“Since our season has ended (1 week) I have received over 15 resumes, emails, or calls from coaches looking for jobs at the college level. I think there are a ton of young coaches who do not realize the effort, sacrifice, and grind it takes to make it in the profession. Buzz's story always humbles me and encourages me to work harder, as well as help those who are trying to make the climb. He is great example for all of us...”
Here is the Buzz Williams interview after their 1st round win over in the 2011 NCAA Tournament on what he did to get into college coaching...
MODERATOR:
When you came out of Oklahoma City and started as a young assistant at Navarro, would you say you had modest career ambitions or big career ambitions?
COACH WILLIAMS:
I was a student assistant at Navarro from '90 to '92, and then I was a student assistant at Oklahoma City University my junior and senior years, '92 to '94. The first job that I took was a high paying job. It paid $400 a month in a dorm room, and that was at the University of Texas at Arlington. It's a long story in how I got that job, but from the beginning of my first day of college until the last day of college, any college coach that I met, regardless of title and regardless of classification, from that point forward I wrote them a letter once a week. That's before the iPhones and Internet and Twitter. And I was 17 when I enrolled in college. And I didn't know anything about college basketball, to be honest with you, but I knew how to say yes, sir, and no, sir. I wasn't scared to work, and I knew that being polite and being honest would at least give you a chance. And of the 425 coaches over the course of my college career that I met, one of them was at the Final Four in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1994.
In January of '94 I went to the financial aid office at OCU, and I used to steal stationery and envelopes from a lady there so I could write letters. I said, I need a loan. She said, You don't qualify for a loan. I said, I need some sort of loan. She said, Why? Because I want to go to the Final Four. And she gave me an emergency student loan for $1,200. I bought a suit, a shirt, a tie, a belt, a pair of socks and shoes and a round trip plane ticket to Charlotte, North Carolina. Paid for it all in cash. I arrived in Charlotte on a Thursday afternoon, with zero dollars in my pocket, dressed with what I bought at Bachrach, and as many colors of construction paper with my resume on it that in essence said I knew how to sweep the floor from corner to corner. And for three consecutive days and three consecutive nights I stood in the lobby of the Adam's Mark Hotel in Charlotte and passed out every resume that I could. On the Saturday night of the semifinals, one of the coaches that I knew told me about the job at UTA. And so every hour on the hour until Monday afternoon before the championship game, I went to the house phone and left a message for the head coach at UTA. I flew back on Monday night.
And when I got to Oklahoma City, I got in my car. It was a 1974 Ford Courier pickup that had a U Haul box on it that I sold the box for $500 so I could afford the truck for a thousand, paid for it in cash, and I drove from Oklahoma City to Arlington, Texas. I took the first exit at Arlington. It was West Park Row. I exited and I stopped at a Shell station. And back then they had phonebooks. Arlington's a big city, and Eddie McCarter, his name was in the phonebook, and I went in there and asked the convenience store attendant if she happened to know where this street was. She halfway guided me there. This was without a GPS. I got closer. Stopped at three other convenience stores.
I set in my car until about Tuesday night in front of Eddie McCarter's house. He drove up Tuesday night, drove in his parking garage, and when he got out of his car I got out of my truck. And I don't know if you would call it a truck. It was more like a red wagon. I bought two by sixes and drilled them to the chassis of the truck and then stained it kind of a dark cherry wood stain.
And when he got out of the car, I got out and I said, “Hi, Coach McCarter, I just wanted to say one more time how much I really want the job.”
And he said, “You have to be the craziest son of a bitch I've ever seen.”
And I said, Coach, “I wanted to tell you one more time that I wanted the job.”
Now, understand, this is April the 6th. I don't have a degree. And so he invites me in his house and he said, “I don't really know what else to tell you.”
I said, “Coach, you don't have to tell me anything. I know you don't know me. I'm just telling you I want the job, and I'm telling you I don't care who you can hire, nobody will work harder.”
That was on a Tuesday night. I turned around and drove through the night back to Oklahoma City. He called me on a Friday after visiting with the AD. The AD's name was B.J. Skelton. He came from Clemson. And he told me that the AD wanted to talk to me over the phone and if everything went fine he would hire me. So I talked to the AD on that Saturday morning, and Monday I went to the registrar at OCU, who sang the National Anthem before every game, and I handed her a microphone like this, minus the NCAA logo, and I said I called her Aunt Nell. She looked like the African American lady from the hit show "Give Me a Break."
And I said, Aunt Nell, “I got a job.”
She said, “Boy, that's great, Buzz.”
I said, “Well, they don't know I don't have a degree.”
And she said, “What do you mean?”
I've dreamed my whole life to be a Division I coach, and I'm going. And I start next Monday. And so whatever you have to do, if you need me to go to the president, you know, I can go to the president, because I steal letter envelopes and stationery from the secretary. I need to get out of here because I start next Monday morning. And so I was enrolled in 15 hours. I was magna cum laude at that moment in time and I went to every teacher, some of which gave me the grade I earned up until that point. Some of which I had to finish projects, book reports, whatever, tests. I would take zeros on it. I would do the best I could. I had four days.
And I told Aunt Nell, I'm going to pull up in a U Haul on Friday afternoon and I'm going to have an 11 by 13 frame in the front of this U Haul truck and it's going to be blank, and I'm going to honk the horn and I'm driving the truck all the way up on the curb into the stairs, and I'm going to walk up and I want you to give me my diploma. That was on Friday afternoon at 4:30.
I got in the U Haul and drove to Arlington, had no money, had nowhere to live. I slept in the U Haul in the parking lot of the athletic office until Monday morning at 8:00. Monday morning at 8:00 I walked in there and I said, “I'm here.”
That's how it all started.
So I don't know if you would deem that to be modest or not. But I can tell you that you can't create a story such as that. There was zero exaggeration in what I just told you. And for me to elicit those facts as verbatim as I did, you can't exaggerate anything like that. Only God could author something of that magnitude, and I tell our kids, I've told everybody, I'm living the dream 1,075 days into being the head coach at Marquette, bigger than any I've ever had as a kid. And I'm unbelievably humbled and grateful for the opportunity. But I don't know what the right adjective would be to describe what I thought or what my dreams were. I just knew that the only chance I had as a non player, as no one that was connected to anybody associated with anybody in college athletics, was to wake up early, be very hard and diligent and effective and efficient in my work, to always tell the truth and to always try to treat people the right way. And that's not a secret. And that's just kind of how it's played out.
And I just wanted to be the head coach at Navarro some day. I never thought that the day I would be hired as the head coach at Marquette that I would hire the guy that I worked for at Navarro, and he's arrived here somewhere. He was 76 years old. He was a college coach for 50 years. He's not Gene Keady at Purdue, and I'm not Steve Lavin at St. John's, but the stories are similar. It's just we're from the country, and it's worked out the way that it has.
