Free Wooden: A Coach's Life by Seth Davis

year, she actually fainted in the stands and missed the end of the second half. Even as the Boilermakers lost four out of nine games beginning in January, Wooden developed a reputation as one of the finest guards in all of college basketball. His methods were as effective as they were uncomplicated. He simply worked harder than everyone else. “He was always moving,” said Wooden’s future assistant coach Ed Powell, who grew up in South Bend and attended several of his Purdue games. “He would be passing, cutting, dribbling, moving. Whoever guarded him would stay with him maybe for a quarter or two or three, but then, towards the end, John would get one or two steps away, just enough to score the winning basket. He didn’t do anything differently towards the end than he did during the game, except that conditioning paid off.”
    Wooden and his teammates closed the season with five straight wins to finish second in the Big Ten with an 8–4 record. Lambert’s young guns had matured quite a bit over the course of the season. Best of all, not a single starter or significant reserve was a senior. That meant the team was going to return intact for what was shaping up to be a very promising senior season for Johnny Wooden.
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    During the summer between his junior and senior years, Wooden was again offered the chance to play professional baseball, based largely on the potential he showed while playing semipro ball the previous summer. The Chicago Cubs and the Cincinnati Reds, who were either unaware of or unconcerned about his bum shoulder, offered Wooden contracts to join their farm system. Lambert had played some minor league baseball himself, so he knew what a grind it was. He also regarded the notion of playing sports for money as a corrupt enterprise. “You can’t play in the dirt without getting dirty,” he liked to say. He didn’t tell Wooden explicitly not to play, but Wooden got the drift.
    Wooden was more serious in contemplating an offer to be appointed to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. The academy had the ability to recruit athletes from other schools and allow them to play for another four years. This time it was Nellie who shot down the idea. She had agreed to wait for him to finish at Purdue, but she did not want to wait any longer. She told Wooden that if he accepted, she would call off the marriage and join a convent.
    So much for West Point.
    After abandoning his initial plans to be a civil engineer, Wooden committed himself to become a high school English teacher. His plans took on another dimension at the start of his junior year when Purdue added a Physical Education department. The state of Indiana had just passed a law requiring teachers to have a Phys Ed degree in order to coach high school sports. Wooden hadn’t given much thought to coaching, but with the new department in place, he loaded up on electives and got the extra degree. With an English degree, a Phys Ed degree, and a teacher’s certificate, Wooden figured that he would always be able to find work in the state of Indiana.
    As always, Wooden remained on the lookout for ways to make extra money. After Stretch Murphy graduated, he handed over to Wooden the rights to concession sales around Purdue football games. During his senior year, Wooden made a killing one weekend selling sandwiches, soft drinks, and cigarettes on the train that carried Purdue fans to the annual football game against the University of Chicago, which was coached by Amos Alonzo Stagg. Lambert had connected Wooden with a local butcher who provided him a couple of large hams. Wooden then brought the meat to the cook at the Beta house so they could grind it up and spread it on bread like butter. “We could make a lot more sandwiches that way,” Wooden said. “I used to say I walked to Chicago and back because I was walking up and down the train all the way.”
    Most of the fans in West Lafayette knew Wooden for his exploits on the basketball