Bobby Knight called three times after Bruce Parkhill quit. The first call came on Sept. 6, 1995—the day Parkhill stunned the college basketball world by resigning as Penn State’s head coach. That initial call was a simple courtesy. After all, most coaches from the Big Ten, Atlantic 10, and ACC called that day, the phone ringing off the hook like there had been a death in the family.

But Knight called again six weeks later—the day practice for college basketball officially began across the country. Then, a year later, with the promise of another season fresh upon the land, he called again.

Each time, Knight asked Parkhill, “Are you sure about this? Are you really happy you left?” And each time, Parkhill told Knight he had never been more certain about anything in his life.

Parkhill reminded Penn State fans of Knight, maybe Rick Pitino, perhaps even Dean Smith. He loved the X’s and O’s and teaching young players how to win. Nobody roared as loud when the officials jobbed him. Twelve years earlier, when he had come home to State College, where he grew up, the hope had been that not only would Parkhill build a winning program where there had never been one before, but that he would become a civic institution like Joe Paterno.

“Bruce was one of the brightest young coaches available,” says athletic director Tim Curley ’76 H&HD, ’78 MEd Edu, “so we certainly thought it would be a long tenure. We thought he fit exactly what we were looking for.”

As soon as the news conference announcing Parkhill’s resignation was over, rumors began to fly. Some whispered that he had been caught in an affair. Another claimed the program was about to go down in scandal. Another had him jumping to another job. When a booster saw Parkhill at a hospital, for what proved to be a routine physical, the gossip began that he had cancer.

“Everybody had a reason why he did it,” says Bob Perks ’85 Lib, ’87 MBA Bus, former president of the Penn State basketball booster club. “It took a while for us to realize that Bruce quit for the very reasons that he stated from the beginning.”

But, four years later, people are still asking Parkhill why. He gets the question a couple of times a month. And no matter how many times he answers, people seem reluctant to believe him, as if they’re unable to comprehend why someone who had the world by the tail, who was on his way to becoming a local legend, would abruptly quit.

And now I’m asking him, too. I’m meeting with Parkhill over lunch across the street from the University Park campus. The conversation has gone on for almost two hours, Parkhill telling his story and me trying to understand.

Parkhill smiles and looks past me at the room, which is deserted except for a waitress or two. He runs his large hands in slow circles across the thickly lacquered tabletop that sits between him and me.

“It was time,” he says. “That's the only way I can explain it. It was time.”

Admit it. We all think about quitting, even when things are going fine. It’s the bad dream that most of us keep hidden away. After all, our world stresses success, achievement, upward mobility. A new study by the International Labour Organization shows that Americans work longer and harder than any other industrialized nation. We are proud of our work ethic. Our drive.

So when somebody walks away from a job that others would give their eyeteeth for, we stand there, dumbfounded. We wish we had the nerve to do the same thing. But then we hurry on, because there is always something else to do.

 

 

In Silicon Valley, it is customary to quit every two or three years; in many ways it’s seen as the new ladder to success. “The legends of the current boom—Jeff Bezos, Michael Dell, Bill Gates—all started emphatically by quitting their jobs or their formal educations,” writes Michael Lewis, author of Liar’s Poker and The Money Culture. But Bruce Parkhill’s situation wasn't about getting ahead. It was about peace of mind, and in recent years, others have done the same. Bill Paxon and Joseph Kennedy II left Capitol Hill. Silicon Graphics Inc. co-founder Rocky Rhodes scaled back on time in the office. They complained either about too much job stress or too little time with their loved ones. Eli Lilly CEO Sidney Taurel requires his managers to takes courses in how to give employees more flexible hours. A recent cover story in Forbes headlined me woes of “Daddy Stress”—how corporate America wants them at work and their families want mem at home.

A meaningful life these days means more than money, perks, and another promotion. It has to do with balancing family and career. Parkhill was not only ahead of his time, but decisive in a way mat many of us can only dream about.

 

“If you have the time, I can show you around town,” Parkhill says.

Few know State College as well as Parkhill. He grew up here. He was a winner here. He could have been revered here. Perhaps in seeing the situation through his eyes, I can answer Knight’s question: “Are you really happy you left?”

Our first stop is a network of tree-lined streets just off Fraternity Row. Here in a small two-story house, overshadowed by the Greek castles on either side, is where the Parkhill family lived when they moved to town, when Bruce was 5. In an empty lot across the street, where a fraternity villa now stands, Bruce and his younger brother, Barry, held their own Wide World of Sports. The next stop is Rec Hall, on campus. After a few years along Fraternity Row, the Parkhills moved to College Heights. Rec Hall was within walking distance, and Bruce would often sneak into games as a kid.

Such childhood memories were a major reason why Parkhill accepted the Penn State job in 1984. He had already gained a reputation as the head coach at William & Mary—his team even upset North Carolina in his second year there. If he had wanted to bide his time, wait for the game of coaching musical chairs to swing in his favor, there were a host of places he could have gone. But there was something about going back home, starting a program from scratch, that Parkhill appreciated.

