GAINESVILLE — It is 15 minutes after a victory, an impressive victory, and Norm Sloan has reason to be smiling and joking in the postgame news conference.
But he doesn’t.
Instead he talks of how he’ll never be viewed as a “great” coach, of how the media always will say it is his players or the crowd or the failure of the opposition that produces his victories.
The soliloquy comes after career victory No. 598 for Florida’s basketball coach, a crucial 61-50 win over Southeastern Conference rival LSU. It is not that he’s particularly angry with any single reporter, or even with the media in general.
It is just Norm Sloan’s way.
“It’s because I’m really up after a game, and I’m really combative,” he says during a calmer time. “My wife will say to me, ‘You’re no fun to be with after a game.’ But you just can’t cut that off. I don’t do it intentionally. It’s just the way I am.”
Sloan finishes his explanation, and smiles a sincere smile. At times like this you wonder where Stormin’ Norman is, the one with the steely blue eyes, the one who transforms the coaching box into a combat zone. Seated behind his desk in his basement office in Florida’s O’Connell Center, he is charming, content and reflective.
“I can remember when I first started. I really did wonder what the future would be like, how long I would stay in this business,” he said. “But that was only at the beginning. Once I got rolling in it, that never crossed my mind again. I just figured I was here for the long run.”
The long run began in tiny Presbyterian College in Clinton, S.C., with a 21-7 team in 1951. It continued with brief stints as an assistant at Memphis State and as coach at The Citadel, and was followed by an early stop in Gainesville, a return to his alma mater, North Carolina State and an encore performance at Florida.
Now, at 61, Sloan finds himself two victories from becoming the 11th NCAA Division I coach to win 600 games. With a Florida victory Wednesday night in Tuscaloosa against Alabama, the milestone could come as soon as Saturday night at home on ESPN against Auburn.
“What does it mean?” Sloan asked rhetorically of No. 600. “It’s longevity. But I don’t think you’ll ever see it again. I don’t think you’ll ever see any more Ralph Millers, Dean Smiths or Norm Sloans. I don’t think the pressure will allow these guys to last that long.”
Given an opportunity to make an argument for being a great coach, Sloan passes.
Instead, he credits his 36 years in the trade.
It is just Norm Sloan’s way.
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If Sloan’s career were argued in court, there would be two cases on the docket: Sloan vs. The Players, and Sloan vs. The Media.
On each count, he would plead guilty-with-explanation.
Most characteristic are those outbursts on the bench and in practice with his players.
“The thing that has caused me the greatest consternation over the years is something I only have been able to identify in recent years,” he said. “I get too close to the players. It’s like family. The reason you get so angry at your own family is because you love them so much. You don’t get real angry with someone you don’t care about.”
Case in point was a 1960 incident, when Sloan had to ship Clifford Luyk and Bob Shiver home from Georgia for breaking curfew. Before the two left on the bus for Gainesville, Sloan brought them a bag of apples so they wouldn’t go hungry.
“I’ve gotten a reputation of being a tough disciplinarian, but you can’t find a player I’ve ever kicked off the team,” Sloan said. “I’ve never taken a player’s scholarship in my life.”
Still, there is a Sloan doghouse. High-scoring Ronnie Williams lived there from 1980-84. But even with Williams, the run-ins were more about style than substance — such as the loud music he played in the locker room or the junk food that created a weight problem.
“I’m very demanding about personal appearance,” Sloan said. “Take the length of Dwayne Schintzius’ hair, for example. I’m on him all the time about his hair. I just think he can wear it in a style more becoming to himself.”
Said Williams, now playing in the Continential Basketball Association: “Now that I look back, his philosophy on life in general makes a lot of sense. But at the time, it went over my head. If I listened to Coach Sloan then, I think I’d be in the NBA now.”
On the Florida bench, all one can do is listen. The diatribe begins with the opening jump.
“Believe me, he’s mellowed out 200 percent since he first got here,” said Skip Higley, a point guard who played for Sloan during the 1965-66 season, Sloan’s final year during his first stint at Florida. Higley is now vice president of Sullivan Junior College in Louisville, Ky. “He’s calmed down quite a bit. Some of us had trouble with it at the time, but we looked at it as the price of a scholarship.”
Even today, an adjustment to Sloan’s temperament is required.
“I know now when he’s getting rowdy or upset, he cares,” senior guard Vernon Maxwell said. “It took until the beginning of my sophomore year, then I started understanding the way he acts.
“But I’m not sure if he’s mellowed.”
Neither is Sloan — and that brings up the case of Sloan vs. The Media.
First, though, Sloan’s opening argument: “Once an individual hates you or doesn’t like you in this business, they never change. Never. The people who like you may change over time, but the number of enemies gets larger and larger. That’s an absolute truth in this business.”
It is that absolute truth, Sloan said, that will keep him from being compared favorably to the John Woodens and Ray Meyers and Henry Ibas.
