ORLANDO, Fla. — To be a great college athletic director, you also have to be a gambler.
You have to know when to hold ‘em and know when fold ‘em.
Late, great Duke AD Tom Butters is a perfect example.
He knew when to hold his cards and play his hand or fold his cards and move on.
“Tom Butters was a sharp guy,” Steve Spurrier recalls.
He must have been sharp because he hired two of the greatest coaches in college sports history — Spurrier and, of course, Mike Krzyzewski.
As Coach K gets ready to embark on his final NCAA Tournament as the winningest college basketball coach in history, let us pay homage to the man who hired him but, more importantly, refused to fire him.
Spurrier came to Duke as offensive coordinator under former head coach Red Wilson the same year Coach K became Duke’s head basketball coach, and Spurrier remembers many of Duke’s basketball fans being angry and frustrated during Coach K’s first three years.
“They were yelling and screaming about wanting to fire him,” Spurrier says.
But Butters wouldn’t budge. Before he died back in 2016, I had a chance to interview Butters when he was retired and living in a golf-course community near Tampa. Butters told me the whole story of when many of Duke’s big-money boosters were calling for Coach K to be Coach Kanned after he went 38-47 in his first three seasons.
“You cannot let the alumni tell you who to fire,” Butters told me. “I knew our coach was the absolute right man for the job. I never paid attention to the wishes and whims of the audience. You have to make decisions based on what you feel is right.”
Even then, though, Butters realized that the times had changed.
“In today’s world,” Butters said, “I’d probably be fired for refusing to fire the coach.”
Remember, this was 18 years ago in 2004 when I interviewed Butters — before Twitter and other social media platforms. Can you imagine what the noise in the system would be like today? Would Butters have been able to stave off the Twitter mob? Would Krzyzewski have been able to recruit amid the noxious negativity on social media that would have surrounded and suffocated his program?
All you have to do is look at what’s happened in this state in recent years to understand what I’m talking about. The Florida Gators just fired football coach Dan Mullen only a year removed from nearly beating Alabama in the SEC Championship Game. The Florida State Seminoles fired Willie Taggart not even two years into his tenure in Tallahassee.
Of course, Mullen and Taggart might have survived if their recruiting had been headed in the right direction as Butters believed Krzyzewski’s was during those early years of losing, mainly because Coach K was able to land McDonald’s All-American Johnny Dawkins after going 10-17 in his second season.
Dawkins is now UCF’s basketball coach, but back then he blazed the trail for the hundreds of other top recruits who have turned Duke into the dominant, dynastic program it has become. Just before Duke played UCF in the NCAA Tournament three years ago, I asked Coach K what the signing of Dawkins meant to the Duke program.
“Johnny meant everything,” Krzyzewski replied. “He was the first great player that believed in us. He started it all.”
And the rest, of course, is history. Coach K has led Duke to five national championships, 12 Final Fours and a combined 28 ACC conference tournament and regular-season championships. All because his AD had a little patience.
“You have to give a coach time to recruit players and implement a system,” Butters told me.
Coach K wasn’t the only great coaching decision Butters made. Spurrier left Duke as offensive coordinator in 1982 to take the head coaching job with the USFL’s Tampa Bay Bandits, but the USFL folded three years later and Spurrier was unemployed and spent a year out of coaching.
He interviewed with Butters for the Duke head coaching job after Steve Sloan resigned the position, but Spurrier says one of Butters’ assistant ADs advised him not to hire Spurrier.
“Why not?” Butters asked has assistant.
“Because he’s just going to come here, win a bunch of games and leave,” the assistant said.
Butters replied: “Well, that sounds pretty good to me. If Steve Spurrier comes here, wins a bunch of games and leaves, he’ll be the first Duke football coach to ever do that. I’ll take my chances on that!”
Spurrier took the Duke job and his wide-open Fun ‘N’ Gun offense took the ACC by storm. By his third season in 1989, Spurrier had led the perennially pathetic Blue Devils to their first ACC title in 27 years. Along the way, Spurrier saw firsthand how much Coach K loved to win.
“A bunch of us coaches would play basketball at noon time, but it was hard to beat Coach K’s team because he’d always call a foul at the end if it got close,” Spurrier says, and laughs.
Spurrier’s offenses at Duke were groundbreaking, but his defenses were headshaking. Spurrier was fascinated with the way Duke’s basketball team played stifling man-to-man defense and how all five players would come down on defense and slap the floor as a reminder to bear down on the opponent and get a stop.
“I asked Coach K once, ‘If you were a defensive coach in football, what kind of defense would you play?’ " Spurrier recalls.
He said, ‘I don’t exactly know what type of defense I’d play to stop the offense, but you have to put pressure on the quarterback; you have to get some hands in his face; hit him while he’s throwing; divert the ball.’ ”
Spurrier took Coach K’s advice — and it worked.
“It was hard for us to get to the quarterback,” Spurrier says, “but we started rushing about seven or eight guys just so we could get some pressure. That’s when we finally started stopping some people.”
It was after that 1989 ACC championship season when Spurrier’s alma mater — the University of Florida — came calling and offered him the Gators head coaching job.
Butters did not try to stand in Spurrier’s way, did not try to persuade him to stay at Duke or offer him a bunch of money to match Florida’s offer.
“You’ve done all you can do at Duke,” Butters told Spurrier. “Go coach the Gators; that’s your destiny. Go down there and dominate the SEC.”
Which, of course, is exactly what happened.
Tom Butters was indeed a sharp man.
He knew when to hold ‘em.
He knew when to fold ‘em.
