Where Are They Now?

John McDonnell still at work

Former Arkansas coach John McDonnell (left) and current coach Chris Bucknam speak Saturday, Feb. 11, 2017, during the Tyson Invitational in the Randal Tyson Track Center in Fayetteville. Visit nwadg.com/photos to see more photographs from the meet.

During the June 6-9 week of the NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships in Eugene, Ore., the greatest collegiate coach in the history of the sport stayed content at his Arkansas home with his wife Ellen.

Coach John McDonnell is cattleman John McDonnell now, still interested in Arkansas Razorbacks track and field and cross country but retired in 2008 from coaching Razorbacks, coached by him since 1972 and feeling 10 years removed from the flow of big meet adrenaline.

“I hate to say it, but that part of my life is over,” McDonnell said. “I’ll watch a meet if Arkansas is involved but not otherwise.”

The 42-time national champion coach and 84-time conference champion coach of both Southwest Conference and Southeastern Conference indoor track, outdoor track and cross country, and the former Irish miler who once beat the legendary Jim Ryun, is 79 and retired but certainly not retired to a rocking chair.

He’s still riding a Ranger and otherwise assisting with the cattle he’s raising near Muskogee, Okla.

“I was over there (Muskogee) today,” McDonnell said, as he and Ellen graciously hosted this interview at their home.

Since his athletes always called him “John” instead of “Coach,” those who work with his cattle certainly don’t call him “Coach” either.

“I’m just like them over there,” McDonnell said. “They don’t even know what I did. They never ask what I did or what I’ve won and that’s fine with me.”

They and the horses they ride while working the cattle are the winners in McDonnell’s view and communicate man-to-horse better than most communicate person-to-person.

“They are really good on horses,” McDonnell said. “Those horses, they can almost talk. There are great people involved in that. Down-to-earth people.”

In a literally down-to-earth business, McDonnell years back was flattened by an escaped bull.

“That was in Joplin (Mo.) on a parking lot and they opened a gate too quick,” McDonnell said. “He hit me in the chest.”

Ellen interjected.

“He broke his sternum in two places and hit his head,” Ellen said. “And they couldn’t believe there was no concussion.”

“That’s because there was nothing there,” John quipped.

McDonnell used to talk cattle with former Arkansas football coach and presumably still cattle farmer Danny Ford.

“We’d leave from here to Vinita (Okla.),” McDonnell said. “I’d drive and he’d be spitting tobacco and drink a six-pack.”

Ford, Ken Hatfield and Houston Nutt are former Arkansas football coaches that McDonnell remembers fondly. And, of course, there are recollections of Frank Broyles as the football coach who became “visionary” athletic director giving coaches the latitude to launch the Razorbacks into an all-sports program.

Ford, McDonnell said, was nearly as direct as the late Wilson Matthews.

“He treated everyone the same — like dung,” McDonnell said, smiling at the memory of Matthews, an Arkansas legend whether as fiery football coach or fiery fundraiser. “No, I really liked Wilson. Danny Ford and Wilson were two of a kind. Good people. They would tell you exactly what they thought of you. Another guy I liked was Kenny Hatfield and Houston.”

Turns out Ford isn’t the only one who has coached the Hogs while raising cattle.

New football coach Chad Morris raises cattle back in his native Texas.

“Is that right?” McDonnell said. “I’ll have to talk to him.

“I talked to the new AD (athletic director Hunter Yurachek). I liked him. Very nice, down-to-earth.”

He sees the Razorbacks’ administration taking better and more relatable care of its fan base.

And he’s always been supportive of his successor, 19 times SEC champion and 2013 NCAA Indoor champion Coach Chris Bucknam.

“I’m really happy with the way program has turned out,” McDonnell said. “It’s a good staff. Hard workers.”

Unlike the athletic director who hired him, Bucknam arrived impressed by and determined to include the legacy he inherited.

Meeting McDonnell’s approval remains as important to him as the Arkansas job itself.

