Former Razorback Coach Likely Surprised at ESPN’s Latest Goof
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — The truth is Nolan Richardson probably got a good laugh when someone told him he’s apparently dead now. It will probably get worked into one of his talks at some point in time.
ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith, trying to inject sports opinions into his recent flurry of appearances regarding politics, apparently thought the former Razorback coach had passed away at some point. Considering Richardson spoke to John Calipari’s team before their Sweet 16 trip to San Francisco before Thursday night’s loss, Nolan is still around and doing well for an 83-year-old.
This is just the latest round of verbal misstatements by the loudmouth ESPN talking head. This is becoming a habit just this week for him after an earlier comment about LeBron James.
As of this writing, Smith has not issued any sort of clarification about Richardson’s status. The clip doesn’t add if Seth Greenberg, who should know the former Arkansas coach is still very much around and enjoying retirement in Northwest Arkansas, corrected the mistake.
Richardson, of course, was a Hall of Fame vosvh who guided the Razorbacks to the National Championship in 1994. He took the program another Hall of Fame coach, Eddie Sutton, built and expanded it even higher.
Considering the number of times Richardson has been seen at Razorback games this year probably should have caught the attention of the ESPN shock-jock talker that usually stays focused on the pro sports, but occasionally dabbles down into the college ranks.
If he’s going to talk about legends, though, he might want to be be sure they are alive before he refers to them as the “late, great” of anything. Not that Nolan would disagree with him on that assessment.
Ad you can probably be assured he will get a good laugh out of it. The fans won’t like it all, though.
