Published in The American Hereford Journal, April 15, 1951, pp. 10-11

Coach Adolph F. Rupp literally takes the bull by the horns as he looks over his 11-year-old MW Domino 65th, a son of Colorado Domino 159th.

by DON McCARTHY - American Hereford Association

The Baron has benched his rare collection of Wildcats and called in his herd of Herefords to unwind his nerves.

The tension, excitement and the thrilling climax of another NCAA national championship for his University of Kentucky basketball team left Coach Adolph Frederick Rupp, widely known in sports circles as the Baron, with a chronic case of bench jitters.

But the Baron is not one to sit idly by when he finds himself in a tight situation. After 23 years of coaching and winning four national basketball championships - three NCAA titles and a national invitational crowm - the Baron has conceived his own prescription for soothing his nerves.

The recent evening in Minneapolis, when his underdog Wildcats upset another band of Wildcats from Coach Rupp's native state of Kansas by a score of 68 to 58, is gradually becoming just another pleasant memory for the coach.

Prescription Works Wonders

On the Cover Page - Coach Adolph Rupp of the University of Kentucky basketball team likes his hoop stars tall - something like seven feet if possible - but when it comes to Herefords he wants them just as stocky and lowset as he can get them. For instance, like the youngsters of the 1951 crop upon which he casts an appraising look in the picture featured on the cover page of this issue of the Hereford Journal. They comprise just a few of the youngsters now coming along at his Four Leaf Clover Hereford Farm, near Lexignton, Ky., and provide, he says, the best means of all of unwinding his tense nerves afer the hectic cage season which ended when his Kentucky quintet won the NCAA championship at Minneapolis recently.

His prescription for calming his nerves is to leave his desk, stacked high with unopened letters, congratulatory telegrams and memos on local and long distance calls, for a day with his Hereford herd 12 miles northeast of Lexington.

Driving up the entrance way to his 266-acre farm, the Baron takes a deep breath of the country air and a smile breaks on his face as he looks with admiration toward his new crop of Hereford calves with their protecting mothers at their side. He parks his car alongside a fence and you can feel his tension ease as he surveys the inspiring color scheme of his red-bodied, whitefaced cattle munching contentedly on a green carpet of Kentucky bluegrass.

The Baron of basketball has now become the Baron of a small cattle empire. He leaves his car for a walk around the pastures and reminds you that this is the second time since the first of the year that he has found time to visit his herd of Herefords.

Walking among the new calves, he pauses and looks pointedly at one little fellow which shows promise of becoming a proud herd sire. He studies the youngster in the same way he studies a freshman basketball player the first time he reports for practice.

In another pasture, he casts a sharp eye over part of his herd of 62 registered Hereford cows. He points to one cow and tells you that she is going to be retired from the squad. He points to another and confides that she has a regular berth on the team. She's an example of the type he wants throughout his herd.

"Now that cow over there," he says, "you might think she doesn't measure up to everything you want but year after year she produces one of the best calves in the lot. And as long as they produce, the have a secure spot on my team."

The Baron and his young son Herky started their Hereford herd five years ago. The coach owns another 187-acre farm nearby, while a third farm southwest of Lexington serves as a home for his commercial herd of Herefords and a few sheep. His goal is to consolidate his properties into one 600-acre spread.

"Farming is the safest investment a man can make today," he said. "In fact, everyone ought to have a farm, a place where you can look over the rolling hills and call the soil your own."

Herefords Safest Investment

"After you buy that farm" he continued, "I believe Herefords are the safest investment you can make. Herefords for me are not only an investment but my best means of recreation and exercise.

"My objective is to build a herd of Herefords that I can be proud of, just like I am proud of a standout basketball team that I had a hand in building," the Baron said.

"Building a Hereford herd " he continued, "poses the same challenge building a basketball team. When came to Kentucky 21 years ago, I decided to have a good basketball team", Now I have decided the same about my herd of Herefords."

The Baron's love for Hereford cattle took root one fall day when he skipped his classes in business administration at the University of Kansas while a student there and headed for the American Royal Livestock Show in Kansas City.

"I saw all the good Hereford being exhibited at the Royal and I made a solemn vow to myself that someday I would have some Herefords of my own," he recalled.

Plans to Shoot for the Top

"After I build my herd to the point where I think the individuals are good enough for tournament play, I'm going to shoot for the big shows including the International and the Royal, just like I shot for the top with my basketball teams," he said.

Experience has taught the Baron that he can't expect to walk away with championships the first few years on the show circuit. He expects oldtimers at the top of their classes to place above his entries.

