NC State Finally Visits White House 33 Years After Stunning Basketball Upset
Obama and a Republican senator found some common ground today.
— -- It was a White House tour 33 years in the making.
The 1983 NCAA men's basketball team champions, the North Carolina State Wolfpack, finally got their visit with President Obama after the team started a lobbying campaign to make up for lost time.
The oversight was based partly on tight budgets and NCAA rules: The White House had invited the team back then, but the school's athletic director was frugal, one N.C. State official said, and wouldn't pay for bus fare or hotel rooms.
A local TV station then offered to foot the bill, but the NCAA said that would violate its rules. "So we stayed home," the official said of the team coached by the late Jim Valvano that upset the mighty No. 1 ranked Houston Cougars.
But as Thurl Bailey, then a senior on the championship team, said, members started talking about belatedly taking the White House up on its invitation about three years ago at a team reunion.
He then enlisted the help of Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, who became a good friend during Bailey's nine NBA seasons with the Utah Jazz.
As the president joked when he visited with the team today in the East Room of the White House, "basically if [Hatch] asks me to do something, I usually do it."
Putting his arm around Hatch, he ribbed the senior Republican senator: "It's not always reciprocated."
There were about 20 members of the team, plus their family members, at the brief meeting, during which the players stood on a riser as the president greeted them individually.
"They look like they still got a little game," the president exclaimed, noting that these players were part of his peer group (Obama graduated Columbia University in 1983).
Bailey, now 55, said the meeting meant more to the members of the team now than it would have back when they first won the championship, because they were able to bring their families now.
"People said back then that it was meant to happen that we won the championship, fate,” he said. “I also think it was not necessarily a bad thing that we didn't get to go visit back then because now I think it's that much more enjoyable.”