Article published December 09, 2007
In Their Words: John Rudley
UT education assisted point guard
John Rudley was the Rockets' point guard for three seasons, including Toledo's best ever - 23-2 in 1966-67.
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In Their Words is a weekly feature appearing Sundays in The Blade's sports section. Blade sports writer Maureen Fulton talked with John Rudley, who was the point guard on the University of Toledo men's basketball team in the late 1960s. Rudley is now the interim chancellor and president at the University of Houston.
John Rudley came to the University of Toledo in 1965 in the same recruiting class as two future NBA players. He believed he had a chance to play a couple of years professionally if he had pursued it.
But Rudley, from Benton Harbor, Mich., felt if he took advantage of his academic opportunities at UT, it would lead him to a brighter future. More than 40 years later, he has lived up to his high expectations.
Rudley, who averaged 11.4 points a game in three seasons at UT, is the interim chancellor and president at the University of Houston. Once his interim duties end next month he will resume his post as the vice chancellor and vice president of administration and finance, which he has held for nearly six years.
Rudley is a certified public accountant. He has a doctoral degree in administration and a master's degree in administration and supervision from Tennessee State University. He earned his undergraduate degree from UT in business administration.
Rudley, 5-foot-9, was a UT freshman the same year as Steve Mix and John Brisker, who both went on to play professionally. Their first year on the varsity in 1966-67, UT won a Mid-American Conference championship and finished 23-2. The Rockets' only losses were to Marshall and Virginia Tech.As the starting point guard that year, Rudley averaged 7.4 points and 3.9 rebounds. Statistics for assists were not listed in the UT media guide until 1973-74. He bumped his scoring average up in each of his final two seasons, to 12 points a game in 1967-68 and 15 in 1968-69.
Rudley's senior year was one of turmoil, when some of the players boycotted the team because of a conflict with coach Bob Nichols. But Rudley, as a team captain, missed just one game. The team finished 13-11 and fifth in the MAC.
After he finished his undergraduate and graduate education, Rudley worked in positions such as the senior technical advisor with the U.S. Department of Education and the vice president for business and finance at the Tennessee Board of Regents. He went to the University of Houston in 2002.
"WHEN I WAS in high school, the Benton Harbor high school team won the state championship two years in a row and we were recognized by the legislature as the greatest high school basketball team in the state of Michigan. Bob Nichols recruited me and indicated he wanted to adopt the up-tempo type play and I would start. That's all he had to say to me, I would start. Most people from Michigan wanted to play at the University of Michigan or Michigan State, but none of those institutions [had a coach] as personable as Bobby Nichols."
"Calvin Lawshe, a great local athlete out of Macomber, was my roommate. He always talked to me about graduating. 'We should be playing basketball but also get our degrees,' Calvin was always talking about that. That's why I'm an accountant today. I was having a hard time with engineering. My roommate was working in accounting and I said, 'I can do that.'•"
"A lot of athletes need somebody to emphasize to them they should get a great education. I got a great University of Toledo education. A quality education means something."
"I wasn't as focused on the NBA as [Steve Mix and John Brisker] were. I felt my chances to play there were 50-50. I was thinking about the long term. I could go to the NBA and spend a year or two, but then where would I be after that?"
"THE CONFLICT WITH coach Nichols occurred when [teammate] Bob Miller didn't go to class but went to practice. Coach told him if he didn't go to class he couldn't go to practice. Students who were not athletes didn't have to go to class unless attendance was mandatory. He was denied, we felt, due process of student rights. If he wanted to come to practice he should be allowed. Coach Nichols was strict and was making a teaching point, but we wanted student-athletes to have the same rights as the rest of the class."
"It wasn't a Bob Nichols problem [in 1968] as much as it was the time. Look at the environment. You can see the atmosphere. We felt obligated to support Bob [Miller]. I apologized to Bob [Nichols] at the Martin Luther King banquet that I was in Toledo for last year. The rights the student-athletes have there are because of the issues we raised. Now you can't have all the athletes in the same dorm. We want athletes to be part of the regular student population."
"ACTING AS THE chancellor and president has been great in that it's given me a new perspective on a leadership role that one must assume. To oversee 35,000 students in the system at four campuses, I look at it as a president's training school. My next career move will be a presidency somewhere. The University of Houston Board of Regents, the confidence they expressed in me indicates to me that the hard work I've been going through the past five years to move the university toward being a national flagship research institute has been worth it."
Contact Maureen Fulton at:
mfulton@theblade.com
or 419-724-6160.
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