Jim Valvano

Jim Valvano

James Thomas Anthony Valvano (March 10, 1946 – April 28, 1993), nicknamed Jimmy V, was an American college basketball coach.

While the head coach at North Carolina State University, he won the 1983 NCAA Basketball Tournament against high odds. Valvano is not only remembered for running up and down the court after winning the 1983 NCAA championship, seemingly in disbelief and looking for someone to hug. He is also remembered for his 1993 ESPY Awards speech, given just eight weeks before he died of cancer.

Biography

Personal

Valvano was the middle child of Rocco and Angelina Valvano, and was married for 25 years to his high school sweetheart, Pamela Levine. They have three daughters: Nicole, Jamie, and Lee Ann. Valvano attended Seaford High School on Long Island, New York.

Vince Lombardi was Valvano’s role model. Valvano told an ESPY audience, on March 3, 1993, that he took some of Lombardi’s inspirational speeches out of his book Commitment to Excellence and used them with his team. Valvano discussed how he planned to use Lombardi's speech to the Green Bay Packers in front of his Rutgers freshman basketball team prior to his first game as a coach.

College playing career

Valvano was a point guard at Rutgers University in 1967, where he partnered with first-team All American Bob Lloyd in the backcourt. Under the leadership of Valvano and Lloyd, Rutgers finished third in the 1967 NIT Tournament, which was the last basketball tournament held at the old Madison Square Garden. Jim was named Senior Athlete of the Year at Rutgers in 1967. He graduated with a degree in English in 1967.

Coaching career

Valvano's 19-year career as a head basketball coach included stops at Johns Hopkins, Bucknell, Iona, and NC State. His career record was 346–212. During his 10 year NC State career, Valvano's teams were the ACC Tournament Champions in 1983 and 1987 and the ACC regular season champions in 1985 and 1989. The Wolfpack won the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship in 1983, in addition to advancing to the NCAA Elite 8 in 1985 and 1986. He was twice voted ACC coach of the year. Valvano became NC State's athletic director in 1986.

Valvano's famous reaction of running around on the court looking for somebody to hug in the moments after the Wolfpack victory came after the game-winning shot in the 1983 NCAA finals. Dereck Whittenburg heaved a last-second alley-oop pass that was caught and dunked by Lorenzo Charles as time expired. By a score of 54-52, NC State beat a top seeded University of Houston team that was on a 26-game winning streak and was led by future Basketball Hall of Famers Clyde Drexler and Akeem Olajuwon. Previously, NC State won the college basketball championship in 1974.

Head coaching Record

Statistics overview

Season	Team	Overall	Conference	Standing	Postseason
Johns Hopkins Blue Jays (Middle Atlantic Corporation) (1969–1970)
1969-1970	Johns Hopkins	10-9
Johns Hopkins:		10-9
Bucknell Bison (Middle Atlantic Corporation) (1972–1975)
1972-1973	Bucknell	11-14	6-4
1973-1974	Bucknell	8-16	2-8
1974-1975	Bucknell	14-12	4-4
Bucknell:		33-42	12-16
Iona Gaels (Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference) (1975–1980)
1975-1976	Iona	11-15
1976-1977	Iona	15-10
1977-1978	Iona	17-10
1978-1979	Iona	23-6			NCAA 1st Round
1979-1980	Iona	28-4			NCAA 2nd Round
Iona:		94-45
NC State Wolfpack (Atlantic Coast Conference) (1980–1990)
1980-1981	NC State	14-13	4-10	7th	None
1981-1982	NC State	22-10	7-7	4th	NCAA 1st Round
1982-1983	NC State	26-10	8-6	T-3rd	NCAA Champions
1983-1984	NC State	19-14	4-10	7th	NIT 1st Round
1984-1985	NC State	23-10	9-5	T-1st	NCAA Elite Eight
1985-1986	NC State	21-13	7-7	T-4th	NCAA Elite Eight
1986-1987	NC State	20-15	6-8	6th	NCAA 1st Round
1987-1988	NC State	24-8	10-4	2nd	NCAA 1st Round
1988-1989	NC State	22-9	10-4	1st	NCAA Sweet 16
1989-1990	NC State	18-12	6-8	T-5th	None
NC State:		209-114	71-69
Total:		346-210
National champion         Postseason invitational champion         Conference regular season champion         Conference regular season and conference tournament champion       Division regular season champion       Division regular season and conference tournament champion       Conference tournament champion

