Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 16, 1990 TAG: 9003161909
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: bill brill
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
The old gunslinger, now reformed, comes back to help his long-time pal, the burly sheriff. Only the sheriff becomes ill and the gunslinger has to take charge.
In another time, in this case the 1970s, this gunslinger was a long-haired, gold-chained, leisure-suited madman who took the New Mexico basketball program to unparalleled heights.
He won 134 games in seven years, and in 1978 the Lobos were ranked No. 4 nationally.
Of course, they were cheating to do it.
Norm Ellenberger not only was fired on Thanksgiving 1979, he also was convicted in state court of 11 felonies for misuse of state funds.
He didn't serve time, getting off with one year of unsupervised probation. But, it was assumed, his career as a college basketball coach was finished.
That was sentence enough. All Ellenberger ever wanted out of life was to be a basketball coach. In many ways, he was similar to Tates Locke, who got Clemson put on probation and was ostracized from his profession.
Locke is a Bobby Knight disciple. So is Ellenberger. So is Texas-El Paso's Don Haskins, who rescued Ellenberger from the restaurant business and made him an assistant coach.
This season, Knight called in some markers and got Locke the job as head coach at Indiana State. Locke was the first admitted lawbreaker to get a second chance.
Ellenberger's opportunity is different. He will be the head coach for UTEP today when the Miners play Minnesota in an NCAA Tournament first-round game at the Richmond Coliseum. But he is an interim, a fill-in for Haskins. "The Bear" has been sidelined since Dec. 20 with a severe case of laryngitis. He did not accompany the team here.
"This is still his basketball team," Ellenberger said Thursday. "I was an assistant in September, and I'm an assistant now."
Ellenberger said he doesn't recall how Haskins offered him the job. "I think we were fishing," he said. That was four years ago, he said, and he quickly accepted.
In the period between his firing - he once said, "You can't win at New Mexico without cheating" - and his hiring by UTEP, Ellenberger remained in Albuquerque, N.M.
Once a coach, always a coach. For two years, he directed the Albuquerque Silvers in the Continental Basketball Association when it was a nickel-and-dime minor league.
When the Silvers folded, he coached the Energy in the World Women's Pro league, which lasted less than a season.
A woman's team? "It was basketball," Ellenberger said.
Now, older and calmer, he says he is happy. Satisfied. "Handling my own life," Ellenberger said. "I'm doing what I want to do."
He won't talk about the old days, when he got in trouble because the FBI had tapped the telephone of his roommate, a bookie, and heard Ellenberger talking to an assistant coach about changing the transcripts of some players.
"That dead horse has been whipped to dust," he said. "I don't even acknowledge or talk about it."
But, because of the media hype surrounding the NCAA Tournament and because the story is not well-known here, Ellenberger expected the questions.
"I knew this was going to happen," he said. "This is b-------."
Ellenberger, who ran a restaurant after the women's league folded, says he didn't expect a second chance, but he is reveling in it.
"I'm coaching. I love to coach," he said.
As for whether this chance to run a team for most of a season has whetted his appetite for more, Ellenberger said, "It's nothing I dwell upon. It's not life or death. If something comes up, fine, fine.
"You do what you have to do. I don't have to satisfy any ego."
Locke cleansed his soul a few years ago by writing a book about his experiences at Clemson, and he gives it to all of his prospects at Indiana State.
Ellenberger won't do that. Not while he's still working. That's not his style. But he knows, better than most, about the seamy side of sports.
"Some day," he said, "I hope to talk. That's not me now."
by CNB