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VOLUME 26, ISSUE 4 23 The article barely mentioned Purdue as being a school of interest, giving equal billing to Indiana from a state perspective. UCLA and its legendary coach, John Wooden, were mentioned, as were Cincinna- ti and Miami (Fla.) and its flamboyant coach, Bruce Hale. Mount's lone recruiting visit with Wooden was at the Indianapolis airport upon Wooden's return from the 1965 Holiday Festival in New York. "(Rosenstihl) took me down there to meet him and Wooden got off the plane for about five minutes and talked to me," Mount recalled. "He was honest with me and said, 'We are looking for a guy to throw the ball in to (center) Lew Alcindor and I don't think that interests you.' "He was right about that, but I always appreciated that Coach Wooden was straight with me. We didn't waste each other's time." The magazine cover, and all the buzz surrounding it, did come into play when Mount paid a recruiting visit to another Hall of Fame coach, Adolph Rupp. Just a couple of months after the magazine came out, it came up when Kentucky's coach started con- versing with Mount. "He looked at my copy, but then pulled out a copy of an issue from when he was on the cover and he said, 'Now this is really big because I am the greatest coach that ever lived and I am going to make you an All-American,'" Mount recalled. "He talked about him- self for 30 minutes, which really turned me off, and when he asked me if I was going to stay, I said 'No.'" Apparently nobody said "no" to Rupp. When Rupp asked his guest if there was anything he could do for him to sway his decision, the quick-think- ing Mount asked for six tickets for an NBA playoff game between Oscar Robertson's Cincinnati Royals and Bill Russell's Boston Celtics. It just happened to be on the way home from Lexington to Lebanon. "He looked at me as if he didn't want to get those tickets, but he did, and I saw the game," Mount said with his high-pitched laugh. "I didn't see Rupp again until the NCAA Regionals when his team got beat by Marquette just before we faced Miami. I heard him say as he walked by me, 'We can't put the damned ball in the damned basket.' Then he stopped and shook my hand and said, 'Son, you are a great player, a great player.'" Mount liked Hale's personality and the amount of attention he paid to him and even signed a non-bind- ing scholarship agreement with Miami as the Hurri- canes' coach had promised to send back game films to be shown at the Lebanon theater. But, in the end, it came down to Purdue and Indiana. Purdue's chief recruiter in those days was assistant Bob King, whose uncle Herb just happened to be the Mayor of Lebanon. The fact that King had developed a close relationship with Rosenstihl after recruiting sharpshooter Bob Purkhiser, who played for Rosens- tihl in Blufton, Ind., put Purdue in a good spot with Mount. "Rosie showed me the two Big Ten letters of intent, and he said to me, 'You probably should sign with Pur- due,'" Mount said, referring to Rosenstihl. There are others who tell the story that Rosenstihl only gave Mount a Purdue letter. But either way, in the end, Mount was happy to be playing 40 miles up the road. "It was the craziest recruiting battle I had ever been involved in," King said in 2011, two years before he died. "But there was no way that Rick was ever go- ing to leave the state of Indiana to play basketball. The people of Lebanon wouldn't stand for it." Neither would have the people of Purdue. "Purdue maximized Rick's basketball abilities when he was there," Limp said about a player who led Pur- due to its first Big Ten title in 29 years and its first Final Four. "But looking back, Rick made the most out of Purdue, too." Mount never suffered from the famed Sports Illus- trated cover jinx. His college record stands the test of time at Purdue, in the Big Ten and even nationally. And the cover represents a time when Purdue, at least in terms of recruiting, was on top of the college basketball world. j