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John Rudley left Toledo University as a successful
student-athlete but bearing the wounds of race, class and
culture inflicted by the generational strife he had
encountered there. Rather than playing the “blame-shame
game,” however, Rudley – as he had always done, viewed the
negative life-experience as an occasion to step in to fill
voids in leadership wherever an opportunity presented
itself.
Nevertheless, even after over 50 years since his conflict
with late UT coach Bob Nichols, the generational clash
between modernity and traditionalism would continue to stalk
Rudley showing up, sometimes, in unexpected places.
I caught up with John Rudley to discuss the impact of racial
and generational strife on his leadership and life. This
article is the conclusion of a three-part series.
Perryman:
Your professional career began with Coopers & Lybrand. Later
you worked at the highest levels in the field of education.
Please talk about your experience in this later season of
your life.
Rudley:
These were all predominantly white situations and so I was
deft at dealing with that. Toledo gave me a great education
in that regard. The University of Toledo didn’t have many
black students at the time, so I took that experience and
was able to work with Secretary Lamar Alexander in D.C. and
then the Tennessee Board of Regents came knocking and hired
me to be their Chief Financial Officer (CFO) for the system,
the sixth largest in the country. From there, I went to the
University of Houston, a predominately white institution, as
a CFO and they hired me because I had this Washington D.C.
experience. So, I was doing pretty well because I was in the
right place at the right time to be able to use the skillset
I learned when I worked at Coopers & Lybrand and other
higher education institutions.
Perryman:
So, you leave the University of Houston and take the job as
president at Texas Southern University (TSU). How did this
experience differ?
Rudley:
TSU was a totally different experience because now it’s
dealing with all black people, essentially. It took me nine
years to realize that that probably wasn’t the best thing
that I should’ve done, but I worked as hard as I could.
Perryman:
Why do you feel that TSU, an historically black institution,
was not best for you?
Rudley:
There, I found that a lot of issues in the black community
are there because we shoot ourselves in the foot. Many of
our problems are not always somebody else’s fault and you
have to look at yourself and do a self-evaluation. But you
live and you learn.
Perryman:
How did your early experiences with Bob Nichols and the
University of Toledo shape your leadership at Texas
Southern?
Rudley:
It taught me that you have to get your act together, be
competent and then once you get into a position where you
can make decisions the Nichols incident also taught me that
everybody has strengths and weaknesses and it really doesn’t
matter what color you are. Just like when I was playing
guard, you’ve got to identify the best people who can do the
job.
Perryman:
You have been quoted somewhere saying that your tenure at
Texas Southern was “tumultuous.” Do you think some of the
problems were indicative of higher ed problems in general or
do you think they were specific to HBCU’s?
Rudley:
Both, because all schools are going to have a problem with
financing. At the University of Houston or University of
Tennessee at Chattanooga or Tennessee Board of Regents, we
focused on getting quality students and the highest
standards. Because we all need enrollment, we have to also
make sure that we had quality faculty, quality research,
quality students, the whole nine and the campus needs to
look great.
In the black institutions you have the same problem, but
often the team does not come together to work in a focused
manner on solving problems. That’s my biggest criticism, the
difference between HBCU’s and predominantly white
institutions is the lack of collegiality, lack of respect
for the mission of the university and the lack of respect
for leaders who are doing the things to make sure the
mission is acted upon.
Another difference is there is not as much concern for the
outer appearance at HBCU’s as there is for a predominantly
white institution and you invest in the things you believe
in. So, at Texas Southern, one of my initiatives was to
clean the campus up and make it look like a university that
if a parent came there and saw that facility, physical
environment, they would say this is a place I want to send
my child to as opposed to sending them to a place where
trash and papers are everywhere.
I was out of, I guess, step with some of the people at Texas
Southern, who didn’t understand the best practices of
predominantly white institutions so I made decisions to
improve the campus regardless of what they were saying. I
made my decision to increase the standards. They were an
open admission school and I changed that right away. They
didn’t like that. So, these are fundamental differences I
had with the faculty at Texas Southern and their alumni as
well, but I made the changes anyway. I said these are the
best practices at predominantly white institutions and I’m
here to make sure this school is going to improve and so I
also changed the facility, how it looked, added new
buildings, a new dormitory, new library, cleaned up the
campus, got a new football stadium for them to play in, the
Dynamo Stadium, and new academic programs.
Perryman:
Do you think that you might have compensated or even
overcompensated at TSU for your early experiences at Toledo
and that, possibly, the current generation of young black
kids might have seen you in the same vein as you previously
saw Coach Nichols a half-century ago?
Rudley:
Oh yeah, I think that is the case. That’s a very astute
observation in that this clash between traditionality and
modernity happens all the time and when I was a student, I
was part of the trying to be modern crowd. We don’t like
discrimination, we want fair and equal housing, the whole
nine yards and so even when I had those feelings, they
remained when I worked at the black college. I said, ‘okay,
if a lot of people don’t know what to do, I do know what to
do.’ Just like you were saying that I used to take over the
game in the third or fourth quarter if I felt like we needed
to do so, well that also is how I approached Texas
Southern. I said well let me just take over this thing,
they will be mad at me, but this is how I run the game. I
realized that that was going to be a problem in the long
run, but I said if I work hard and fast enough, by the time
they catch up with me, I will have made the changes that
need to be made regardless of what they’re saying.
