RIP Eddie Sutton --Oklahoma State's Legendary Basketball Coach
Legendary college basketball coach Eddie Sutton dies at 84
Sutton passed away in hospice care on Saturday in Tulsa
May 23, 2020 at 11:58 pm ET • 1 min read
Legendary college basketball coach Eddie Sutton died Saturday in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He was 84 years old. Sutton led his teams to three Final Fours during his illustrious coaching career and won 806 games prior to his retirement in 2008.
The former Oklahoma State player began his coaching career at his alma mater first as an assistant (1958-59), returning three decades later to take over as the Cowboys head coach, a position he held from 1990 to 2006 with conference titles in his final two seasons at OSU.
In between his first coaching gig and his short stint as the interim head coach at San Francisco in 2007-08, Sutton coached at Southern Idaho, Creighton, Arkansas and Kentucky. Scandal at Kentucky led him back to Oklahoma State, but not before the Wildcats achieved a 90-40 record and an SEC regular-season title. Sutton also earned an AP Coach of the Year honor with the Wildcats.
The aforementioned scandal at Kentucky -- in which the NCAA nearly handed the Wildcats the death penalty due to the number of rules it deemed the program had broken -- trailed Sutton for the rest of his life. He was denied enshrinement into the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame six times but elected to the elite fraternity earlier this spring on his seventh opportunity. His formal, now-posthumous, enshrinement is set for later this summer.
The Sutton family released a statement:
@jacobunruh
Just received this from the Sutton family. Legendary #OKState coach Eddie Sutton died this evening. He was 84.
Sutton was a winner everywhere he went. Only twice did he post a losing record during his career: as an interim coach at San Francisco and in his final season at Kentucky. He led four different programs to a combined 25 NCAA Tournament appearances.
The Sutton name lives on in college basketball prominently through Eddie's lineage. Two of his three sons, Sean and Scott, are college basketball assistant coaches at Texas Tech and Oklahoma State, respectively.
https://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/news/legendary-college-basketball-coach-eddie-sutton-dies-at-84/
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Berry Tramel: Eddie Sutton was genuine while building Oklahoma State basketball
by BERRY TRAMEL
The memories came flooding back Saturday night when news arrived of Eddie Sutton’s death.
* A Southwest flight from Phoenix back to Oklahoma City, after a December 1993 OSU-Arizona game. The Cowboys had flown commercial; Sutton sat near the back of the plane, on the aisle, and I was in the seat right in front of him.
I got a crick in my neck, because I spent the whole flight turned around, listening to Sutton stories. He loved to tell stories, and he was marvelous at it.
* A game sometime in the mid-1990s, when I was the OSU basketball beat writer. We were in the old press room in Gallagher-Iba Arena, which doubled as the sports information office, munching on a pregame bagel sandwich from a Stillwater joint. Don’t remember the name.
It was probably 90 minutes before tipoff, and Sutton stopped by. I don’t know what he was doing. I doubt he came up to chat with the writers, but since he was there, he couldn’t resist. Sutton pulled up a chair, commented that the box of bagels sent over for the game weren’t nearly as good as what you got when you went in the store.
He called us scribes, an old-fashioned term for writers. Sutton was an old soul in many ways, born at just the right time. Born earlier, and Sutton would have coached in college basketball’s darker ages. Born later, and Sutton would have been forced to deal with the social-media madness of modern times. Neither era suited him as well as 1969-2007.
* An afternoon in December 1991, my first week on the job at The Oklahoman. I drove up to Stillwater to meet the coach I was assigned to cover. I had known all about Sutton for years, since his great Creighton team almost beat Kansas in the 1974 Sweet 16.
I never told Sutton this, but for some reason, I never liked him growing up. My twin brother and I were huge college hoop fans, and we loved Arkansas. But for some reason, Sutton rubbed us wrong. When he took the Kentucky job, we were thrilled. We didn’t like Kentucky. We didn’t have to be conflicted anymore.
But I met Sutton on that 1991 day in the Gallagher-Iba gym, and I was hooked. He wasn’t so much charming, as coaches can be by flipping a switch, as he was genuine. I drove back to Oklahoma City thinking, this is going to be all right.
And indeed it was, for six years as the OSU basketball beat writer, then nine more years writing columns about Sutton’s teams.