"But you know," he added, "Notre Dame beat us seven times in a row before we started to hold our own. Notre Dame taught me what should be done to improve my team, and the same thing will hold true for my Hereford cattle in show competition."

The Baron has both enthusiasm and the yearn to learn when it comes to his cattle. He and his herdsman, Chester Jones, plan to cull out sharply his cow herd and his calf crop to the point where he will be proud to own every animal retained in the foundation herd.

Herd sire in chief almost from the herd's beginning has been the 11-year old MW Domino 65th, one of the last living sons of Colorado Domino 159th, leading Milky Way Farms herd bull of several years ago. Other bulls now in the Rupp herd are Triumphant TT, son of the 1947 Denver champion TT Triumphant, purchased in dam from Con Warren, Deer Lodge, Mont., and a son of Dandy Domino 3d, purchased in dam from the Painter Hereford Ranches, Denver and Roggen, Colo.

Studying a crop of Hereford heifers with the same sharp eyes with which he looks over freshman basketball players reporting for their first practice, Adolph Rupp of Kentucky finds it pays to hang on to the good ones. The Baron wil keep most of these heifers on his 'first team' providing they develop as expected.

Law of Averages No Hazard

The time when Adolph Rupp & Son will be listed up in class at the major livestock shows may be sooner than average for other new Hereford herds over the country. The Baron, apparently, has little respect for the law of averages.

He tossed the law out of bounds when his team won the national championship three times out of four years. His next national title shouldn't come until 2,800 years hence, according to the way he figures the law of averages. But it will be no surprise to a lot of fans if Kentucky wins another title or two in the next five years. That's the way things usually work out for the fellow who doesn't worry too much about the law of averages but just goes ahead every year doing the best job

With his twenty-first year at the Bluegrass school behind him, Baron Rupp can look back over a two-decade period of unparalleled success - an amazing record of 442 wins against 79 losses.

A group of brood matrons pauses to watch the camera across the pond in one of the Rupp pastures.

Trains a Cage Giant

The crafty professor of hardwood tactics and his nationally famous Wildcats have become virtually synonymous the basketball world. The record compiled by Rupp-coached Kentucky teams borders on the fantastic and his cage powerhouses have consistently won nation-wide fame in intercollegiate competition. Coach Rupp's Kentucky Wildcats can boast an unequalled record of 83 victories against 17 defeats in major tournament competition over the past years, including participation in 18 national classics. The coach and his "Fabulous Five" (Beard, Jones, Groza, Rollins and Barker) represented the United States as a unit as the American basketball entry at the 1948 Olympic Games in London.

Not to be outshone by the highly publicized cage powerhouses he has developed at the University of Kentucky, Baron Rupp personally has scaled the pinnacles of basketball fame and won deserved recognition in his own right.

For the rebuilding job he accomplished on the sophomore-studded 1949-50 Wildcats, weakened beyond repair, everyone but the coach thought, by the loss of four great stars, the New York Basketball Writers Association named Adolph Rupp "Coach of the Year." The new team's record was a mere 25 games won and only five lost.

In 1944, he won the highest individual coaching honor in the basketball world - election to the basketball Hall of Fame sponsored by Helms Foundation. He was the 10th coach in the history of the sport to be so honored by the quasi-official California organization, which in 1949 selected him as Coach of the Year for the second season in a row and designated the Wildcats as national champions for the third time - an honor given no other collegiate quintet.

The Baron also has achieved a host of additional honors during his career. He is the author of a best-seller, "Championship Basketball," which is already being translated into foreign languages. During the past season, he was made an honorary citizen of New Orleans for the second time and is the holder of the first plaque of appreciation ever awarded by the Sugar Bowl basketball committee. He was honored in 1949 as the outstanding citizen of the university city of Lexington and holds the high office of Assistant Raban in the Oleika Temple of the Shrine. In 1945, Coach Rupp was named to the Kentucky Hall of Fame as the second man to be so honored in the history of the state.

Just for the record, the Baron is a native of Halstead, Kas., where he captained the high school cage team. Later at the University of Kansas, he played under the tutelage of Dr. Forrest (Phog) Allen. As a high school coach at Freeport, Ill., his teams won 71 out of 82 games prior to his appearance on the Kentucky scene in 1930.

When summer comes and vacation starts for the University of Kentucky faculty, the Baron will spend his spare time with his Herefords. And when the fall term opens, he will be in top shape to combat another season of bench jitters, which have become an old sidekick in his program of shooting for the top.

Return to Kentucky Basketball page, Kentucky articles, statistics, team schedules, team rosters, opponents, players, coaches, opposing coaches, games, assistance or search this site.