Retirement is a strange thing for most sports icons. They leave, only to find the spotlight that will never be the same. Public adoration is a drug, and a lot of athletes can't break the habit.For Lute Olson, retirement was a different sort of challenge. The 74-year-old former head coach at Arizona left, frankly, because he couldn't do the job anymore. Olson, one of the most animated coaches ever to pace the length of the bench, went from coach that couldn't get enough to coach that couldn't do it anymore. Beset by health problems, divorce and a program that couldn't seem to find its way out of a mediocre situation, Olson retired last October so quickly the program barely had time to recover, let alone say goodbye.
Saturday, farewell finally came for Olson and the program he built.
Any and all that could pack into the famed McKale Center, waved goodbye to a man that isn't simply a part of Tucson, but in a very real sense is the city.
No matter if you're heading east on Speedway to land a Cowboy sandwich at Baggins or walking around campus on a flawless spring day, Olson is what you see.
You see, before Lute was hired by Arizona in 1983, the Wildcats had been to the NCAA Tournament a total of three times. It was a program that was, to put it kindly, abysmal on all accounts. Lute joined the Wildcats, and missed the NCAA Tournament once in his 25 years -- the first season he was in the desert. A national championship came in 1997 in an overtime epic against Kentucky. There were three other Final Four appearances, including a finals loss to Duke in 2001. There was a run of 71 consecutive wins at McKale, a winning percentage of nearly 76 percent, and a legacy that was as much screenplay as statistics.
Intelligent, poised and, though not always eager to call on me when I was interviewing him as a snotty 19-year-old, Olson talked like a man that knew basketball as thoroughly as most folks know their way home. He knew the game, and there wasn't a better coach in the country that could recruit talent to a desert town.
On Saturday, more than 40 of his ex-players showed up to wish their coach off. Steve Kerr said, "An event like this has to be a little bittersweet for Coach. It signifies that it's over. It wasn't easy for him."
That describes the kind of coach Olson was. The word "quit" isn't in his biography. The man will be missed by the basketball world, but never forgotten. The good news is on a sunny Tucson day, when the students are pouring in to watch their Wildcats destroy a Pac-10 foe, they might catch a glimpse of Coach in the stands, cheering on the program he built. He's never been easy to miss.
Even in retirement, the spotlight will find him.
