Hooptown serves up its HOF tribute to GU’s Dan Fitzgerald: ‘The last of the basketball cowboys’ | Dave Boling

Jamie Dudley provides a moving example of how recognition for Dan Fitzgerald’s legacy at Gonzaga has dwindled over time.

A point guard in the pre-Cinderella days at Gonzaga in the early 1990s, Dudley recently met a well-known GU guard from some 20 years later, a four-year starter who earned All-American mentions.

The younger Zag asked Dudley: “So, you played for Fewie (coach Mark Few), right?”

Dudley: “No, I played for Fitz.”

The younger man asked. “Who’s Fitz?”

Dudley was stunned, and saddened.

“He had no idea,” Dudley said. “And it just broke my heart.”

The pointed reality: Whole generations of Zag fans, passionate as followers can get, share a diminishing awareness of this hugely important contributor to GU basketball history.

This week, however, the late Daniel John Fitzgerald is being inducted into the Hooptown USA Hall of Fame.

It’s not only warranted but absolutely mandated. You couldn’t dare call yourself “Hooptown USA” without stepping up and reminding the newer residents of your fantasy realm of the full folklore and mythology of one of your early progenitors.

Fitzgerald laid the groundwork and footings for the program, not only elevating it from the threshold of extinction to an NCAA Tournament berth. But, to more durable effect, he had the foresight to hire the two young assistants who succeeded him and took the program to the top and kept it there.

If there’s a consistent message from this Hall of Fame honor, and from the comments of the aging core of disciples still benefiting from Fitzgerald’s enduring influence, it’s this: Yes, the Zags have become an incredible phenomenon, and the subsequent coaches and players and administration have earned every bit of it.

But … Just Don’t Forget Fitz.

In addition to the passing of time, part of the fading image may be the result of Fitzgerald’s ignominious departure. As athletic director, Fitzgerald landed the Zags on probation in 1997.

The findings seem laughable in the current unregulated state of college sports.

As hard as they tried during a six-month investigation, NCAA officials could find no illicit payments to a player, no instances of self-enrichment, and no competitive advantage gained.

They found that Fitzgerald took money that the program earned (roughly $200,000 over a 16-year period) and put it in an account where he could get to it to help the athletic programs – outside of university control.

Consequently, the probation included no limitations on recruiting, scholarships or postseason appearances.

Fitzgerald said at the time: “If I made some procedural errors, I’m a big boy and I’ll face the tune. But I’ll tell ’ ya what, money didn’t go to players and there’s no yacht in my back yard.”

Fitzgerald was loved by so many, and so respected for his integrity, that the ruling came as a shocking rebuke.

“If unethical conduct is trying to hang on to an understaffed and underfunded program, OK,” he said. “I made a very bad mistake in judgment.”

Going back to the Greeks, nothing was more dramatic than a hero with a flaw. In most cases, it came down to hubris. A strong suspicion is that Fitzgerald was convinced he could more efficiently direct those funds than the institution could.

And he probably was right in that regard, but wrong by strict rule interpretation. Did he deserve to be punished? Sure. But not erased.

He had been so highly regarded that NCAA Rules Committee chairman George Raveling appointed him to the committee in 1995.

Raveling, at the time, said that he saw Fitzgerald as “the last of the basketball cowboys.” He evoked an image of Gary Cooper in High Noon, doing the right things for all the right reasons, always true to his beliefs.

Such was Fitzgerald’s image – larger than life, a defiant underdog, a charismatic weaver-of-tales. He contained multitudes, with an enormous personality spectrum that could range from intelligent and curious, hilarious and wise, to unbendingly tough and unrelentingly demanding. But overriding it all, and cementing his place in the hearts of his players, was his deep caring for others.

The problem with lost personalities over time is they’re not making new Fitz stories. So, we will revive a few of the million old ones to serve today’s purpose.

Shortly after Fitzgerald died of an apparent heart attack in January, 2010, at age 67, his value to the program was still fresh in the minds of key figures in Gonzaga history.

An obvious early Fitzgerald milestone was his successful recruitment of John Stockton, who would become a Hall of Famer and the NBA’s all-time assist leader.

