In the 1966 NCAA basketball championship game, an all-white
University of Kentucky team was beaten by a team from Texas Western
College (now UTEP) that fielded only black players. The game,
played in the middle of the racially turbulent 1960s—part David and
Goliath in short pants, part emancipation proclamation of college
basketball—helped destroy stereotypes about black athletes. Filled
with revealing anecdotes, The Baron and the Bear is the story of
two intensely passionate coaches and the teams they led through the
ups and downs of a college basketball season. In the twilight of
his legendary career, Kentucky's Adolph Rupp ("The Baron of the
Bluegrass") was seeking his fifth NCAA championship. Texas
Western's Don Haskins ("The Bear" to his players) had been coaching
at a small West Texas high school just five years before the
championship. After this history-making game, conventional wisdom
that black players lacked the discipline to win without a white
player to lead began to dissolve. Northern schools began to abandon
unwritten quotas limiting the number of blacks on the court at one
time. Southern schools, where athletics had always been a
whites-only activity, began a gradual move toward integration.
David Kingsley Snell brings the season to life, offering
fresh insights on the teams, the coaches, and the impact of the
game on race relations in America.