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All the great basketball schools—UCLA, Indiana, North Carolina, and so on—had long-standing deals with Adidas or Converse. So who was left? And what could we offer? We hurriedly dreamed up an “Advisory Board,” another version of our Pro Club, our NBA reward system—but it was small beer. I fully expected Strasser and Vaccaro to fail. And I expected to see neither of them for a year, at least. One month later Strasser was standing in my office, beaming. And shouting. And ticking off names. Eddie Sutton, Arkansas! Abe Lemmons, Texas! Jerry Tarkanian, UNLV! Frank McGuire, South Carolina! (I leaped out of my chair. McGuire was a legend: He’d defeated Wilt Chamberlain’s Kansas team to win the national championship for North Carolina.) We hit pay dirt, Strasser said. Plus, almost as a throw-in, he mentioned two under-the-radar youngsters: Jim Valvano at Iona and John Thompson at Georgetown. (A year or two later he did the same thing with college football coaches, landing all the greats, including Vince Dooley and his national champion Georgia Bulldogs. Herschel Walker in Nikes—yes.) We rushed out a press release, announcing that Nike had these schools under contract. Alas, the press release had a bad typo. Iona was spelled “Iowa.” Lute Olson, coach at Iowa, phoned immediately. He was irate. We apologized and said we’d send a correction the next day. He got quiet. “Well now wait wait,” he said, “what’s this Advisory Board anyway…?” The Harter Rule, in full effect.
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