“(Fitzgerald) has been a special man in my life, and in the lives of a lot of people,” Stockton said. “He was an unforgettable personality. He was loyal – incredibly loyal – above all.”

Dan Monson succeeded Fitzgerald as head coach (when Fitz stepped aside to focus on his athletic-director duties) in 1997, and in 1999 led the Zags to their breakthrough Elite 8 NCAA Tournament run.

“When you talk about the ‘Zag Way,’ the tradition … he was the foundation of all that. He’ll always be a founding father.”

Mark Few started at GU as an unproven assistant and took over from Monson on his way to a Hall of Fame coaching career.

“It’s simple – I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Fitz,” Few said after Fitzgerald passed. “He’s had a huge impact on how we still run the program, how we work, how we prepare. What we do and what we achieve now has Fitz’s imprint all over it.”

So often, one of the first characteristics mentioned about Fitzgerald was his toughness. Tough? To the point of combativeness.

Former assistant Billy Grier, back in the early 2000s, recalled a time on the road at Idaho State, when a rowdy fan threw something that hit Fitz. Fitz spotted the culprit, and while the game was going on, stood and challenged the miscreant: “You, bring it down here, right now, right here,” Grier recalled.

This was not a coach who would allow players to back down.

“He was tough-nosed as anybody, right?” said Jeff Brown, a three-time all-West Coast Conference center from the early 1990s. “We were a reflection of that true underdog personality, and we kind of lived through his (motto of) ‘play hard, play smart.’ ”

Fitzgerald’s fiery temperament made Gonzaga games pure theater even when the team wasn’t consistently winning.

Tall and rangy, highly animated, Fitzgerald had this striking shock of white hair at his forehead, which seemed to glow brighter (by contrast) when his face reddened when screaming at a ref or an ill-prepared player. It gave him the air of an angry badger.

So much more of Fitzgerald’s impact came behind the scenes, in the draconian 10-mile runs he put his team through before the season to ensure maximum fitness, or some of legendary drills, such as one descriptively titled “Jungle.”

Other teams had higher-valued recruits, but they wouldn’t be better conditioned nor be as well-prepared.

“We were not the most skilled team, for sure, but we were more prepared,” Dudley said. He recalled a number of times that they had scouted opponents so thoroughly that sometimes GU players had to tell opposing players where they were supposed to be in certain sets.

Brown, as an executive in tech industries, said he often thinks of Fitz when conducting meetings in conference rooms around the world. “(I think about) cleaning up the garbage and the paper cups or whatever they’ve served to us, making sure the chairs get pushed in, for all those little life lessons that he was so good at.”

Brown paused, apologizing for “getting emotional,” about the topic of Fitzgerald.

Continuing, he recalled his involvement with “The Fitz” prep basketball tournament that, for years, raised money for good causes in his name. So many times, Brown said, people came up to him to relate a time when Fitzgerald had donated blood to help somebody, or helped a coach find work, or somebody else to find crucial medical care.

“He touched so many lives,” Brown said.

A Spokane attorney, Jim McPhee said that Fitzgerald’s influence is felt almost every day in his practice, even more than 40 years since he last played for the coach.

Fitzgerald used to offer one piece of final advice before leaving the locker room, McPhee said for a newspaper article several years ago: “Lace ’ em up tight.” McPhee continues to write that message on his paperwork, attributed to “DJF,” reminding him to master the smallest of details, and go at it with everything he’s got.

As a reporter on the Zag beat for a few memorable years, I was most impressed by Fitzgerald’s capacity to make such a deep, human connection with people, to somehow care so deeply and genuinely.

In the locker room after perhaps his team’s biggest win (over Stanford in the 1994 NIT), I watched him tell the players how much he loved them, and then reminded them to clean up their celebration mess so the custodians wouldn’t have to pick up after them.

And a few days later, when the Zags lost a close one at Kansas State, he revealed the team’s truest identity: “Of the 13 guys in that locker room, 13 of them were crying,” Fitzgerald said. “That’s what being a team is all about.”

Some contend that the real measure of a life is how long its influence is felt even after it’s passing. It’s evident from those who knew him best that Dan Fitzgerald remains one of a kind.

Unique and unforgettable.