I have covered the Thunder since it first hung up a shingle. I grew up an OU football fan and consider myself a Sooner historian. I have covered OU basketball, from Dave Bliss to Lon Kruger, with tons of great teams. I have covered OSU football, from Pat Jones’ contagious personality to Mike Gundy’s wildly entertaining teams.
But I never felt an affinity for a program the way I felt about Sutton’s basketball teams.
The Cowboys became the little engine that could. A program with no reason at all to bust through to the national stage did exactly that, with a native son leading the charge, energizing a fan base and making a university believe that most anything was possible.
Those cold winter nights in Gallagher-Iba became the stuff of legend. Bedlam games and Kansas showdowns. The loudest arena I’ve ever experienced was Gallagher, OSU-Iowa State in January 1992. A Final Four in 1995, which sealed forever in all that wore orange, that dreams indeed could come true, and another Final Four in 2004, to remind everyone that the first was not a fluke.
And I had a front-row seat for it all.
When Sutton’s great mentor, Henry Iba, died in 1993, legendary Tulsa World columnist Bill Connors opened his next column with an apology, writing, “Excuse me, but this one is personal.”
I can’t say the same about Sutton. We were friendly, but not exactly friends. I never visited his home, unless you count the physical rehab center in Tulsa where I interviewed him a few years ago, when he was still doing reasonably well. I don’t remember ever sharing a meal with Sutton, unless you count the Southwest peanuts on that flight from Phoenix.
What Sutton did was treat us scribes well. He was helpful and courteous and quotable. Many coaches today are the same. But what Sutton gave us that we rarely get now is time.
The coach who would tell stories on an airplane and stop by the press room to talk about bagels was available for phone calls without going through his PR department. Sutton would linger in locker rooms after big games, in no hurry to get out of the gym.
Sutton gave us all kinds of great words to fill our stories, and his teams gave us all kinds of great games to make people want to read those stories. The coach I didn’t think I liked ended up giving me a thousand great memories, and he gave the fans of OSU many more than that.
https://oklahoman.com/article/5663061/sutton-was-genuine-while-building-osu-basketball?fbclid=IwAR25xwE14D56qV-NJu3gXASOaSMbDNFcE6wip0diSnMLtXtzhl7N6B4QiK8
Sutton passed away in hospice care on Saturday in Tulsa
May 23, 2020 at 11:58 pm ET • 1 min read
Legendary college basketball coach Eddie Sutton died Saturday in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He was 84 years old. Sutton led his teams to three Final Fours during his illustrious coaching career and won 806 games prior to his retirement in 2008.
The former Oklahoma State player began his coaching career at his alma mater first as an assistant (1958-59), returning three decades later to take over as the Cowboys head coach, a position he held from 1990 to 2006 with conference titles in his final two seasons at OSU.
In between his first coaching gig and his short stint as the interim head coach at San Francisco in 2007-08, Sutton coached at Southern Idaho, Creighton, Arkansas and Kentucky. Scandal at Kentucky led him back to Oklahoma State, but not before the Wildcats achieved a 90-40 record and an SEC regular-season title. Sutton also earned an AP Coach of the Year honor with the Wildcats.
The aforementioned scandal at Kentucky -- in which the NCAA nearly handed the Wildcats the death penalty due to the number of rules it deemed the program had broken -- trailed Sutton for the rest of his life. He was denied enshrinement into the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame six times but elected to the elite fraternity earlier this spring on his seventh opportunity. His formal, now-posthumous, enshrinement is set for later this summer.
The Sutton family released a statement:
@jacobunruh
Just received this from the Sutton family. Legendary #OKState coach Eddie Sutton died this evening. He was 84.
Sutton was a winner everywhere he went. Only twice did he post a losing record during his career: as an interim coach at San Francisco and in his final season at Kentucky. He led four different programs to a combined 25 NCAA Tournament appearances.
The Sutton name lives on in college basketball prominently through Eddie's lineage. Two of his three sons, Sean and Scott, are college basketball assistant coaches at Texas Tech and Oklahoma State, respectively.
https://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/news/legendary-college-basketball-coach-eddie-sutton-dies-at-84/
------------------------------------------------------------
Berry Tramel: Eddie Sutton was genuine while building Oklahoma State basketball
by BERRY TRAMEL
The memories came flooding back Saturday night when news arrived of Eddie Sutton’s death.
