Quote:Norm Sloan, who coached N.C. State to the NCAA men's basketball title in 1974 and was known for his feisty style and plaid sportcoats, died Tuesday morning at Duke Hospital, his son, Mike, confirmed. Sloan was 77.

<a href='http://www.jsonline.com/sports/coll/dec03/190852.asp' target='_blank'>http://www.jsonline.com/sports/coll/dec03/190852.asp</a>

Another titanic spirit enters Wolfpack heaven ...



Godspeed, Coach. Thanks for the memories.

I'm sure God himself is wearing a plaid jacket in honor of his newest assistant coach joining his staff.

Norm Sloan was one of the good 'uns... :frown:

BTW, very cool wolf pic, beo!

The game has lost a legend.

R.I.P. Coach Sloan.

I'm not old enough to remember the days of The Man in Plaid roaming the sidelines, but I know the influence he's had on ACC basketball.

Rest in peace -- we'll miss ya, Norm.

-JD

Stormin' Norman, he and his teams were always fun to watch and conducted themselves like gentlemen on and off the court. We've lost a great one!

doh

Let us never forget his legacy. Rest In Peace, Norm.

Quote:For Good Or Bad, Norm Was ... Well, Norm
JOE HENDERSON
Tampa Tribune
Published: Dec 10, 2003

It generally is good policy to speak no ill of the dead, so we'll have to choose our words carefully. You'll understand why. Norm Sloan died Tuesday, and if we left out his dark side as we say goodbye, we'd be hundreds of words shy of filling the space allotted for this column.
That's not very nice. But a lot of the time, neither was Norm.

He coached 627 winning basketball games, including 150 at the University of Florida, and it's possible he didn't cheat in all of them. He was cantankerous, combative, crude and - through the judgment of the NCAA - a crook.

He may not be subletting Hugh Culverhouse's place on eternity road, but chances are he was handed a brochure.

His defenders will say he introduced the Gators to big-time basketball, and that's certainly true. What's even better is, they eventually recovered.

Florida went to the NCAA Tournament three times during Stormin' Norman's tempestuous nine-year reign. But the price tag was national disgrace.

There were cash payments to players from coaches, thugs masquerading as scholar-athletes (see Maxwell, Vernon), drugs, you name it. Sloan got fired, the Gators got probation, and they had to bring in Don DeVoe in a desperate attempt to clean it up.

It didn't lead to many wins, but DeVoe left his mark with an all- time quote: ``I'm a no-nonsense coach in a nonsense program.''

Norm's program.


Had Some Friends

To be fair, a lot of people were saying nice things Tuesday - none nicer than Monte Towe, who played for Sloan at N.C. State, was his top assistant in Gainesville and now coaches at New Orleans.

``He has touched a lot of great people in a great way, and he will be missed,'' Towe said. ``We love him, and we love his family.``

Others, mostly in North Carolina, used words like ``icon'' and ``legend'' that surely do describe one portion of his being. We can only wish Sloan had gone public with those traits more often.

We could be charitable and use the euphemism ``old school'' to describe Norm. You'd nod and understand saying it that way is more polite than pointing out how he used to cuss and humiliate most anyone he didn't like.

Even if you wanted to like him, it became too much work.


Coach Behaving Badly

Cable TV was in its infancy when Sloan returned to Gainesville to bring the Gators into the big time. One night, a TV crew stuck a microphone into Sloan's huddle during a timeout.

Big mistake. The announcers spent the next several minutes apologizing to viewers for the torrent of gutter profanity that Sloan directed at his players. Well, that was Norm.

People put up with it because Sloan won, but when it came out how much he was cheating and what lousy citizens some of his players were, even winning couldn't save him.

We are a forgiving people. Just look at Charley Pell, who was darn near beloved by the time he died, even though he arguably was a bigger cheater than Norm. But people liked Pell, and he at least admitted he had done wrong and tried to make amends.

You can only hope Sloan made his peace after leaving Gainesville. You can only hope he understood there's more to life than basketball, and that anyone not "for'' you is not necessarily "against'' you. You hope the storm inside him blew itself out before it was too late.

:rolleyes: