The Coach: Adolph Rupp, a Chautauqua Presentation. During the 42 years he coached the University of Kentucky men's basketball team, Adolph Rupp raised the game to near-religious status in the Commonwealth. Rupp's teams won 880 games, four national championships, and one Olympic gold medal. There was a flip side to all this success - the team was suspended from the 1952-1953 season after a point-shaving scandal, and Rupp was heavily criticized for taking too long to integrate the Kentucky basketball program.
Adolph Rupp grew up in Kansas, the son of immigrant farmers. He played three years of varsity basketball at the University of Kansas, but never scored a point. The University of Kentucky hired him in 1930 and remained the head coach for 41 years. Rupp's genius for public relations and his teams' winning ways combined to make Kentucky basketball a statewide, then national phenomenon, a point of pride around which Kentuckians of all stripes still rally.
This Chautauqua program is made possible by the Kentucky Humanities Council and its generous sponsors.