“Years ago, I became Stormin’ Norman,” he said. “And until the day I coach my last game, I’ll be Stormin’ Norman, no matter what I do on the sideline. So when you’re tagged, it won’t ever change. It has always surprised me how many people the media influence. I don’t understand that.”
Last year, during Florida’s firstNCAA Tournament, Sloan lashed out at ESPN analyst Dike Vitale for playing favorites among the coaches. The two have since settled their differences, but Sloan still casts a wary eye at those who cast a wary eye at him.
“With these electronic ministers, you’re either a Motivator, or a Michelangelo or The General,” Sloan said last week. “But where’s Digger (Phelps of Notre Dame) this year, where’s Denny (Crum of Louisville), where’s The General (Bobby Knight of Indiana). They’re all getting clobbered.”
In another time, Sloan said he could have been one of the Nicknames — if he knew then what he knows now.
“If I had it to do over again,” he said, “I’d make sure I wouldn’t make those mistakes with the media. My relationship with the media has been such that I’ve almost been paranoid at times.
“But it’s my fault. I never said it wasn’t my fault.”
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On the eve of No. 600, Sloan already is preparing for retirement. He plans to bow out after the 1990-91 season.
“I made that decision some time ago,” Sloan said, “and I’m going to do it because I’ve lived my life that way.”
But even near the end, he remembers the beginning fondly.
At Presbyterian, he had to double up as a football assistant under a coach named Bo Schembechler.
At The Citadel, Sloan’s wife, Joan (pronounced Jo-ann), had to keep the scorebook in his final game, because, Sloan said, “there was such little interest there.”
Then it was on to Gainesville.
“When I walked on this campus the first time, the feeling was, and still is, a great feeling,” Sloan said. “It’s the kind of school I always wanted to coach at.”
But the program wasn’t always kind to Sloan. He was the school’s first full-time basketball coach. John Mauer, who preceded Sloan, also was end coach on the football team.
“I might have been a little too cocky, believing what I could do,” Sloan said of his stint in Gainesville. “At that age, you feel you’re better than you are.”
But without full-time assistants, Sloan soon learned his limitations.
“Those were enjoyable years,” he said. “But they weren’t all that productive. In terms of the emphasis the school gave that program, there was every bit as much emphasis at Presbyterian.”
In 1966, Sloan returned to his alma mater for the funeral of his college coach, Everett Case. After Case had been diagnosed with cancer, Press Maravich briefly had taken over the North Carolina State program. But when his son, Pete, couldn’t qualify academically at N.C. State, the two headed to LSU.
“I was there, and all of a sudden they were looking for a coach,” Sloan said. “It never entered my mind.”
Shortly afterward, Sloan left Gainesville for Raleigh, N.C.
“I had reached a point (at Florida) where we couldn’t improve any more,” he said.
Seven years after taking over at N.C. State, Sloan won the NCAA Championship in 1973-74.
“I remember telling the Wolfpack clubs not to worry about this team, because it’s going to be a good one,” Sloan said of the squad that included David Thompson, Tommy Burleson and current Gator assistant Monte Towe. “But I didn’t know we would go all the way.”
Of his lone Final Four experience, Sloan said: “It was an unreal thing. It was almost surreal.”
Six seasons later, Sloan decided again it was time to move on.
“I worked with Lou Holtz (at N.C. State) for four years, and we used to have very lively philosophical talks,” Sloan said. “He said, ‘Norm, the way I see this business, you need to change your job every so often if you’re going to remain for any length of time in college athletics.’ “
During a road trip with the Wolfpack to Maryland, Sloan ran into a member of Florida’s coaching search committee. With the completion of the 12,000-seat O’Connell Center in 1980, the decision came easily.
“When you first take a job, you’re all excited about it because every problem that exists you think is solvable,” Sloan said. “But then, after a period of time, you realize there are problems you can’t solve. And then you start losing some enthusiasm.”
At first, Sloan said he was not exactly welcomed back to the state of Florida. In most high school gyms, he said, members of the Florida program were treated like outsiders.
“You’d be standing there, listening about how excited they were that (Virginia’s) Terry Holland or (Georgia Tech’s) Bobby Cremins was coming the next night,” he said.
But eventually, with the recruiting help of assistants Towe and Kenny McCraney, the home-grown talent began to stay home, helping Sloan reverse the 12-16 and 5-22 records he posted in his first two seasons back in Gainesville.
First Maxwell arrived, then 7-foot-2 Schintzius, then last year’s first NCAA Tournament berth.
Next is career victory 600, then, possibly, the school’s first SEC championship.
And then Norman Leslie Sloan will stop stormin’ in 1991.
“We’ll miss it all terribly,” he said. “We’ll miss the pressure. It’s a good life, and I don’t know what we’re going to do without it.
“I’m gonna hate that last year.”
