Arkansas Sports 360 - ArkansasSports360.com

1/30/2012 at 4:09pm

Texas A&M Coach Gary Blair was in North Little Rock on Monday speaking to the Downtown Tip-Off Club.

Gary Blair is the personification of the adage that life begins at 40. He's won 610 basketball games, all since the age of 40. He won a national championship with Texas A&M last year at 65, when most people have considered retiring.

Blair won't be retiring anytime soon, he insisted Monday after speaking at the Downtown Tip Off Club at North Little Rock's Wyndham Riverfront ballroom. He'll coach, and he'll continue to maintain a commuter marriage between College Station, Texas, and Fayetteville, Ark.

Following up a 33-5 season that culminated in a national title game win over Notre Dame last spring, Blair is 12-5 with this year's Lady Aggies. He has the No. 2-rated signing class coming aboard next year for another run at a national championship, though he's also planning on this year's team to play host to the first- and second-round games in College Station and seeing where it goes from there.

"I've been in the right stops, so my bucket list is still going," he said of those 610 career wins still working at age 66. "I think I'm just starting to get into my prime. I'm learning to coach better. I've been recruiting pretty well. And I love what I'm doing. So why retire when you're good at something and you have good health and you can produce?"

Arkansas Razorback fans were still wondering why they were watching a successful former women's coach at the University of Arkansas, who expressed his love for Northwest Arkansas and kept a house there even when he left for Texas A&M, coach a team other than one named "Razorbacks" last spring.

Basically, nine years ago, Blair thought 10 successful years at Fayetteville, including a Final Four appearance in 1998, was deserving of a raise and contract extension. His contract had one more year remaining. Then UA chancellor John White was set on bringing a female coach on board to direct what were then called the Lady Razorbacks. Texas A&M courted Blair with better money and he left, but he never cut his ties with his friends and some of the UA administrators.

His wife stayed back and leads the UA's department of nursing. Sometimes she makes the nine-hour driving commute to College Station; sometimes Blair can fly back home.

Blair led the large crowd at noon Monday in a one-verse Hog call. "It's all right, I'm paying taxes in both states."

He insisted later to three reporters his departure from the UA is not an issue for him. His coaching roots were all through Texas, and through those relationships he built the Lady Aggies into a top 5 team last year that won it all. For once, UConn (which lost to Big East rival Notre Dame in the national semifinals) didn't take home the crown.

"The hardest thing in life, well, say you're a doctor here in Central Arkansas. For you to get a big-time raise, you’d probably have to go to Dallas. Same way in coaching," he said. "I had been there 10 years, I didn’t have leverage. They know you love it there, there’s not much you can do. You have to accept what they are willing to give you. And they didn’t think I was worth what I wanted.

"I could have stayed another year. I would have had the best player in the SEC, Shameka Christon, and we would have won. But, at 57 years old, could you take that chance?

"It worked out for Gary Blair and it worked out for Arkansas. Maybe it didn’t work out for the Arkansas fans, or some of the players, but it worked out, they got what they wanted and I got what I wanted."

And, Blair adds, he has Arkansas to always thank.

"Right now I owe my success at A&M to the state of Arkansas for giving me the platform to be considered for a Texas A&M job ... I've got the best of both worlds now. I've got a home in Fayetteville and a home in College Station. Go Hogs and Gig 'em, Aggies."

It might be harder to conjure up a Hog call next season, when Texas A&M's athletic programs move into the Southeastern Conference. They'll be abandoning what Blair says is the toughest basketball conference in women's basketball — and it's been that eight of the last nine seasons.

Blair sees A&M's conference in both good terms and bad. "The TV exposure and the money will be good. But is it best for the student athletes to play a volleyball match in Columbia, South Carolina, and now have to charter back home? You’re expenses for travel will have to go way up. That isn’t going change at all because we can’t afford to miss the class time."

With a little detente between the University of Texas and the rest of the Big 12, A&M's and Missouri's bolting to the SEC might have been avoided, he said.

"But it’s all about football, TV sets and money, and egos right now," he said.

And the great Texas-Texas A&M rivalry will be a thing of the past. Texas athletic director DeLoss Dodds won't schedule A&M in any sport now.

A&M leaves the Big 12 competing at the highest level in both men's and women's sports, Blair noted. That's due to the leadership of Aggies athletic director Bill Byrne, who hired Blair away from Arkansas.

"When Bill was at Nebraska, they won 94 national or conference championships. During those same 10 years, A&M won six, in all sports combined," Blair said. "Now, we’re doing just like Nebraska, what he was able to instill there.

"Sometimes your athletic director can be more important than the coaches because he’s hiring the right coaches that had the vision and the recruiting to get it done."

When Blair was at Arkansas, the men's and women's programs were under separate leadership, and then chancellor White had the ear of the women's side, while Frank Broyles ran the men. Now, Arkansas' sports are all under one roof led by Jeff Long, whom Blair said he didn't know personally "but I know what he's done."

Arkansas' women's basketball team is having some of its best short-term success since Blair left, winning its last five games under former Blair assistant coach Tom Collen. It's been a long road back for the women's program since Blair left.

But he's filled his bucket list somewhat later in life than many, and he spent part of Monday urging other adults to stop the blame game and make something of theirs.

"It’s all about having your chance in life. Maybe it didn’t come at 20 to 30 or 30 to 40 because maybe you weren’t good enough," Blair said. "But if you’re good enough right now and you can produce ... I’m challenging adults as much as I’m challenging young people. And adults, quit making excuses for yourself and get out and get the job done."

Blair promises he'd done dancing the "Dougie" or the "Wobble" after national championships — that video from last spring's trophy celebration went viral, and Blair's daughter (who lives in Farmington) and wife asked him to refrain.

"I’ve got one more dance left in me," he said. "If I can can win another national championship, I’m not going to do some of this new stuff. I’m going to do the jitterbug."

Tagged: Texas A&M Lady Aggies, NCAA Women's Tournament, Gary Blair, Southeastern Conference, Tom Collen