Floyd vs Norm: A Battle of Wills, Part 2

McKinney

Irons says he and Stewart today are on better terms. “I was not very benevolent that day and I know you must sometime(s) just move on. It took a lot for him to come meet me on my turf, I will give him that. We met last fall (2022) at a coach’s clinic in Columbia. It wasn’t planned but it gave us a chance to sit down and talk, which we had not done for years. I am glad we did. Neither of us are getting any  younger and it gave me a chance to tell him I had always respected him as a basketball coach, one of the best.  Maybe in a different time under different circumstances things would have been different. But I was always going to do what was best for my players, and during those years, Columbia, MO was not a good place for a kid from Vashon. If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t change a thing. Norm was the one who needed to change, and he until he had no choice, (he) would not.”

To Irons, Stewart represented white privilege. Irons never allowed any of his Vashon stars to go to Mizzou while Stewart was coach there. After Stewart’s retirement and the hiring of his replacement, Quinn Snyder, Irons immediately directed his star player of the day, Jimmy McKinney, into Snyder’s waiting arms.

After a long and successful career playing basketball overseas, McKinney returned to St. Louis and began work on the staff of Coach Tony Irons at Vashon. In the summer of 2020, he landed on the plum jobs on the St. Louis sports scene, the head boys basketball coach at traditional suburban power Kirkwood High School.

McKinney was not aware he was a trailblazer, of sorts. When told that when he enrolled at Mizzou, he became the first black product of the St. Louis Public High League to play for the Tigers in over 30 years, he responded, “I know that now, but I didn't then. I have over the years picked up on the (bad blood) between Coach (Irons) and Norm Stewart. But at the time I was recruited it was never mentioned. That is just how Coach was. He protected us from a lot of the controversy that I know now was around Vashon basketball. We were kids, and he shouldered the criticism and didn’t let us get pulled in.”

“I had a good experience at Mizzou, but I didn’t like the losing,” he states. “The first two years were good, but then all the problems came in.”

Clemmons

By the time McKinney played his last game for the Tigers, in 2004, Coach Quinn Snyder had resigned under a cloud of illegal recruiting activities.

Snyder made a huge impact upon his arrival in Columbia. As a rookie head coach, his Tigers knocked off nationally ranked rivals Illinois and Kansas. Snyder's second season, 2002, Mizzou continued on an upward trajectory as they once again defeated Kansas and made it to the NCAA round of 8, losing to eventual national champion Duke. The burden Stewart will always carry us that despite his long-time success, none of his Tigers advanced to the NCAA Final Four. 

In 2003, Snyder’s fortunes took a sudden downturn. In November, the NCAA hit the Tigers with sanctions for recruiting violations, centering on improper benefits to troubled guard Ricky Clemons. The program was placed on three-years of probation.

In 2004, the Tigers stumbled through an11-win season. Snyder did not see the end of the disappointing year. He resigned as coach on February 10, 2006 following a 26-point loss to Baylor.

McKinney remembers his days at Vashon with great fondness. He describes Irons as both a “Southern Baptist preacher and the Godfather, all rolled into one.”

“I still talk to coach almost every day,” McKinney says. “Who I am today is a direct reflection upon him. The style we play, the teaching style I use; all things I learned at Vashon High School.”

Tony Harvey, in 1999, was a young and upcoming coach.  Known for his prowess as a recruiter at Eastern Michigan University, Snyder made him his associate head coach, in essence, his top assistant. They were a young and dynamic duo that gave the face of the program a fresh new “hip” look after three decades of the old school Stewart’s style of branding.

“I grew up in Benton Harbor, MI,” Harvey says today. “Think of East St. Louis, that is what Benton Harbor was like,” says the 52-year-old. “I was comfortable in the inner city and knew how to relate and recruit kids from that environment.”

As a black man at the end of the 20^th century, in Boone County, MO, Harvey faced an unease reception from the conservative campus and community.  

“I had to do a lot of work,” Harvey says. “Boone County, 20 years ago, was not a very welcoming environment for African Americans, especially those from the inner city. I don’t think the people in charge really understood the message they were sending. It was a hard job not only to recruit the players but also to gain acceptance within the college culture there.”

Snyder

To Snyder and Harvey, connecting with Irons and Vashon, just made sense. “Floyd Irons became a good friend of mine. I spent a lot of time working to establish a relationship not only with Coach Irons and Vashon but through him, the entire Public High league. It had been, with Norm Stewart, a neglected area for 30 years.”

When the fall for Mizzou came in 2004, it was swift and fatal. Today, 16 years later, Harvey is still bitter over the Clemmons scandal that derailed his promising career.

“I felt like I became the fall guy for the Ricky Clemens recruiting mess,” Harvey states. “I never had anything to do with recruiting Ricky Clemens. But I was the first black assistant coach there with any real responsibility, because Norm Stewart never had any and it was a real perception problem for me. I think it was an unfair one, it was cast over me.”

The NCAA sanctioned stigma made Harvey damaged goods in the college basketball world and left him under the constant watch of the NCAA, he claims. “It really has hurt my career. I became the head coach at Texas Southern (after leaving Missouri). They won three games the year before I got there. We qualified for the NCAA tournament twice. But I always felt I was under suspicion, whatever I did.”

Texas Southern also ran into issues with the NCAA during the years Harvey ran the program.

It was not only the basketball program at Texas Southern that came under scrutiny, but the entire athletic program. The Division I Infractions Committee labeled the problems at the HBCU with the dreaded, “lack of institutional control.” They found violations at Texas Southern involving 13 sports over a seven-year period. The most serious proven misdeeds were the use of ineligible athletes and exceeding scholarship limits.

In 2013, with Harvey no longer in charge of the program, Southern was hit with five years of probation and banned from that year's NCAA tournament.

“I was forced by the NCAA to sit out three years after I left Texas Southern," Harvey says. “I then went to the University of Illinois Chicago as assistant head coach. I just left the job a month ago and I’m now the assistant coast Eastern Michigan. It’s where I started. I guess you could say I’ve come full cycle.”

Of Irons, Harvey says, “Kids are not dumb. You can’t piss on a kid and tell him it’s raining. Especially a city kid. If Floyd hadn’t had his kids' best interest as his priority, he would never have been able to get them to Vashon the way he did. I have very good contact with Coach Irons, still today. His son Tony is like a little brother to me. My relationship with Coach Irons has been very beneficial and very positive.”