A former Ball State men's basketball coach was hospitalized Tuesday with heart problems that could possibly end his coaching career.
Utah men's basketball coach and former Cardinal coach Rick Majerus, who was known as much for his 300-plus pound frame as his success in coaching, is being treated at the Santa Barbara (Calif.) Cottage Hospital. His condition has not been released after he suffered severe chest pains Tuesday while eating dinner in Utah.
Majerus will resign from his position after the season because of his ailing health, Utah officials announced Wednesday. He is unsure whether he will rejoin the team this season.
Majerus coached the Cardinals for two seasons, from 1987-89. When he left Ball State for Utah, he had the highest winning percentage of any coach in the program's history.
In his final season, 1988-89, he guided the Cardinals to a 29-3 record, the MAC regular season and tournament titles and the school's first NCAA Tournament victory. He was named MAC Coach of the Year and finished fifth in the voting for national Coach of the Year.
Those who knew Majerus at Ball State remember him for his size and his love of food. Utah's associate sports information director Mike Lageschulte told ESPN that the coach is 6-foot and weighs 370 pounds.
"I was very sad to hear (about Majerus' heart problems), but it wasn't a surprise," former Provost Warren Vander Hill said.
Vander Hill, who was provost when Majerus was hired, called the coach a close personal friend. The two kept in touch for almost 10 years after Majerus left for Utah.
"His two years here we spent an awful lot of time eating ribs and peanut M&Ms," Vander Hill said.
Professor John Ginter was an associate sports information director when Majerus was at Ball State and also became very close to him. He, too, reflected on the former-coach's insatiable appetite.
"He was legendary for eating," Ginter said. "When you opened his car door all kinds of pizza boxes and fast food wrappers fell out. He'd go out for a big meal and stop and order a couple pizzas on the way home.
"Unfortunately all that eating caught up with him. He probably should have stopped coaching long ago because of health reasons."
In 1989, eight months after leaving Ball State, Majerus had septuple bypass surgery. After the surgery, Vander Hill said, he began eating healthier and losing weight.
"He modified the things he ate, but not the quantity," Vander Hill said. "He lost about 50 pounds. In recent years, when I watched him on the sidelines, it appeared he gained it all back."
"He'd say 'I lost 10 pounds, but that's like throwing a lawn chair off the Titantic,'" Ginter said.
Now that the coaching legend may never coach again, Vander Hill and Ginter both said it is a shame because Majerus was so dedicated to the sport that he loved.
"For me, the saddest thing is to think of Rick Majerus without a basketball team to coach," Vander Hill said. "He's someone who'll have a real life-adjustment problem. He eats and sleeps basketball."
Both of Majerus' friends said that all who met him loved the coach, not only for his success in basketball, but because of his amiable personality.
"I've never been around a person as interesting as Majerus," Ginter said. "I always said he's the best coach in the country, and I still believe that."
Morry Mannies, who's broadcast Cardinal basketball games on WLBC-Radio for 48 years and was close with Majerus, summed up the thoughts of most who knew the coach while at Ball State.
"He was a cult hero," Mannies said.
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