"The game was in its incipiency in England then, and not a lot of people went out for it," he says. He was even a reserve on the Oxford University B team while he was a Rhodes scholar from 1968 to '70. Then when Nolan Richardson came, he brought a whole different dimension of basketball to our state, and he's been terrific."Īs a kid Clinton played some church-league ball. I learned a lot from him and from watching his teams. "Then, in the '70s, Eddie Sutton came to Arkansas. "Growing up in Arkansas, we had good basketball teams in high school, but football was always the Southern sport," Clinton says. A Chief Executive who not only listens to Dick Vitale but also talks back to him'? Quick, someone: Could this be grounds for invoking the 25th Amendment? 8, a certain clean-headed ESPN commentator wondered on air whether the President was watching. But it's a great tension-reliever."ĭuring Arkansas's 96-78 victory over Memphis State on Dec.
#Sooey soooey tv
"If you want to be calm and quiet, you shouldn't watch a game with me," he says of his behavior, whether watching hoops on TV or in person.
Or, more precisely, the first hoops-savvy, Hog-calling, standing sitting President. Further, when he dropped in on their 129-63 rout of Texas Southern in Fayetteville just after Christmas, Clinton was believed to be the first sitting President to attend a basketball game. (That was the heyday of a guy who played high school ball in Little Rock for Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders's husband, Oliver-a player named Sidney Moncrief.) The First Fan rarely misses the Hogs when they're on TV. The 25-3 Razorbacks have been the closest thing to a preeminent team this convulsive season, and followers of Arkansas basketball haven't lived so large since 1978-79. With a four-foot vertical jump, I could be doing something else."įor the next three weeks the Oval Office will take on a decidedly roundball cast. "It makes me wish I were two inches taller and 20 pounds lighter. "It's a fabulous game, isn't it?" he says. More than anything, though, the President believes in a place called hoop. A security van often has to sweep up tuckered-out stragglers. And despite the slightly porcine figure he cuts in jogging shorts, the President pounds the pavement well enough for aides to warn those joining him for a run that they had best be in at least decent shape. As a golfer he is no slouch, either, even if he does freely take the executive mulligan. On the phone with Dallas Cowboy owner Jerry Jones and Cowboy coach Jimmy Johnson after the Super Bowl, the President could be heard to bubba with his fellow Arkansans, raving about how Dallas had dominated the Buffalo Bills "from tackle to tackle." Only a week ago Clinton bowled a league-night-creditable 220. For Clinton, who at age 47 is the youngest occupant of the White House since John Kennedy, sports is no subject of expediency.
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