WholeHogSports
The finish line : McDonnell set to retire after outdoor track season
Posted on Tuesday, April 22, 2008
URL: http://www.wholehogsports.com/nwat/64423/
The coach with more national championships than any coach of any NCAA sport will retire from the University of Arkansas at the conclusion of this outdoor track season in June.
John McDonnell, with 42 NCAA championships and 83 conference championships coaching the Razorbacks in men’s track and cross country, announced his retirement Monday from the UA effective after the NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships June 11-14 in De Moines, Ia.
This summer McDonnell still will assist coaching the U. S. team’s distance runners in the Olympic games.
Turning 70 July 2, McDonnell has privately contemplated retirement for some time among his close associates and UA Chancellor John White, but acknowledged Monday he was determined not to retire until NCAA penalties for the recruiting transgressions committed by former sprints coach Lance Brauman concerning junior college transfer sprinter Tyson Gay’s enrollment in 2003 were resolved.
McDonnell was not mentioned in any allegations, but the UA selfimposed penalties in reduction of scholarships and recruiting visits. The NCAA formally approved those penalties in its ruling last autumn, but also ruled the UA must forfeit two national championships won while Gay competed as a Razorback. The UA has appealed those championships be retained as Gay was eligible when he competed. The appeal will be heard this summer and has no effect on McDonnell’s eventual successor other than how many national championships the program has won previously. “ I would have stepped down two years ago if it wasn’t for those penalties, ” McDonnell said Monday at a press conference attended by his family, team, several of his former Razorbacks, and a host of Razorback coaches from basketball and tennis and of course assistant track coaches Dick Booth, Kyle White and Danny Green and Lady Razorback track coach Lance Harter and staff including new athletics director Jeff Long, recently retired athletics director emeritus Frank Broyles and UA Chancellor John White. McDonnell, who suffered a heart attack in 2001 and as a cattle rancher was hospitalized last November when trampled by a bull, said it’s long overdue that he spend more time with his wife, Ellen, and two grown children who also reside in Fayetteville. “ I don’t know how many years I got left, ” McDonnell said, “ but I want to make the best of them. I want to spend some time with my family while they’re still around and I’m still around. ” McDonnell said he will continue cattle ranching but joked, “ I’ve given up bullriding. ”
Long will conduct the search for McDonnell’s replacement but said he would seek input from the retiring Arkansas icon. “ I would not be a very bright man, if I didn’t call upon the greatest there has ever been in NCAA track to advise me, ” Long said. “ He will have an important role. ”
A since naturalized U. S. citizen from County Mayo, Ireland, who was a worldclass runner for the University of Southwestern Louisiana (now
Louisiana-Lafayette ) McDonnell had coachedat New Providence High School in New Jersey before joining the UA. He came to Fayetteville as head cross country coach and graduate assistant to coach Ed Renfrow in 1972 while earning the bulk of his income teaching shop at Greenland High School.
McDonnell stopped teaching shop when Broyles, Arkansas’ AD from 1973-2007, promoted him to head track coach in 1978 after McDonnell won the first four of his unprecedented 34 consecutive conference cross country championships (1974-90 in the Southwest Conference and 1991-2007 in the SEC ).
Arkansas had never won a conference indoor championship until McDonnell’s men won the SWC Indoor in 1979 and never won a conference outdoor championship until his Hogs won in 1982.
His Razorbacks won conference indoor title No. 27 at last month’s SEC Indoor in Fayetteville and aim for their 23 rd conference outdoor title at the SEC meet next month in Auburn, Ala.
McDonnell’s men won their first national championship at the 1984 NCAA Indoor, at that time the only national title in school history other than Helms Foundation national title voted to Broyles ’ 1964 undefeated football team, then in 1984-85 won the first of an eventual unprecedented five NCAA triple crowns of national cross country, indoor and outdoor titles in the same academic year.
McDonnell finishes with 19 NCAA Indoor track titles, 12 NCAA Cross Country titles and aims for his program’s 13 th NCAA Outdoor title in June.
On Monday, McDonnell thanked Broyles for “ taking a chance 36 years ago on a guy who had never really proven himself, ” and called Booth, a possible candidate to succeed his boss, “ as the greatest field events coach in the world” with “ more world ranked jumpers than any coach. ”
He also thanked the Tyson family and Tyson Foods for being integral in helping fund Arkansas’ indoor and outdoor facilities from nothing in in the 1970 s to world class that have hosted the NCAA Indoor and will host the 2009 NCAA Outdoor.
“ I talked to Don Tyson and got $ 3 million for a $ 40 watch, ” McDonnell said. “ That was a pretty good deal. ”
On the banquet circuit and again at Monday’s press conference, Broyles has long said he hired McDonnell because as Frank was coaching football practice, he would see McDonnell leading a pack of distance runners and return an hour and a half later still leading them.
After the press conference Broyles said that’s no joke why he hired McDonnell though there was considerable talk back in 1978 that highly successful Arkansas State University coach Guy Kochel might be the Razorbacks’ next coach.
“ I’m serious, ” Broyles said. “ I said, ‘ There is a committed coach. ’ That was the key point. And they were winning championships. ”
And never stopped.