When Bob Wenzel called Bill Foster in November of 1988 to tell him that he was planning to honor him before the Northwestern–Rutgers game, Foster was very uncomfortable with the idea. “I’m not a big one for looking back,” he said. “If I could have talked him out of it, I would have.”
But when Wenzel went through with his plan, no one enjoyed it more than Foster. Seeing his former players brought back happy memories; the notion that he is still remembered fondly at Rutgers gave him great pleasure. At fifty-eight, Bill Foster seems to have learned—at least a little bit—about how to have fun.
“If I had the whole Duke experience to do over again, the one thing I would change would be the time right after our run in ’78,” he said. “I never did stop to enjoy it or appreciate it. Now, finally, I can look back at it and say it was a hell of an achievement. But it took me a long time to do that. I tended to dwell a lot more on the Kentucky loss than on all the victories that came before it.”
His former players and assistant coaches still worry about Foster. He has been at Northwestern three years now and the record is 23–61. He is popular there, just as he was popular at Duke before the winning started. He has made the team much more competitive and pulled some significant upsets, including 1988 victories over Indiana and DePaul. Still, there have been many more losses than victories. Northwestern started in a hole much deeper than Duke’s. This school isn’t likely to go 27–7 in Foster’s fourth year.
Knowing how Foster deals with losing—or doesn’t deal with it—is what worries those who care about him. “I still can’t accept losing,” he said. “I feel like I have to be the one to be the bad loser here because there’s a real tendency to accept losing. It’s been a fact of life for so long that people don’t get that upset by it. It’s nice that I’ve gotten support from people at the school. I appreciate that. But I still feel that I was hired to do a job and that job is to win games. So far, I haven’t done it.”
No one is quicker to question himself than Foster. Even now, after twenty-nine years and 436 victories as a head coach, Foster still thinks of himself as the kid from tiny Elizabethtown College who must prove himself every single day.
“When he first started moving into the so-called big time, I think he thought he had to work twenty hours a day to be successful because he wasn’t as good as other guys,” Wenzel said. “When he won, he figured it was because of the work, not because he was any good.”
Foster knew what he was getting into when he took the Northwestern job. He knew all about the losing tradition and about how tough the Big Ten was. But he also knew he didn’t want his coaching career to end on the sour, tainted note of South Carolina. When he visited Northwestern, it brought back memories—of Duke.
“That was definitely a factor,” he said. “The school itself is a lot like Duke. You’re coaching and recruiting the same kind of kids. That doesn’t make it easy, but it makes it fun. I like the campus and we’ve really enjoyed living near Chicago. I think that’s where I have managed to change. We go to Bulls games on occasion or Blackhawks games. During the summer we go to baseball games. This is a fun place to live. I’ve actually had some fun even with the losing.”
There is a cruel irony in Foster’s seeking happiness at a school that is similar to Duke. He understands that although he categorically refuses to dwell on it. “I look at what they’ve done and I can honestly say I feel good about it. There really are good guys and bad guys in this sport and Duke is always going to be one of the good guys. When they win, what the school stands for wins. And I like seeing that.”
Before Foster took the Northwestern job, the school had started a series with Duke. In his fifth game as Northwestern coach, he found himself back in Cameron Indoor Stadium—as the visiting coach. When he walked onto the floor at Cameron for the first time in almost seven years he received a warm standing ovation. That was all well and good. But the 105–56 final score took a lot of the pleasure out of the homecoming.
Going back to Duke will never be easy for Foster. He can walk into Cameron and see the two ACC Championship banners he produced and the 1978 Final Four banner. But there are also three Mike Krzyzewski-produced Final Four banners and, outside the front door, a paved parking lot.
“Looking back is pointless,” he said. “I can’t go back there, so why think about it? When I think about those years now, I don’t think about the wins or the losses or even the frustrations. I think about the guys I coached. My memories of them are still vivid and still warm.
“But I don’t like to think of myself as someone sitting around reminiscing about my career and my past. I’m still coaching and I still think we aren’t all that far away from making some tangible progress at Northwestern. We’ve done a lot of the little things: getting attendance up, getting the students out to the games, building up the camp and the TV and radio package. Now, of course, we have to win or the result of improving those other things is that more people are watching us lose.”
Although Foster says he has learned to enjoy himself more, he is still a basket case after losses. Often, he will drive around in his car by himself or sit up late in his office working on the next day’s practice plan. Shirley Foster still worries about him largely because she knows that trying to change him is impossible.
“I married a coach,” she said. “He was this way when he was young and he’s always going to be this way. I wish he could relax a little bit more but it just isn’t going to happen.”
If anything, Foster worries more about how his behavior affects his family than about how it affects his health. “I know it upsets them when I’m up late or stay at the office working,” he said. “Shirley’s been trying to quit smoking but during the season she starts again. I know it’s because of me. I’m not exactly easy to live with. But knowing that and doing something about it are two very different things.” Foster’s heart attack did make him more aware of his health. He had a bed set up in an office at South Carolina so he could lie down when he felt tired. He is in excellent shape and exercises every day—almost to the point of being obsessive about it. He has done well on his annual stress tests since the heart attack but it took him a long time to put the fear behind him.