Controversy

In 1990, accusations of rules violations surfaced in the book Personal Fouls by Peter Golenbock. These accusations centered mostly around high school All-American Chris Washburn. Washburn could only read at a 4th grade level and received a 470 on his SAT but was given a full scholarship anyway. Two of Washburn's childhood friends were given tickets behind the bench even though they had three felony convictions for drug dealing. Cozell Mcqueen was unable to read at all and the drug usage of Washburn, Charles Shackleford and Bennie Bolton was ignored. Most of the inside information was given to Golenbock by the team manager, who had his arm broken shortly after the book surfaced. After the allegations surfaced, two local newspapers called for his ouster. A 1989 NCAA investigation cleared Valvano, but found that players sold shoes and game tickets. As a result, NC State placed its basketball program on probation for two years (the maximum) and was banned from participating in the 1990 NCAA tournament. The state-appointed Poole Commission issued a 32-page report that concluded that there were no major violations of NCAA regulations, and that Valvano and his staff's inadequate oversight of players' academic progress violated "the spirit, not the letter of the law." After this report, Valvano was forced to resign as the school's athletic director in October 1989. He remained as basketball coach through the 1989-1990 season. Under subsequent pressure from the school's faculty and new Chancellor, Valvano negotiated a settlement with NC State and resigned as basketball coach on April 7, 1990. Six separate entities investigated Valvano and the NC State basketball program including the NC State Faculty Senate, the North Carolina Attorney General, the University of North Carolina Board of Governors, the NC State Board of Trustees, and the NCAA. None of them found any recruiting or financial improprieties.

Valvano's version of these events can be found in his 1991 autobiography, Valvano: They Gave Me a Lifetime Contract, and Then They Declared Me Dead.

The following letter (excerpted from the book "The Gifts of Jimmy V") is from Bob Valvano to a listener of his radio show that hoped the book would sell well to help the V Foundation, but was extremely critical of Jim Valvano the coach. Here Bob offers his point of view on the firing of his brother in response:

I appreciate the kind words about your wishes for the book, and very much appreciate your candor about my brother and his reputation. Your summation is in fact one of the main reasons I want to write the book. I agree that he has been 'sanctified' and it is for the wrong reasons. He got sick and died very young, and handled it with great dignity and courage. I am proud of that. But he really was no different in his illness than he was in health. It was simply the perception, publicly, that changed, and your comments are a reflection of that. Let me ask you a question. You say Jim ran one of the dirtiest programs in America. Did you know that after three investigations, the only thing he was ever accused of was that his players sold complimentary athletic shoes and tickets? Period. Did you know that? Did you know that the guy who ran the NCAA investigation, Dave Dideon, a hardened veteran of dealing with slick, underhanded coaches, said that he never investigated a more misunderstood coach than Jim, and that following the investigation, he wrote a letter to Jim saying that if he had a son, he would be proud to have him play for Jim? Probably not, and my guess is that if you did, you would rather not have it cloud your preconceived judgment that Jim was a bad guy. He made mistakes. He tried to do too many things at once. He assumed details were being tended to that weren't, that he should have seen to. But dirty program? Astoundingly inaccurate, but perpetuated, as is the misconception that he became a 'good guy' when he got sick. He was always a 'good guy,' an inspiring guy, and he made his share of mistakes. Both have been blown out of proportion, and it makes Jim a cartoon character. Please don't take my remarks personally . . . I am probably tilting at windmills to think I will change anyone's mind, but it is a noble fight. To fight it, I can't, and won't, make Jim out to be a saint, but the criticisms are as inaccurate as the accolades are simplistic.

It is worth trying.

-Bob Valvano

NBA veteran and former Iona coach Jeff Ruland, who Valvano coached while a player at Iona, once referred to him as "a liar" when Valvano denied a report that Ruland took money from Valvano and boosters during his recruitment to Iona.

After coaching

After his coaching career, Valvano was a broadcaster for ESPN and ABC, including a stint as a sideline reporter for the inaugural season of the World League of American Football. In 1992, Mr. Valvano won a Cable ACE Award for Commentator/Analyst for NCAA basketball broadcasts. From time to time he was paired with basketball analyst Dick Vitale, dubbed the "Killer Vees", with similar voices and exuberant styles. The two even made a cameo appearance, playing the role of professional movers (V&V Movers), on an episode of The Cosby Show.

Valvano created JTV enterprises to guide many of his entrepreneurial endeavors. He gave hundreds of motivational speeches across the country and was a featured guest on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and Late Night with David Letterman.

One of Valvano's most memorable motivational speeches was delivered February 21, 1993 at Reynolds Coliseum on NCSU's basketball court during the ten year commemoration of the University's 1983 NCAA championship. It was during this speech that Valvano stressed the importance of hope, love, and persistence and included his famous "Don't give up, don't ever give up" quotation.

