How '40 Minutes of Hell' Became an Iconic Arkansas Basketball Brand

Nolan Richardson's moniker that struck fear in the hearts of opponents was well earned, necessary

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – It's one of the most iconic brands in college sports, yet not a lot of people know the story of how it came about.

Legendary Hall of Fame Arkansas coach Nolan Richardson, who led the Razorbacks to multiple Final Fours, two national finals and a national championship in the 90s has told the story before, but when former University of Arkansas sports information director turned DriveTime Sports radio co-host Rick Schaeffer asked Richardson to tell the story of how "40 Minutes of Hell" came to be, he lept at the chance.

While the characteristics of the concept traveled with Richardson from Bowie High School in El Paso, Texas all the way to Arkansas, it didn't receive its signature name until after he arrived in Fayetteville.

"That was my hope that I could get them to play 40 minutes every place that I've been," Richardson said. "There's one thing that was the common denominator of all the teams I coached. You'd better be prepared to play and you'd better be prepared to be in shape because they're going to play you hard. You won't find any team that will play you harder than his team." 

Richardson's frantic style that led to a 101-13 record at Texas Western Junior College complete with a 37-0 national championship season and an NIT championship at Tulsa was crafted through a blue collar work ethic. It was an identity he wanted to establish at Arkansas as well.

"I took pride in the fact that when we went to the gym, the gym was the work place," Richardson said. "It was the classroom, but it was the work place."

Branding to get the philosophy across to his early teams at Arkansas would be essential. Fortunately, because of the Arkansas mascot, his signature approach practically branded itself.

"We used to call that Hog Ball," Richardson said. "I called it that because hogs are greedy. I said, we're greedy. We want the ball."

Being greedy meant always wanting the ball and the only way to always have the ball was to constantly take it back through defense. The most effective way to make defense work at the level Richardson wanted required relentless effort. 

Relentless effort came from relentless work in practice, which was jarring for those new to Richardson's approach.

"When we started one of our workouts one of our players thought we worked too hard," Richardson said. "He said 'You come and do this every day?' I said 'Every day for 40 minutes. For 40 minutes in preseason, that's what we do.'"

The idea was overwhelming.

"'Coach that's Hell!' 

"You're right. It is Hell – 40 minutes of it."

Richardson then laid the groundwork for why he was forcing his players through so much misery instead of spending the preseason working on fundamentals.

"I said, 'I don't care nothing about a basketball,'" Richardson said. "Fatigue will make cowards of us all and I have been able to prove that to myself. 

"This is what we're trying to accomplish. We're trying to make you a coward. If you're a coward, you won't play. Most guys don't like to run hard. Most guys don't like to be guarded hard. There's a lot of things that they don't like and that's what we've got to give them.

"Just think, if you can take 40 minutes, can you imagine your opponent who is not used to any of this stuff?"

And with that, "40 Minutes of Hell" was officially born. 

Sacrifice and pushing limitations became the name of the game. Sprints up Cleveland Street, a road that is the first closed in Fayetteville when snow falls because of its extreme steepness, became a regular part of the regiment. 

Pouring sweat well before the sun came up not only pushed the body, it disciplined the mind. Richardson wanted the impossible to become routine.

"It sounds really hard, hard, hard," Richardson said. "But once the body and the mind get trained to do those kind of things, it becomes just like another simple day. After the 40 minutes, there was only 25-30 minutes of practice left.

"We may not have the best team or best of talent, but that doesn't give us the right not to play hard," Richardson said.

The practices that made "40 Minutes of Hell" possible were limited to the preseason. They gave way to regular season practices that prior to brutal workouts experienced before would have been viewed as extreme. 

However, as Richardson already knew, the players would now see it as borderline coasting after having pushed their bodies so hard.

"Once we got ready, we called it tune-up time," Richardson said. "Your tuning it up was just come out, clean up, running you some full-court stuff. That's what you predicate your game on. 

"Then you put it on the floor for the game time. That's when I would always say 'Let's take our practice to the game. If we take our practice to the game we've got a chance to be successful.'"

Once the tone had been set, the current players filtered out visiting recruits who couldn't cut it on their own.

"Every player that came in they talked about it," Richardson said. "They talked about the Cleveland deal. That's hard. They talked about getting up at five in the morning. That's hard.

"Those are the things that you want your guys talking about. That way when they show up to work there's ain't no surprises. We're going to work."

And work they did, following Richardson through their own personal Hell, 40 minutes at a time.

HEAR THE FULL AUDIO OF THE NOLAN RICHARDSON INTERVIEW
WITH DRIVETIME SPORTS ON 103.7 THE BUZZ

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