Perryman:
Let’s go back to the snub you have received by Toledo’s Hall
of Fame committee. Why do you feel you are worthy of the
Hall of Fame?
Rudley:
As an example of what you expect student athletes will
accomplish, I am that example. You expect student athletes
to charge off into a profession and become superlative in
what they do, represent the university proudly and help the
brand of the institution because every time you have a
stellar candidate or a stellar student who gets a great job
somewhere, we all kind of toot our horns and say that’s what
the university is all about, isn’t it? It’s supposed to be
about producing graduates who excel. I believe I’m a
graduate who excelled, I just also happen to have played
basketball.
So, if you look at my credentials in terms of even when I
went through that struggle at Toledo, I was able to finish
my degree. I did that, in spite of the controversy and in
spite of what I went through in terms of the athletic
program and in terms of some of the people who made mistakes
in handling me, but if I look at all the other students who
were non-athletes that go to the University of Toledo and
graduated and stack my career side by side and my resume
side by side with everybody in the Hall of Fame, I think I
would be well represented when you make a comparison. So, I
think from that standpoint, I represent what you would hope
all student athletes would do - come to your school and
graduate. I won’t even bring up the question of how many
student athletes don’t graduate, but I graduated and went on
to work for the Secretary of Education and Department of
Education and college president at two major institutions
and one system, Tennessee Board of Regents System. I don’t
know what else I’m supposed to do career-wise, what else do
I have to do? That’s one side of the coin.
From the standpoint of my experiences as an athlete, you can
look at the history of the basketball program at the
University of Toledo and as you go through everybody that
came through that program, our team has to be singled out as
one of the best that ever played for the University of
Toledo. It has to be, hands down. I had two guys, actually
three guys that should’ve been in the NBA, maybe four, think
about this. John Brisker went to the NBA, right? Steve Mix
went to the NBA. Bob Miller should’ve gone to the NBA and
I’m certain that Calvin Lawshe would’ve been in the NBA had
he not busted his knee. I have to say to you that that team
was a special team in the history of the whole school and I
was a part of that team. So, from an athletic standpoint I
would think that because I was on that team and was a factor
in its success, that should also take my statistics and line
it up against anybody else given the role I had to play and
I was a role player for that team. Instead of being the
leading scorer I really sacrificed that for the success of
the team. That’s what team is all about.
Perryman:
If you could go back in time and do anything different,
would you?
Rudley:
In my whole life?
Perryman:
From the journey beginning at the University of Toledo to
Texas Southern University.
Rudley:
I look back on that team and said, ‘Everybody’s kind of
looking at what happened, they don’t know what could’ve
happened.’ We beat a lot of teams, so I’m looking at what
opportunity we lost and that’s where I think that if we
could do it all over again, I should have spoken up sooner
about making sure the team stayed together. I should’ve
talked to Coach Nichols, giving him my opinion about what we
should be doing. I would’ve tried to be more of a
reconciler and trying to get the coach and the players to
understand this is our opportunity for all of us to advance
and we can’t act as though this is going to last forever,
we’ve only got a certain period of time, only four years to
do this.
I look back on my experiences I think people overlook what
we could’ve done and I’m the person in the best position to
see that. I’ve always regretted that we didn’t beat the
hell out of Virginia Tech that next game, cause we could’ve
beat Dayton. I think Dayton ended up coming out of that
bracket. We could’ve beat them because they only had one
player. The one thing I’d say is what I said in that bus
station, first coming to Toledo. I said ‘I know I made a
mistake but I’m going to make the best damn thing I can out
of this mistake. I believe I’ve done this, that I’ve tried
to make the best out of all my mistakes.
The truth is that I’m really not pursuing this Hall of Fame
on my own, there are a lot of people who are doing this and
if you look at my background and my career, do you really
think I would try to go in there and fight with the
committee again if they don’t want to give me the
recognition I’m due? I have been at some hallowed grounds
in this country in my career and I would love to have the
honor of my alma mater, but people need to understand that I
really don’t want people to think that I’m…
Perryman:
Begging anyone?
Rudley:
That’s what I wanted to say, you helped me out with that!
Well, I’m looking at all these plaques I have on my wall
here and I’ve got plaques from legislators, John Cornyn and
Lamar Alexander and here in Houston, Texas almost all of the
legislators sent me acknowledgments of my accomplishments.
When you go back to Tennessee, I have great friends there,
so every place I’ve had an opportunity to work or meet with
people, they thought pretty positively of their experience
with me and it’s mutual.
Calvin Lawshe told me the year that he died that he had
tried to talk to some people about getting the whole team in
the Hall of Fame, but I said, ‘Calvin don’t worry about it,
don’t stress out. We’ve got other things to worry about.
Contact Rev. Donald Perryman, PhD, at
drdlperryman@centerofhopebaptist.org
The Clash of Youth and Age: John Rudley’s Story (Part Two)
The Clash of Youth and Age: John Rudley’s Story (Part One)
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