“He is Coach McDonnell, man!” Bucknam said. “All you need to do is get that look and that nod and you know you are OK. And he gave me that. I appreciate beyond words how he has treated me and how he has given me the OK. Because if I didn’t have it, it would probably break me.”

McDonnell’s mere presence motivates Bucknam as coach.

“He has that incredible ability with his athletes to get the very best out of them,” Bucknam said. “And that didn’t change when I came on board wanting the best out of me. That’s a big part of what motivates me, making him proud of the program that he brought to greatness.”

They transitioned smoothly because Bucknam’s respect for his predecessor and McDonnell’s respect for the program he bequeathed and the effort he saw put forth to sustain it allowed no other way.

“Legends control the narrative,” Bucknam said of the tone McDonnell set. “I couldn’t have done it without him. And I couldn’t have been more honored to get his nod of approval and know that if I needed anything, he told me I could call him. And I’ve done that a few times yet have tried to respect the rest that he deserves and tried not to intrude on his privacy. I just continue to try to live up to the standard that he set.”

That standard, McDonnell said, starting with his first world-class runner, the late Niall O’Shaughnessy in the 1970s, was set by character dictating it to the “characters” that any large team is bound to have.

“I look back at the pictures of all the All-Americans and national champions,” McDonnell said. “We had some guys that were leaders in character. Those good guys helped me control. They’d say, ‘Coach, you need to keep an eye on this guy right here.’ It was great camaraderie and like everybody on the team was a coach.”

Winning triumphs over national origin, skin color, language and recruiting pedigree. So McDonnell’s men won harmoniously blending Arkies, Texans, Irishmen, Africans, Englishmen, Scandanavians, Aussies, Canadians, and about every hyphenated American you can name with contributions from recruits you’d call five-stars to walk-ons.

McDonnell and his field events coach, Dick Booth, like distance coach McDonnell, renowned as the best in his field, churned out great ones with stunning regularity.

McDonnell can’t name his single greatest Razorback because there are too many: Joe Falcon, Alistair Cragg, Erick Walder, (McDonnell remains miffed, “It’s crazy,” he said, that the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame doesn’t include Walder, the 10-time NCAA champion and still NCAA long jump record-holder), Paul Donovan, Frank O’Mara, Wallace Spearmon Jr. and Daniel Lincoln among others come to mind.

But for team leaders, the list is headed by O’Shaughnessy, though he never won a national championship, and nine-time NCAA champion and Olympic gold and silver triple jump medalist Mike Conley.

“Mike Conley, and Niall O’Shaughnessy to start with,” McDonnell said. “Niall was a leprechaun from heaven. He ran like a machine and was an outstanding student and did exactly what you’d ask and so did Mike Conley. Same thing. What a great job in the jumps and what a great guy.”

So great they made it easy for McDonnell not to have to give any the “star” treatment even while coaching to the individuality that track and field fuels yet blending it to be a team sport.

“Now while I treated them the same,” McDonnell said, “I know everybody is different and you have to learn how to read their mind and the way they think. But there is something the same, treat them with respect. Nobody likes to be put down in front of their teammates. I’d try not to make anybody feel small. I’d just tell them, ‘I want to see you Monday in my office.’ Then I’d tell them, ‘Don’t pull that crap again or you’re gone.”

And if they did pull it again they were gone.

That didn’t happen often. Because even the ones he didn’t coach directly, the sprinters, hurdlers, jumpers and throwers, respected him as their coach while calling him John.

Shannon Sidney, the Russellville native and football receiver on Ford’s 1995 SEC West championship team, epitomized the team wide respect for McDonnell upon winning the 1997 SEC Outdoor 400-meter hurdles for McDonnell’s 1997 SEC Outdoor champions after previously finishing runner-up.

“I felt like I had finally pleased Coach McDonnell,” Sidney said. “That of all his champions, I was finally one of them and not second again. Feeling his hand on your neck when you win, that’s not your average ‘Attaboy.”

It’s still the ultimate “Attaboy”, especially for the coaches.

This story appeared in the July edition of Hawgs Illustrated