The ACC Basketball Book of Fame by Dan Collins

Author:Dan Collins
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780895876188
Publisher: John F. Blair, Publisher

Phil Ford was the one player who made Coach Dean Smith almost sorry for the other team whenever he directed the Tar Heels into their infamous four-corners spread offense.

The operative word of that sentence: almost.

“I admit it was unfair with Ford,” Smith said years afterward. “He hit the foul shots, he could drive, he could take it in, bring it out, and pass it off. He was unstoppable.”

A multi-sport star in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, Ford was the focus of a recruiting war so fierce that, as one unverified account from Art Chansky’s The Dean’s List has it, a Clemson booster visited his home and left behind a suitcase filled with cash. An equally unverified account from Chansky’s book has it that when Ford’s father called Smith to ask what he should do, Smith suggested, “Have Phil sign with Carolina and keep the money.”

To anyone who offered illegal inducements, Ford’s father had a stock reply: “You can have my son for a nickel, if that’s where he wants to go to school. If he doesn’t, there’s not enough money in the world.”

Smith recalled in A Coach’s Life the white-hot recruiting battle. Lefty Driesell of Maryland offered to put the ball in Ford’s hands the day he arrived at College Park and leave it there all four years. Norm Sloan of N.C. State dangled the opportunity to play a season with David Thompson.

Smith went to work selling the star’s parents, Phil Sr. and Mabel, both of whom were educators with master’s degrees, on the value of a North Carolina diploma. He wrote how, when Mabel Ford first heard he was visiting, her response was, “Isn’t it nice that North Carolina is sending one of its deans to our house?”

In his autobiography, Hard Work, Roy Williams claimed at least a modicum of credit for Ford’s deciding on North Carolina. Williams, who had helped pay his way through North Carolina by refereeing intramural games, recalled the summer of 1973, when Ford attended Smith’s basketball camp. Smith asked Williams to referee the games in which Ford played, mentioning in passing that Ford was a player the Tar Heels really, really, really wanted.

“Phil Ford enjoyed himself at basketball camp that summer because every time Phil drove to the basket, Phil got fouled,” Williams wrote. “On the defensive end, Phil got a charge call in his favor every time. Phil played great.

“Phil came to UNC.”

The cocky kid with the Little Richard look found the college game a little more demanding than he expected. Ron Morris’s ACC Basketball tells of a despondent Ford.

“I called home crying,” Ford recalled. “It was the first time that basketball was so hard.”

Smith apparently was more impressed with Ford than Ford was with himself. Taking advantage of the freshman eligibility rule instituted just two seasons before, Smith installed Ford at the point and let him run the show. One story has it that in Ford’s four years, he only once called a play of which Smith did not approve.

Buddies back home kidded

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