Rebuilding runs in the family

CORVALLIS, Ore. – As America met the Obamas during the past two years, Craig Robinson became known as their original key swing voter. Years ago, he had been asked by younger sister Michelle to play a suitor named Barack Obama in pickup basketball and report back on his character.

Cute story. But does Robinson, who will sleep in the White House Tuesday night following Obama’s inauguration, ever think how he might have changed history? What if his scouting report said the skinny law school intern was a ball hog or called tacky fouls?

“Oh sure, I actually think about that a lot,” the first-year Oregon State men’s basketball coach said last week after his team’s regular 6 a.m. practice. ”If he’d been that type of player, that probably would have been the end of the game.”

Instead it gave Robinson, now trying to resurrect one of America’s most beleaguered major-college basketball programs, a unique recruiting tool. When asked by prospects’ parents if their sons will meet the president, he doesn’t promise anything – but says “it’s more likely if they go to Oregon State than anywhere else.”

While Robinson, 46, doesn’t want to break any rules by having his brother-in-law woo recruits, he’s also unwilling to impinge on executive privilege: ”The president of the United States has the right to call any citizen.”

Including Robinson, who has spoken frequently with his sister and brother-in-law for years. After the Beavers beat Southern California on Jan. 4 to snap a 23-game Pac-10 losing streak, the president-elect called for a half-hour to hear how it happened.

They have more than family ties in common. As presidents and power conferences go, both are comparatively inexperienced. Each is in his first year trying to spearhead turnarounds.

Robinson’s new family reality has gone from “surreal” to ”mind-boggling.” Like when he told kids Avery, 16, and Leslie, 12, that they’ll be staying with their cousins, grandmother and aunt and uncle tonight. But, he says, “it’ll be at the White House. That sounds like a joke and you’re waiting for the punch line.”

Rebuilding in Corvallis

Oregon State basketball has been a Pac-10 punch line for years, and after last season, longtime fan Bill Case says ”things couldn’t get worse.”

The 15th-winningest program in college basketball history has floundered since its last 20-win season in 1989-90. That concluded a decade in which the Beavers won four Pac-10 titles and made the NCAA tournament seven times. Their rosters included future NBA first-round picks such as Steve Johnson, A.C. Green, Jose Ortiz, Lester Conner and Gary Payton. Last season, the team went 6-25 and winless in the conference, the first time that’s happened in the Pac-10.

That rubble created an opportunity for Robinson, in just his second year as head coach at Brown in the Ivy League, just as the unpopular Iraq War and economic recession did for Obama.

Oregon State athletic director Bob De Carolis says he hired Robinson because ”he’s smart as a whip” and coached Brown to a school-record 19 wins last season.

The job included some inescapable challenges. OSU’s Gill Coliseum, which hasn’t been a state-of-the-art arena since the Eisenhower era, seems all the more ancient given archrival Oregon, powered by millions from Nike founder and alumnus Phil Knight, has built comparatively lavish facilities in nearby Eugene.

Knight pledged about $100 million for a new $200 million basketball arena scheduled to open during the 2010-2011 season. “We don’t have all the bells and whistles,” De Carolis says. ”But with 18-year-olds (being recruited), you’ve got to get past that and say it’s not all about stuff. It’s about people, too.”

Winning over fans

Case, a farmer who has been a Beavers fan since 1961, remembers “everybody was nervous” when Robinson was hired April 7. But not about anything related to politics.

Obama carried Oregon with 57 percent of the vote and won its largest county, Portland’s Multnomah County, with three-quarters of the vote – about his share in his home county, Chicago’s Cook.

And helping his family, rather than pushing policies or positions, made Robinson’s campaigning acceptable.

”I didn’t necessarily vote for his brother-in-law,” says longtime fan Mike Butler, a homebuilder who has attended Beavers games for 20 years. “But if my brother-in-law was running for president, I’d support him to the nth degree. I don’t have a problem with any of it.”

And if the First Fan showed up at a Beavers game?

“I’d give up my seat for him,” Butler says.

Experience was the main issue, as it was for Obama – a two-term Illinois state legislator and one-term U.S. senator – during his run for president. Case says “most people weren’t happy” with Robinson “mainly because they didn’t know what we were getting. He wasn’t seasoned. I thought we needed a guy with more experience.”

But Case says he sees the Beavers, 6-10 going into games Thursday at California and Saturday at Stanford, progressing under Robinson: “You make a mistake now, and Craig is in your face. He’s making them work their rears off. It’s the first time in years I’ve seen these guys in shape.”

Robinson didn’t bring up Obama during his six-hour interview, but De Carolis says, “Of course we knew who his brother-in-law was, and he knew we knew.”

But it wasn’t hard for De Carolis to imagine that the boost Robinson got from his family ties would likely open doors with recruits: “And as he said, if he can get in the door, he can sell.”

He also thinks Robinson’s high profile helps safeguard the program: “He’s always got to be squeaky clean because what he does reflects on the Obamas.”

Long-term thinking

Now all Robinson has to do is become the change Beavers fans can believe in. But then, Robinson is uniquely qualified to know the improbable can become possible.

He notes a party at his parents’ place in Chicago, where he helped introduce Obama to his relatives and asked his prospective brother-in-law about his plans. Obama mentioned politics. Robinson thought he was talking about maybe becoming a Chicago alderman. No, said Obama, he was even thinking about the presidency. Robinson took it in stride, like he’d heard a youngster talk about making the NBA. But he figured others wouldn’t understand: “I told him, ‘Don’t say that aloud because people will think you’re nuts.’ ”

Now Robinson – who admits OSU “has to play perfectly to win games” – is trying to think long-term. He doesn’t work refs much – although you’d think he’d mumble something about IRS audits –for now: “Until we’re battling at the top of the league, there’s no point in trying to influence refereeing.”

As OSU lost in overtime to Washington State on Thursday, Robinson looked calm. Except when he gave his team an angry shout-out that fits with today’s inauguration: “Patience!”