Entertainment

Trailblazing '66 Miners left lasting impression on young stars of 'Glory Road'

11:43 AM CST on Friday, January 13, 2006

By CHRIS VOGNAR / The Dallas Morning News

Many basketball fans don't know the details of the 1966 Texas Western Miners, the team that made history by starting five black players in the game that won them the NCAA title against Kentucky.

Michael Mulvey / DMN

The Glory Road cast includes (from left) Al Shearer, Mehcad Brooks, Josh Lucas and Derek Luke.

Then there's the actor Mehcad Brooks, who plays Miners' player Harry Flournoy in Glory Road, which opens today.

Mr. Brooks, an Austin native who played basketball at Anderson High School, used to hear the Texas Western story at his father's knee when he was a child. The elder Mr. Brooks grew up in Odessa, and he gave his son a firm grasp of what made the team from El Paso so important.

"This was a bedtime story for me," says Mr. Brooks, 25, during a recent stop in Dallas.

Going through the press rounds at the Adolphus hotel, Mr. Brooks, best known for his role on ABC's Desperate Housewives, goofs around with co-star Al Shearer, who looks like a younger, thinner Wesley Snipes. The resemblance amuses them as they swap possible Shearer nicknames: "Sugar-free Wesley," "Subway-diet Wesley," "Crackhead Blade."

But they both know the Texas Western story is no laughing matter.

"Being a Texas boy and growing up in that climate, my dad used that story to show me I could do whatever I wanted against enormous odds," says Mr. Brooks. "So I knew about the story before they made a film about it. Once I heard they were making a film about it, it was an honor just to be considered to play a role."

But it doesn't take Texas roots to feel the resonance of the Miners' tale.

Coach Don Haskins arrived at Texas Western (now the University of Texas at El Paso, alma mater of former all-star point guard Tim Hardaway) determined to build a winning program, not shake up the college sports establishment. He ended up doing both by traveling the country and recruiting the best players possible, regardless of color. Among his prize finds were Bobby Joe Hill (played in the movie by Derek Luke) and David "Big Daddy" Lattin (played by Schin A.S. Kerr).

Mr. Haskins' strategy proved a slam-dunk on and off the court when he started five black players in the 1966 title game, a first. The Miners beat a Kentucky team coached by dedicated segregationist and coaching legend Adolph Rupp. (The Kentucky team also included a star by the name of Pat Riley, now the coach of the NBA's Miami Heat and a coaching legend in his own right.) Though not as well known, Mr. Haskins can rightly be considered the college basketball equivalent of Branch Rickey, the Brooklyn Dodgers executive who engineered the signing of Jackie Robinson.

The win made clear what is now beyond obvious: that black players could succeed at the collegiate level.

The Miners not only triumphed, they did so with a flair and entertainment value that hoops fans now take for granted.

"The opportunity to watch Michael Jordan and Tracy McGrady and LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony do their thing is a direct result of college athleticism changing because of the guys in this story," says Mr. Shearer.

Mr. Jordan is the only one of those guys to spend more than one year in college, but point taken. A more apt comparison might be to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and Loyola Marymount teams of the '80s and '90s, which used style and athleticism to run and gun other teams into the ground.

For Mr. Brooks, who played briefly for the University of Southern California ("I walked on and walked off," he jokes), the Miners' impact went way beyond the basketball court.

"It helped in the academic realm also," he says. "It helped get scholarships for minorities who otherwise wouldn't have gotten into Division I schools. It helped put an entire demographic of people into the world with degrees. It helped re-create the social structure in America. That's more than just a college basketball game."

E-mail cvognar@dallasnews.com