Others warned that Penn State was a basketball graveyard. But after his interview with school officials, Parkhill swung through his old neighborhood. He paid a visit to Paterno, asking the football godfather for his blessing. Papa Joe told him he wasn’t opposed to basketball becoming a big-time winner in Happy Valley; in fact, Paterno was rather enthralled with the idea.

It was settled.

In Parkhill’s first year, the Nittany Lions languished near the bottom of the Atlantic 10. Most basketball recruits considered Penn State to be in the middle of nowhere, and in the era of the made-for-TV conferences like the Big East and the Big Twelve, Parkhill found himself on an uphill road to respectability. He went 5-22 his first year and 8-19 his next. But by the 1988-89 season, the program had broken through, posting the first of five 20-win seasons.

“I can remember sitting on my grandmother’s porch when I took the job and telling the media how we hoped to someday win 20,” Parkhill says. “Then to do it four straight years, starting to go to the postseason tournaments. I mean, in some ways that was better than I ever could have imagined.”

But that’s the New Age male talking, someone who can now look back with satisfaction. At the time, 20 wins wasn’t good enough. If you glance at a photo of Parkhill when he was still coaching and then look at him now, you’ll see two different men. The one in the photos is pale and anxious and as driven as any coach in the land; the one riding shotgun on this tour of State College is tanned, relaxed, and has the patience of Job as I ask again. I have to ask again. One last time. Even though what he says makes sense, I still can’t believe what he walked away from. Why did he have to quit when he did?

By Parkhill’s sixth year in Happy Valley, Penn State was a basketball force—quite an accomplishment for a program that, before Parkhill arrived, had reached 20 victories in a season only twice in its 86-year history. Parkhill’s 1991 team captured the Atlantic 10 championship and upset UCLA in the second round of the NCAA tournament. Two years later, Penn State moved into the Big Ten, perhaps the most competitive conference in the country at the time. Making the leap to that level, with an inexperienced backcourt and not much of a bench, was like trying to find a place to spread your towel on Muscle Beach. The Lions were kicked around but good, losing to Indiana by 48 points the first time they met and to Minnesota by 26.

Still, the game that now typifies that season, perhaps Parkhill’s entire short tenure in the Big Ten, was the return match against the Hoosiers. Knight and Indiana came to State College ranked No. 1 in the country. With 17 seconds left, Penn State had the lead and the ball. When a dubious call went against the Nittany Lions, the game spiraled into one overtime and then another. Eventually Indiana came away with tl1e victory, but not before Parkhill’s team earned some respect.

Then, in their second season in the conference, the Nittany Lions upset 18th-ranked Minnesota and seventh-ranked Purdue in consecutive games. But as the victories mounted, Parkhill slowly came to realize that he had lost himself and much of what he treasured along the way.

Take the ’94 season. The only thing that Parkhill would acknowledge about that year “was that we had finished 13-14 and couldn’t go to the NIT.”

“During those days I could only see the empty part of the glass,” he says. “That was a breakthrough year. Anybody could see that, but I wouldn’t acknowledge it at the time. It had gotten to the point where I assumed that this was my basic nature. To always be so pessimistic. I thought I could never change.”

Midway through his tenure at Penn State, Parkhill’s marriage broke up. His ex-wife remarried and moved their daughter, Katie, three hours east to the Philadelphia suburbs. The coach tried to cope the way he always had—by working harder.

At the end of each season, Parkhill would tell family and friends that the job was killing him. He didn’t think he would be back. But the summers, and the time away, healed him enough for the next year of hoops, and his refrain about quitting became like the kid crying wolf.

In 1995, Penn State rang in the New Year by shocking Michigan. At the Allen Street Grill after the game, players, assistant coaches, anybody connected with the program enjoyed the warm afterglow. Everyone, that is, except Parkhill. Even though he shook every hand thrust his way that night, those close to him noticed that he wasn’t happy at all. In fact, only minutes after coming off the court, he reminded an assistant to be in early the next morning to break down the tape of Ohio State, the next opponent.

“I didn’t allow myself to take away as much from those games, even the good losses, as much as I should have,” he says now. “Perhaps if I could have seen it like that, I’d still be coaching.”

In the hills east of campus, the Bryce Jordan Center stands across the road from Beaver Stadium. If the stadium will be forever linked with Joe Paterno, then the Jordan Center could have been remembered as the place that Parkhill built. But three and half months before the facility opened for its first full season, Parkhill resigned.

University President Graham Spanier tried to talk him out of it. First he and Curley, the athletic director, asked Parkhill to wait a week, think things over, see if he was really sure. When Parkhill came back, still wanting to quit, they asked him to at least coach the team through the upcoming season.

“It was tempting,” Parkhill says. “I was making good money, real good money. For a week or so, I really wavered, but in the end I had to go with my gut. And it told me to walk.

“Sure, it was a strange feeling. I felt like I was stepping off into the void. I’ve never been more scared of anything in my life. But at the same time, I had never been so sure about what I was doing.”

Problem was, he couldn’t explain his decision to Spanier or Curley or Bobby Knight. At least not to their satisfaction. There was only a small inner circle, including his brother, who really understood.

“For so long he only focused on the next game, the next game,” says Barry Parkhill, who himself starred at the University of Virginia and later was one of Bruce’s assistants at William & Mary. “One day he woke up and said to himself, ‘If l don’t make some changes, this life is going to kill me.’”

Bruce Parkhill pulls out his wallet. The leather springs open to a picture of a 14-year-old girl with blond hair, her father’s square jaw, and hazel eyes.

“That’s Katie,” Parkhill says. “I like to think that she’s the reason why I quit.”

 

 

Katie was 9 when Parkhill resigned. One night during the year before his resignation, Parkhill was driving home from seeing his daughter in a school play. Katie had been in other productions that year, but Parkhill had missed them. There was always another recruit to see, another game to prepare for. Over the first couple miles on the trip back to State College, he was like any proud father, replaying the moment in his head and congratulating himself for being there. Just being there.

Yet as he drove on, his satisfaction began to fade. The fact of the matter was he had missed more of Katie’s shows than he had made. If he rated himself as a father as harshly as he did his team, he would be below .500.

Parkhill realized that his daughter was beginning to see the world through her own eyes. Whoever was there, in the flesh, would be the ones who mattered. The rest would simply be static at the other end of the phone.

 

When the 1995-96 season opened at the Jordan Center, Jerry Dunn, Parkhill’s longtime assistant, was the coach and Bruce was watching the team he knew like no other, in a place built in large part on his sleepless nights and broken marriage.

As the national anthem played, Pete Lisicky ’98 Bus stood near the Penn State bench. He had turned down offers from UCLA, Indiana, Villanova, and Virginia to play for Parkhill. While some coaches recruited by promising the moon, this coach had been different. He didn’t blow smoke. He wasn’t a phony. If a kid or his parent wanted a guarantee about minutes and playing position, they’d better not ask Parkhill. The coach made no promises and invariably answered all such queries, “Let’s see how you do.”

Deep down, Lisicky appreciated that. When a game came down to the final minutes, when it was there to be won or lost, Parkhill was among the best. He believed in his kids. Lisicky remembers that he would ask the players what they wanted to run. He would listen and then, in a matter of seconds, with the horn blaring that it was time to get back out on the court, he would draw up plays that were perfect.

“I couldn’t help thinking that he should be out front that night, getting the kudos,” Arlene Tepsic, Parkhill’s second wife, says of that opening game. “I don’t disagree with anything he did. He quit because of his daughter and what the job was doing to him. You have to wonder if most men are that smart.”

After almost six years of courtship, Parkhill and Arlene were married last summer—the wedding planned around Katie’s, not Bruce’s, hectic schedule. And these days, Parkhill’s obsession is golf. He has an 11 handicap and the time to play. Instead of lying awake at night, a legal pad on his nightstand so he wouldn’t forget any detail to go over at tomorrow’s practice, Parkhill has a job with much less stress. He helps coordinate Penn State’s club sports program, which—even though it involves 54 sports—is an 8-to-5 position.

Frankly, life’s a snap after running a Division I program.

While the cut in pay eliminated any chance he had of retiring right away, Parkhill got into college sports before coaching salaries spiraled upward anyway, so he grew accustomed to being frugal. The work he does as a color commentator on the Big Ten Game of the Week brings in some extra change and keeps his head in the game. In fact, Parkhill remains as current as anybody who loves college basketball. Still, he remains adamant that he will never coach again. Not at any level.

Not even high school?

“No,” he replies.

College?

“I still get calls. It’s very flattering. But, no.”

The NBA?

“C’mon, those guys live out of a suitcase.”

So you had the perfect job here?

“For a while it was perfect for me. But, like I said, that had to end.”

 

 

In the weeks after the lunch in State College, I spoke with many of Parkhill’s former players and several of his assistant coaches. Most said they tried to talk Parkhill out of resigning. But I noticed something: nearly everybody I talked to had heard from Parkhill recently. Next summer, several players will gather for golf and a cookout at Parkhill’s place—something Parkhill hopes will become an annual event. Former players remain as close to their old coach as they ever were. In essence, Parkhill still has a team-one that doesn't need to be beefed up by going on the road recruiting. This squad can stay together for years.

Ed DeChellis ’82 Edu, Parkhill’s assistant for 11 years and now head coach at East Tennessee State, regularly sends Parkhill tapes of his games or possible recruits. The two of them fax diagrammed plays back and forth during the season. “Sometimes I have to pinch myself,” DeChellis says. “It’s like what we had at Penn State never ended.”

Somehow Parkhill has hung onto the people he cherishes most in life, while leaving the odious aspects of big-time hoops behind. “Now you know why I feel so blessed,” he says. “I’d like to think I’ve got the best of all possible worlds. All I had to do was make it so.”

I’ve come to understand that he saved his best play for last.

 

Tim Wendel is the author of Castro’s Curveball (Ballantine Books, 1999) and a contributing writer at USA Today Baseball Weekly.