p.1 STANFORD UNIVERSITY PROJECT: Bob Murphy Interviews INTERVIEWEE: Mike Montgomery Murphy: [0:01] Hello again, everybody, and welcome once again to the Stanford Sports History Book. Visiting this time with Coach Mike Montgomery, who has been with Stanford for 17 years. And he has coached overall for 25 years and he's won over 500 hundred games. And folks, that add up to 20 wins a season, both at The University of Montana and at Stanford. A fabulous record with all kind of awards. Coach, I know you're trying to be humble, but it isn't easy. [laughter] Montgomery: [0:32] It is easy, it's not that hard to be humble. This is not rocket science, this is just coaching basketball. I think if you get yourself in a situation with good kids and you have good people working for you, you can have success. I think if somebody were looking for a blueprint as to why I've been successful, it's been because I've had good people around me that have been hard workers, most of whom have gone on and become head coaches in their own right. [1:04] We've had great kids. I mean, obviously, at Stanford we get kids that are exceptional, but even at Montana I had kids that really enjoyed playing basketball, really wanted to win. We tried to recruit kids there that being at Montana was important. While a lot of the guys in the Big Sky would recruit kids from junior college, players from California that really didn't care at all where they were, they just wanted to play basketball. I think that's been probably the number one thing, is the players I've had where I've been have really wanted to be there and really wanted to succeed. Murphy: [1:39] Mike, you were born into a coaching family, talk about that. Let's go back a few years. Long Beach, California, your brothers, your dad. I mean, you were born to be a coach. Montgomery: [1:49] You known, they didn't want me to be a coach. Just like, I guess, I have some second thoughts about my son who kind of wants to be a coach, because that's p.2 all he knows and been around our basketball program over the years. You know when you're little and you go to games and there's people and it's exciting and it just naturally gets your attention. In fact, I was at the UCLA-Stanford game in the Coliseum, which Stanford people won't want to remember, because it was 72 to nothing when John Brody was the quarterback. And I distinctly remember that. I wasn't very old, but we were sitting up in the Coliseum. And then my brothers, who were older, started playing sports and, so, it became something that was important. At my house the TV couldn't be on before 5: [2:39] 00. Dad didn't want the kids sitting around watching TV all day. But there was an exception to that, and that was sports. Whenever sports were on, they could be on. Which, as a kid, what meant to you, "Well, sports must be really important, if they can be on television, but highway patrol can't be. It's got to be important." [3:02] So, when you are born that way it becomes really important to you. And, of course, anybody that's ever played competitively knows how much fun it is just to get out, and compete, and play, and sweat, and the team, and all that stuff. Murphy: [3:18] How about three of you? Your two brothers, Don and Dick, and yourself. The three of you guys hang together growing up? How'd it work out? Montgomery: [3:24] No, they're older. They're much closer in age. Dick, my oldest brother is six years older and Don's four years older. And so, they were best friends, they hung out together. But I was that much farther behind that it was hard to include me. [3:41] And that was at the point where I got in college, then they started to include me, because I played rugby with Don. In fact, he invited me to come out to play with the rugby team. And that was important and all his older buddies and all the football players. So that was like me looking up to these guys that I watched play football and everything. And so, went out and tried to be successful there. But that meant a lot to me. [4:07] And then, of course, Dick was a real good volleyball player and had really become fairly accomplished in the club volleyball scene. And we would play some two man together and play against each other on the beach. But when I was younger, I was too far behind to really spend much time with them. p.3 Murphy: [4:26] Long Beach State, and of course, we played down there two or three years ago. and it was like a homecoming for you. Great place to go to school. And of course, going back a few years, that was pretty heavy duty basketball territory, too. Montgomery: [4:38] Well, you know, that's one of the things, ironically, that really had helped my in my career. Because when I played at Long Beach State, it was college division basketball. People would have to think back to remember that they kind of divided it up as to big schools and then college division, and that's what we were. And mostly the team was composed of guy like me from local high schools -- Bellflower High School, Western High School, Long Beach Millikan -- from around the area. You know, we played Fresno State and San Diego State in that league. But we also played Chapman and Redlands and school like that. [5:14] But when I left and went into the service, Jerry Tarkanian came in and, of course, all of the guys I played with were pretty much out of there. And, really, he had all these potential pro type players. Real, real different style of basketball, changing people, philosophy and the whole deal. But they got real good real fast. And then, when I went out and was applying for jobs, I said, "Well I played at Long Beach State." And people looked at me at the same level that was playing. It was really funny I had to chuckle. Murphy: [5:48] You didn't tell them you were part of another era, did you? Montgomery: [5:50] I tried, but it was really funny because they honestly looked at me in a way different way than they would have looked at me. Because they had never heard of Long Beach State. Now all of a sudden, "Oh, Long Beach, I saw you guys on television against UCLA in the NCAA, you guys are really..." [6:07] And I had more stature as a result of that. And the funny thing is, is that really tells a lot about, you know, how athletics fits in a university. People tend to evaluate universities a lot of time based on their athletic success. That's how they look at things. I think that's important to know as we talk about athletics and how they fit in the college scene. Murphy: [6:30] Well you had your bag packed. You were ready to go someplace and coach. Tell the folks a little bit, quickly, where you went and how you got there. p.4 Montgomery: [6:38] Again, you know how fate would have it. Having to go into the military was probably the best thing that ever happened to me. Because I left Long Beach, and that got me away from my friends, and my pals, and my security blanket. [6:53] You know how college is. You're in a fraternity, and you have your group of friends, and you played ball. So you have this built in prestige, or at least you think you do. I was thrown out there and didn't know a soul and had to go to boot camp and all this kind of stuff. But that's really where I made my contacts that got me started in college coaching. I didn't ever dream that I was going to be a college coach. I think I would have probably figured out that's what I wanted to do, but the road would have been very difficult. [7:23] But I got into the Coast Guard. And when I got in there, ran into a guy named George Hill that had come from a major college program, University of Tennessee. And we got along very, very well. I just couldn't get enough of basketball. And that was my first taste of big arenas, of actually going around and seeing east coast basketball, where, obviously, it was way different than west coast, and that really got me started. [7:48] So I went from the military, where I coached, and got my start at the Coast Guard Academy, to graduate school at Colorado State, where I went on a graduate assistanceship, which I'd never heard of, until George told me that you got to try to get a graduate assistanceship. Here I was at Colorado state, there was just three of us. Jim Williams was a famous legend of a coach, Boyd Grant, and myself, and those were the guys I was around.