“For a couple of years there, every time I felt a little bit sick I was really afraid that I was dying,” he said. “I can remember one game in Memphis where I was absolutely convinced just before we went on the floor that I was having another heart attack. I didn’t feel good a lot of the time and I’m sure a lot of that was psychological. I just wasn’t convinced that I was actually healthy. I spent a lot of time being scared.”
All of that made perfect sense given what Foster had been through. What didn’t make sense was his insistence on staying in coaching, especially at a school where winning is almost an impossibility. But Foster, who has never found happiness in any one place for very long, honestly believes that he may find happiness here.
“This is the last stop, I know that,” he said. “I was lucky that my first two daughters went to Duke and I’d like to see my last one go to Northwestern. Mary [the youngest] is fourteen. That’s not a reason to keep coaching though. Thinking I can still get it done is. I know a lot of people don’t think I can. But not many people thought we’d get it done at Duke.”
He smiled. “Of course,” he said, “we did get it done there. It just took me a while to figure that out.”
Was there a specific time Foster came to that conclusion?
“I think, really, it was after the heart attack,” he said. “I did stop to do some thinking after that, especially after I saw how many people really were concerned about me. That was nice. I suppose I should have understood all that before I got sick but I didn’t. If there was anything good that came out of my being sick it was that I learned to appreciate a lot of the good things in my life. Before that, I had tended to focus on the bad.”
The down side of the heart attack, other than the obvious, was that it marked a turning point in Foster’s tenure at South Carolina. The Gamecocks slid steadily after the 22–9 season in 1983 and that led to Foster’s firing. What hurt more than that, though, was the NCAA investigation. Foster had always had an impeccable reputation. After he left South Carolina, that reputation was tainted forever.
“That crushed me,” he said. “I’ve been in the profession thirty years, I’ve been president of the coaches’ association, and I think people, whatever they thought of my coaching ability, always thought of me as honest. Since South Carolina, no question, there are some doubters.”
A lot of that has been put behind him at Northwestern. Now, though, he needs wins—and players. “We’ve done a decent job in recruiting,” he said. “But decent isn’t good enough in the Big Ten. Our power rating [based on computer analysis] this year puts us ninetieth in the country. That may not sound great but, based on that, we’re in the NIT. In a lot of leagues, we probably contend. But we’re in a league where this year the team that finished ninth had a power rating of thirty-fifth. That puts us behind.”
The funny thing is, if Foster walked away tomorrow, no one would question him, doubt him, or criticize him. In his office, on his Rolodex are the names, phone numbers, and addresses of most of the players who have played under him during his career. Virtually all of them know that if Foster could help them with something he would do so in a second. Loyalty is something he has always treasured—whether giving or receiving.
He enjoys feeling as if his players, past and present, will come to him if they have a problem. And yet, there is really no one he takes his problems to. “All the years I worked for him, I don’t think he ever opened up to me about what was bothering him,” Lou Goetz said. “You could usually guess, but he would never really tell you.”
Shirley Foster says she thought her husband would end up not with heart problems, but with an ulcer because he has always internalized his frustrations. Foster has always been someone who wants to give to people but he has always held back one thing from everyone: himself. When things aren’t going the way he wants them to he buries himself in even more work rather than burden others with his troubles.
During the past season he organized a postseason seminar for coaches on how to use videotape. More and more, coaches are finding dozens of different ways to use tape. Foster set up a weekend at a Chicago hotel to tutor them on exactly what can be done.
“I feel like I’ve been a little bit brain-dead the last couple of years,” he said. “I need to have things going during the off-season or I get bored. Especially now, with all the dead periods in recruiting when you can’t go on the road, there’s a lot of free time.”
Free time is never something Foster has believed in. Goetz and Wenzel both remember him creating work for himself even when there was really no work to do. He says he does that less now, but does still do it. It is as if he is searching for something and feels as if he is running out of time to get it done. But what is he searching for?
“I don’t know,” he said. “All I do know is I still feel as if I have something to contribute as a coach. To the players, to the school, and to myself. As long as I feel that way, I’ll want to coach.”
In 1988, Foster became a grandfather for the first time when his second daughter, Debbie, had a son. Foster is a doting grandfather. But when the subject of being a grandfather came up last winter, his first reaction was instinctive: “Hey, don’t spread that around.”
Why not? Certainly Foster loves his grandson. But somewhere deep down he is still rebuilding. Coaches who are rebuilding aren’t grandfathers. And, more than anything, Bill Foster is a builder. He was a builder at Bloomsburg at twenty-nine, at Duke at forty-three, and he still is at Northwestern at fifty-nine.
Still building. Still trying to prove himself. Again and again. For Bill Foster, the answer to the question, what is enough? is simple: nothing.
“He’s always been searching for something that doesn’t exist,” Lou Goetz said. “Complete acceptance. No one ever finds that. No matter what you do, no matter how well you do it, especially in a high-visibility job, someone is going to be unhappy with you. Bill has always wanted to please everyone.”
Ever so slowly, Foster is learning to understand that. Maybe at some point in the future he will look back on his accomplishments and his friendships and be able to please not everyone but someone: himself.
“I hope that will happen,” he said. “Maybe after I retire, I’ll be able to look back and realize that a lot of good things have happened to me.”
And maybe by then he will also realize that he has made a lot of good things happen to others.