ESPY speech

Valvano was diagnosed with bone cancer in June 1992. In July, he found out that it had metastasized.

Shortly before his death, he spoke at the inaugural ESPY Awards, presented by ESPN, on March 3, 1993. While accepting the inaugural Arthur Ashe Courage and Humanitarian Award, he announced the creation of the "V Foundation", an organization dedicated to finding a cure for cancer. He announced that the foundation's motto would be "Don't give up. Don't ever give up." During his speech the teleprompter stated that he had 30 seconds left, to which Valvano responded, "They got that screen up there flashing 30 seconds, like I care about that screen. I got tumors all over my body and I'm worried about some guy in the back going 30 seconds." His speech became legendary, and he closed the speech by saying, "Cancer can take away all of my physical abilities. It cannot touch my mind, it cannot touch my heart, and it cannot touch my soul. And those three things are going to carry on forever. I thank you and God bless you all." One particularly poignant section of Valvano's speech is as follows:

To me, there are three things we all should do every day. We should do this every day of our lives. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. And number three is, you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be happiness or joy. But think about it. If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that's a full day. That's a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you're going to have something special.

He received a rousing standing ovation from the ESPY crowd.

Death

Jim Valvano died less than two months after his famous ESPY speech and after a year-long battle with cancer. He is interred in the Cedar Hill Section of Oakwood Cemetery in Raleigh, North Carolina. His tombstone reads: "Take time every day to laugh, to think, to cry."

Legacy

A 1996 TV-movie titled Never Give Up: The Jimmy V Story, starred Anthony LaPaglia as Valvano. In 1993, Valvano was inducted into the Rutgers' Basketball Hall of Fame. In 1999, Valvano was inducted into both the Hall of Distinguished Alumni at Rutgers University and the New York City Basketball Hall of Fame. In 2004, Valvano was inducted into the National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame.

V Foundation

File:VFoundation Clr Pos.jpg

The V Foundation is a charitable organization dedicated to saving lives by helping to find a cure for cancer. The foundation seeks to make a difference by generating broad-based support for cancer research and by creating an urgent awareness among all Americans of the importance of the war against cancer. The V Foundation performs these dual roles through advocacy, education, fundraising, and philanthropy. Its motto is “Don’t give up. Don’t ever give up.”

The Jimmy V Celebrity Golf Classic was held for many years in August at Prestonwood Country Club in Cary, North Carolina and for a few years, the Jimmy V Celebrity Golf Classic was moved to Pinehurst, NC. The tournament returned to the Triangle area of North Carolina in 2009, with most of the events taking place in Raleigh, NC and the golf games being hosted by the new Poole Golf Course at NC State University's Centennial Campus. Each year, four men's college basketball teams compete in the "Jimmy V Basketball Classic". Recently, a women's game was added to the lineup. To date, the V Foundation has raised over $80 million for cancer research.

The concept of V Week, hosted by ESPN, originated from V Day. V Day was started by the Delta Chi Fraternity. Delta Chi's stated philanthropic organization is the V Foundation.

References

• Cairns, Bob (2005). V & Me: Everybody's Favorite Jim Valvano Story. Alexander, NC: Alexander Books. ISBN 978-1570902291.
• Cole, Marcus (Director); Greenman, Adam (Writer). Never Give Up: The Jimmy V Story (Motion picture (made for television)). Sherman Oaks, CA: Daniel H. Blatt Productions. {{cite AV media}}: Unknown parameter |year2= ignored (help)
• ESPN. ESPY Awards (Television). Bristol, CT: ESPN Original Entertainment. {{cite AV media}}: Unknown parameter |year2= ignored (help)
• Towle, Mike (2001). I Remember Jim Valvano: Personal Reflections and Anecdotes About College Basketball's Most Exuberant Final Four Coach, As Told by the People and Players Who Knew Him. Nashville, TN: Cumberland House Publishing. ISBN 978-1581822199.
• Valvano, Bob (2001). The Gifts of Jimmy V: A Coach's Legacy. Chicago, IL: Triumph Books. ISBN 978-1892049308.
• Valvano, Jim (1992). Valvano: They Gave Me a Lifetime Contract, and Then They Declared Me Dead. New York, NY: Pocket Books. ISBN 978-0671732547. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Wojnarowski, Adrian (2008). Jimmy V: The Life and Death of Jim Valvano. New York, NY: Gotham Books. ISBN 978-1592403547.

External links

• V Foundation for Cancer Research
• ESPY Award Speech by Jim Valvano
• ESPY Award Address in Text, Audio, Video
• Jim Valvano Timeline
• Jim Valvano at Findagrave.com
• National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame