone looked up to him. Frankly, I used to love to just sit and watch him play.”
A 6-foot-5 forward, Robertson led the nation in scoring during all three of his varsity years at UC. When he left in 1960, he was the game’s all-time leading scorer. He finished with 2,973 points and 1,388 rebounds - an average of 15.2 per game - and is still the Bearcats’ career rebounding leader. Until Sean Kilpatrick scored his 2,000th point in 2014 (he finished with 2,145), no other UC players had reached that milestone. And remember, the Big O did it in three years compared with SK’s four, and he did not have the benefit of the 3-point shot, as Kilpatrick did.
During his senior year, Robertson scored 1,011 points. Only 53 players have scored 1,000 points at UC for their entire careers. I counted 22 UC records that Robertson still holds, including a career scoring average of 33.8.
What Robertson was forced to endure seems hard to believe today. Or maybe it’s not so hard to believe. On his first trip as a member of the varsity in December 1957, he was lying on the bed in his room at the Shamrock Hotel in Houston when coach George Smith knocked on the door and told him he had to leave because Blacks were not welcome at the hotel.
“It shocked me,” Robertson said. “He said, ‘You can’t stay here.’ I said, ‘Where are we going?’ I thought the whole team was leaving. He said, ‘No, they don’t want you staying in the hotel.’”
The rest of the team remained at the Shamrock. Only Robertson had to relocate to a dormitory at Texas Southern University. Robertson was so upset he didn’t take any warm-ups before the game against Houston. A stickler for preparation, it was the only time he could remember not taking any warm-up shots. He scored only 13 points.
The following year, when UC played in the Dixie Classic in Raleigh, N.C., Robertson again was reminded that Blacks weren’t welcome in the South.
“This was the worst,” he said. “When we went into the airport they had colored and white drinking fountains. Then we couldn’t stay in town. We stayed in a fraternity house.”
During the game against Wake Forest, Robertson said he was called names such as “porter” and “redcap.” Smith had tears in his eyes as he walked into the locker room after the game, even though UC had won by 24 points.
“It was one of the most difficult things in the world,” Smith said. “Sure, it got to him. But he was a big man. He was able to take it and still go ahead and do the job, reach the goals he had in mind.”
Robertson said he was careful about how he conducted himself in college and about what he said publicly. He was serious about his schoolwork, determined to get his degree so he could handle his own affairs when his playing days were over. (He graduated in 1960 with a degree in business administration.) He said he didn’t have much of a social life at UC.
I asked Robertson, who was 55 when the statue was unveiled, if he was bitter about the way he was treated. “It doesn’t matter whether I’m bitter or not,” he said. “I’m here and I’m involved in the statue. If I were really bitter, I wouldn’t do this.”
But he hadn't forgotten what it was like to be a Black athlete at UC in the late 1950s. Not even a statue could wipe away those memories.
“You don’t forget anything in life,” he said.
The $100,000 statue, which was sculpted by artist Blair Buswell of Highland, Utah, was paid for by J.W. Brown, Robertson's long-time attorney. When the press conference was held the previous year to announce that he would be honored with a statue, the Big O cried.
NEXT: Sitting next to Robertson at UC games
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