* A Southwest flight from Phoenix back to Oklahoma City, after a December 1993 OSU-Arizona game. The Cowboys had flown commercial; Sutton sat near the back of the plane, on the aisle, and I was in the seat right in front of him.
I got a crick in my neck, because I spent the whole flight turned around, listening to Sutton stories. He loved to tell stories, and he was marvelous at it.
* A game sometime in the mid-1990s, when I was the OSU basketball beat writer. We were in the old press room in Gallagher-Iba Arena, which doubled as the sports information office, munching on a pregame bagel sandwich from a Stillwater joint. Don’t remember the name.
It was probably 90 minutes before tipoff, and Sutton stopped by. I don’t know what he was doing. I doubt he came up to chat with the writers, but since he was there, he couldn’t resist. Sutton pulled up a chair, commented that the box of bagels sent over for the game weren’t nearly as good as what you got when you went in the store.
He called us scribes, an old-fashioned term for writers. Sutton was an old soul in many ways, born at just the right time. Born earlier, and Sutton would have coached in college basketball’s darker ages. Born later, and Sutton would have been forced to deal with the social-media madness of modern times. Neither era suited him as well as 1969-2007.
* An afternoon in December 1991, my first week on the job at The Oklahoman. I drove up to Stillwater to meet the coach I was assigned to cover. I had known all about Sutton for years, since his great Creighton team almost beat Kansas in the 1974 Sweet 16.
I never told Sutton this, but for some reason, I never liked him growing up. My twin brother and I were huge college hoop fans, and we loved Arkansas. But for some reason, Sutton rubbed us wrong. When he took the Kentucky job, we were thrilled. We didn’t like Kentucky. We didn’t have to be conflicted anymore.
But I met Sutton on that 1991 day in the Gallagher-Iba gym, and I was hooked. He wasn’t so much charming, as coaches can be by flipping a switch, as he was genuine. I drove back to Oklahoma City thinking, this is going to be all right.
And indeed it was, for six years as the OSU basketball beat writer, then nine more years writing columns about Sutton’s teams.
I have covered the Thunder since it first hung up a shingle. I grew up an OU football fan and consider myself a Sooner historian. I have covered OU basketball, from Dave Bliss to Lon Kruger, with tons of great teams. I have covered OSU football, from Pat Jones’ contagious personality to Mike Gundy’s wildly entertaining teams.
But I never felt an affinity for a program the way I felt about Sutton’s basketball teams.
The Cowboys became the little engine that could. A program with no reason at all to bust through to the national stage did exactly that, with a native son leading the charge, energizing a fan base and making a university believe that most anything was possible.
Those cold winter nights in Gallagher-Iba became the stuff of legend. Bedlam games and Kansas showdowns. The loudest arena I’ve ever experienced was Gallagher, OSU-Iowa State in January 1992. A Final Four in 1995, which sealed forever in all that wore orange, that dreams indeed could come true, and another Final Four in 2004, to remind everyone that the first was not a fluke.
And I had a front-row seat for it all.
When Sutton’s great mentor, Henry Iba, died in 1993, legendary Tulsa World columnist Bill Connors opened his next column with an apology, writing, “Excuse me, but this one is personal.”
I can’t say the same about Sutton. We were friendly, but not exactly friends. I never visited his home, unless you count the physical rehab center in Tulsa where I interviewed him a few years ago, when he was still doing reasonably well. I don’t remember ever sharing a meal with Sutton, unless you count the Southwest peanuts on that flight from Phoenix.
What Sutton did was treat us scribes well. He was helpful and courteous and quotable. Many coaches today are the same. But what Sutton gave us that we rarely get now is time.
The coach who would tell stories on an airplane and stop by the press room to talk about bagels was available for phone calls without going through his PR department. Sutton would linger in locker rooms after big games, in no hurry to get out of the gym.
Sutton gave us all kinds of great words to fill our stories, and his teams gave us all kinds of great games to make people want to read those stories. The coach I didn’t think I liked ended up giving me a thousand great memories, and he gave the fans of OSU many more than that.
https://oklahoman.com/article/5663061/sutton-was-genuine-while-building-osu-basketball?fbclid=IwAR25xwE14D56qV-NJu3gXASOaSMbDNFcE6wip0diSnMLtXtzhl7N6B4QiK8