Ralph Stout: Six decades on the whistle

Mountain City native Ralph Stout made quite the impact in the community, but he also made one on the court and the gridiron across the region. The Mountain City native fell in love with basketball as a child, and officiating the sport as a young adult was equally exhilarating. Stout, who was 96 when he died in the summer of 2017, played basketball and football at Johnson County. The Longhorns basketball teams went 52-10 during his junior and senior seasons (1937-39). Stout went on to play basketball at Lincoln Memorial University, where he became a Hall of Famer. He also was inducted into the TSSAA Hall of Fame (1984), the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame (1992) and the Northeast Tennessee Hall of Fame (1989). "My love for basketball started when I was a young boy," Stout said in 2016. "My first basketball was a tennis ball and my first hoop was an old piece of wire shaped and attached to the side of my dad's woodshed. I practiced shooting hoops with that tennis ball, and in my mind I beat UT (Tennessee), Vanderbilt and all the major colleges." Stout ended up officiating for many of the major colleges. He worked 16 NCAA Tournaments, seven ACC Tournaments, 13 Southern Conference Tournaments and a number of SEC Tournaments. He also called games in the Ohio Valley Conference, Volunteer State Athletic Conference and the NAIA's national tournaments as well as the American Basketball Association. "The first basketball game I ever refereed was an independent game over in Crumpler, North Carolina," Stout said. "They called me to go over there and ref a game. I didn't know much about refereeing. I went over there and refereed for nothing. Well, I didn't charge them nothing; they gave me five dollars before I left. That was about 1947." Before long, he was getting paid handsomely while being yelled at by the likes of Adolph Rupp, Ray Mears and Dean Smith. In fact, Stout called a technical foul on the Smith with his No. 7 North Carolina Tar Heels leading 83-82 at Wake Forest with 52 seconds remaining on Feb. 5, 1970. Stout had called a foul on the Tar Heels' Eddie Fogler, and Smith, some 90 feet from Stout, reacted by putting his hands on his throat to give Stout the choke sign. So Stout assessed Smith a technical foul and the Demon Deacons hit both free throws and the technical foul shot, and they went on to win, 88-85. ACC commissioner Norval Neve, according to the Charlotte Observer, said Stout made the "correct call." It was only the fourth technical foul called in ACC games that season. "Stout looked at me as I put my hand to my neck," Dean Smith told the AP afterward. "I didn't realize he had called a technical until the crowd roared...It was the first time I have been called for a gesture." Stout said he never second-guessed the call. In fact, during his lengthy run as Ohio Valley Conference supervisor of officials, he said he hired Smith's son Scott. "I don't think (Smith) ever thought I's very good," Stout said, "but I didn't take no animosity toward his boy (Scott). I hired him in the OVC and he did me a good job." Stout officiated high school and college games for decades. He was also the head official on football crews for decades. Particularly on the basketball court, Stout was known for his showmanship. Football, basketball and baseball officials were generally more colorful for the majority of Stout's era, which made the flamboyant Stout feel right at home. Cliff Ellis coached Clemson to an ACC title in 1990 and led Auburn to an SEC championship in '99. But he was a hot-headed 26-year-old rookie head coach at Cumberland University when he first encountered Stout. Ellis let Stout know he thought he blew a call, and Stout blew him a kiss. "I'm arguing a call," Ellis said during a 2016 interview for a story on East Tennessee State Hall of Famer Harley "Skeeter" Swift, "and Ralph comes down and blows me a kiss." Ellis said he also watched Stout make a lit cigarette disappear in his mouth, then open his mouth and stick the cigarette back out with his tongue – and a puff of smoke. "I said, 'This guy's crazy,'" a chuckling Ellis said. "After that (first) game Ralph waited on me and he said, 'Cliff, I think you're gonna be a good basketball coach. But if you're more worried about me calling the game, what is your team thinking?' He said, 'You need to let us call the game and you coach the team, and you'll be a lot better coach.' "And I took his advice and I stayed that course. I owe a lot to Ralph Stout. When I talk about mentors, he's a mentor...What a great man. Ralph certainly had a big influence on my life; I can tell you that – a big influence, big influence." Stout said concentrating on doing his job helped him avoid being influenced by the big personalities of coaches such as Kentucky's Adolph Rupp and Tennessee's Ray Mears. Rupp once appeared convinced Stout had missed a foul when Tennessee's Tom Boerwinkle blocked a Louie Dampier shot in the closing seconds of a Volunteers victory. "I called a technical foul on Adolph the first game of his I ever refereed," Stout said. "He told me to call something, so I did – I called a technical. He called the (SEC) commissioner. I thought I's fired. Rupp ran the league and I thought I's fired when I called that technical. But anyway, I called it. "But he told the commissioner to 'Send that little scrawny son of a bitch up here. He's got guts.' I worked his games from then on." Stout called a number of epic bouts between Kentucky and Tennessee. A newspaper clipping in his scrapbook shows Stout smiling at the crowd while Mears scowls at him. "I think I refereed the Tennessee-Kentucky game 16 times," Stout said. "Mears would call them timeouts when he had him beat with about three seconds to go and it'd make Adolph madder than hell. Mears was a promoter. I used to eat with him down there." TSSAA officials supervisor Larry Hutchinson, a Johnson County native, started his four-decade career in officiating thanks to Stout. Hutchinson, a starter in football, basketball and baseball at Johnson County (Class of '71), was excited to see a fellow Longhorn officiating Mears' Volunteers when Hutchinson was a student at UT. "Ralph was a legend when I was down at the University of Tennessee going to school," Hutchinson said. "And Bernard King and Ernie Grunfeld played back in the era I went to school there." Hutchinson chuckled recalling a story Stout liked to tell about angry LSU coach Press Maravich, the father of NCAA record-setting scorer Pistol Pete. Coach Maravich was barking at Stout following a shaky first half from Pistol Pete. "Press Maravich said, 'Lord, they're holding my son every time down the court,'" Stout said, "and I said, 'Which one is your son?'" Stout officiated professionally in the American Basketball Association. "I worked in the ABA for two or three years," he said. "It was too much travel. I didn't like it. I mean I'm in California one night and Pittsburgh the next night and New Orleans the next night. I got tired of that." Stout made an impact on and off the court. He was the mayor of Mountain City for 18 years (1947-64) and was instrumental in a $1.2 million sewer system materializing, and he proudly pointed out how he got $625,000 in matching federal funds for the project. Stout also owned a jewelry store for decades. Legendary Johnson County basketball coach Austin Atwood grew up admiring Stout. Atwood was a good athlete at Johnson County. So were his father (Joe) and brother (Mike). And his great uncles, Ford and Blake, played on those excellent Johnson County basketball teams in the late '30s with Stout. "Ralph and my dad were really close," Atwood said. "So we went in his store a lot. Every time I got to go in there it was like you were going to see the president or something. I mean, really, it was. I was always kind of infatuated with him just because of the way my dad talked about him – good family man. "Just talking to him you would've never known he'd done any of the stuff he did. He was good for our community. … One thing my dad always said about Ralph was how much interest he took in each kid. He wasn't just interested in officiating. He took an interest in the kids in general." Of course, Stout remained a kid at heart, and it always seemed like Christmas morning when a big game was hanging in the balance and he was hustling down the court. "I called a hundred games a year," Stout said. "I'd called 365 if I could have."