Jim O'Donnell: How the assassination of JFK changed Krzyzewski coaching career
ON NOV. 19, 1963, two days before he left for his planned five-city tour of Texas, President John F. Kennedy sat in the Oval Office chatting with Evelyn Lincoln, his longtime personal secretary.
Mike Krzyzewski - then a junior at Chicago's Weber High School - could not possibly have conceived how the conversation might have redirected his coaching saga.
In her book "Kennedy and Johnson" (1968), the late Mrs. Lincoln recounted the President told her Lyndon Johnson would not be his running mate in 1964.
Instead, according to a verbatim passage in Lincoln's diary, JFK said: "I need a running mate in '64 who believes more as I do. At this point, I am thinking of Gov. Terry Sanford of North Carolina. But it will not be Lyndon."
AT THE TIME, "THE NEW SOUTH" - the outnumbered white regionalists who both accepted and paved the path for the inevitabilities of full-scale racial integration and the affirmative actions to follow - had no more prominent voice than Gov. Sanford.
Some Kennedy historians have even suggested he would have been a critical link in a 40-year run of presidencies that would have dramatically reshaped America, including: JFK (1961-69), Sanford (1969-77), Bobby Kennedy (1977-85), a Kennedy philosophist (1985-93) and Teddy Kennedy (1993-2001).
Instead, the sudden gore of Dealey Plaza changed all of that.
THE ALTERED MOSAIC SLOWLY churned toward 1980 and the fortunes of "Coach K."
In 1964, Sanford declined to run for reelection. In 1970, he became president of sagging Duke, a low tide that included the cratering of Vic Bubas's once prominent men's basketball program.
The Sanford revival contained Bill Foster getting the Blue Devils into the 1978 NCAA championship game. That night, as 5-point 'dogs, they lost to Goose Givens and Kentucky, 94-88.
Two seasons later, despite the uptick, Foster resigned to accept the top job at South Carolina.
PRESIDENT SANFORD APPOINTED a three-man committee chaired by athletic director Tom Butters to whittle toward a new Duke coach.
Butters and associates settled on two finalists: Krzyzewski, then head coach at Army, and Bob Weltlich, the head coach at Ole Miss and an assistant on Bobby Knight's unbeaten national champs at Indiana four years before.
With final interviews set to begin, Weltlich announced he was staying at Mississippi.
Sanford signed off on the hiring of the unknown - and unpronounceable - Krzyzewski, a Polish-Catholic from the North.
(Weltlich would fade into the coaching maelstrom with a lifetime record of 300-335 including subsequent stops at Texas, Florida International and South Alabama.)
SANFORD AND BUTTERS HAD Krzyzewski's back through initial seasons of 17-13, 10-17 and 11-17.
Later, well on his way to more than 1,100 victories and five national championships based at Cameron Indoor Stadium, "Coach K" has repeatedly made it clear:
"I've had unbelievable support. Terry Sanford was an amazing person for this country and this state in addition to Duke. He became one of my best friends."
Sanford later served slightly more than one term (1986-93) as a U.S. Senator from North Carolina. He died at age 80 in 1998.
Krzyzewski's story has been one of a rich "what has been."
That of Terry Sanford - progressive and inspiring even after the tragedy of Dallas - is even richer.
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Charles Barkley had to be reminded again and again that he's not on those CBS/Turner NCAA men's telecasts to go x's-and-o's with Clark Kellogg. It's not a running "March Madness Jeopardy!" He's on to be "Charles Barkley, Thee Basketball-Based Entertainer." …
LSU apparently quickly lost interest in Brad "Early Exit" Underwood. University of Illinois president Tim Killeen and athletic director Josh Whitman now have some days of keen image introspection dead ahead. …
Kevin Cross and budget-pared NBC Sports Chicago have scheduled three more editions of "BetCast" alternative programming during Bulls games before season's end. PointsBet sponsors and David "Chatty" Kaplan is involved, so it's sure to be really insightful gambling TV. …
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Bob Costas - gulp - turned 70 this week. ("The Sandberg Game" equals "Forever Young.") …
And amid the predictably stat-heavy month of March, David J. Halberstam resurrected a great Vin Scully quote, "Likening announcers mumbling a slew of numbers to 'a drunk using a lamppost for support, not illumination.' " (Amen, brother.)
• Jim O'Donnell's Sports & Media column appears Thursday and Sunday. Reach him at jimodonnelldh@yahoo.com.