When Dale Brown arrived in Baton Rouge in 1972, he went out on the road and hung purple and gold nets on every basketball goal he passed. Brown, who won 448 games at LSU and died Friday at 90, spent the next 25 years selling the sport to a state that cared far more about football.
He had been ill for several months at home in Baton Rouge, with his wife Vonnie and daughter Robyn Brown Prudhomme. He was a little over a week short of his 91st birthday. LSU announced his death. “We have lost the most loving and most loved man any of us has ever known,” the Brown family said in a statement. They called him “a great humanitarian before anything else” who “always led with the heart.”
Selling the Sport
Tiger Rag called him a salesman through and through. He began selling out the Pete Maravich Assembly Center, nicknamed the “Deaf Dome” in the late 1970s, and kept it full into the early 1990s. Former Nicholls State coach Don Landry recalled in 2005 that as soon as Brown was hired he started traveling the state handing out nets, introducing himself as the new LSU coach.
The program he inherited had not been to the NCAA tournament since 1954. LSU won the SEC regular-season title in 1979, then went to the Final Four in 1981 and 1986, the second as an 11 seed. Over his career the Tigers made 13 NCAA Tournaments between 1979 and 1993, including 10 straight from 1984. Brown won four SEC regular-season titles and the 1980 SEC Tournament, and his record at LSU was 448-301.
Shaq, Jackson and a Critic of the NCAA
He recruited Shaquille O’Neal, who dominated the SEC from 1989 to 1992, and Chris Jackson, now Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, who starred from 1988 to 1990. Abdul-Rauf went No. 3 in the 1990 NBA Draft, O’Neal No. 1 two years later.
Brown was also one of the NCAA’s loudest critics. He said it “legislated against human dignity and practiced monumental hypocrisy.” The NCAA opened a four-year investigation into his program in 1982, citing LSU for sixteen violations and stripping two scholarships, though Brown was not connected to any of them. The end of his career brought another probe. During 1996-97, the NCAA concluded that an LSU booster had paid former player Lester Earl about $5,000. The Tigers went on probation in 1998 under Brown’s successor, John Brady. Earl later apologized, and Brown forgave him.
Wooden and the Honors
Brown idolized John Wooden and stayed his friend until Wooden died in 2010. “I will always remember Dale for his enthusiasm,” Wooden said. “He amazed me because there is a lot more depth to the man. He was much more than a basketball coach.” Earlier this week Brown was announced as a recipient of the John Wooden Legends of Coaching Award, due to be presented in Los Angeles this spring.
He entered the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame in 1999, the LSU Athletics Hall of Fame in 2013 and the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame in 2014. In 2022 the court at the Maravich Center was named for him. “The best potential of me is we,” he said at the unveiling.
Beginnings and Giving Back
Born on Halloween 1935 in Minot, North Dakota, Brown was raised by his single mother, Agnes, a domestic service worker with an eighth-grade education, in a small tenement apartment after his father left. He and his two older sisters all worked various jobs. “I’ll never forget where I came from,” he said at his 1999 Hall of Fame induction. After coaching he turned to motivational speaking and started the Dale Brown Foundation, which promotes educational opportunities for young people with physical disabilities, from impoverished backgrounds or from broken homes.
He and Vonnie, high school sweethearts, married in 1959. They have three grandchildren, Christopher, Peyton and Cameron.
Sources
- Dale Brown (basketball)
- LSU Basketball Coaching Legend Dale Brown Has Passed Away At Age 90 | TigerRag.com
- Dale Brown dies at 90: LSU's all-time winningest basketball coach led Tigers to two Final Four apperances
Photo: Airman 1st Class Justin T. Armstrong (Public domain)
