Former USC basketball coach George Raveling has died following a battle with cancer. He was 88.
The former Iowa and Washington State coach was a larger than life figure and speaking from personal experience, interacting with him was unforgettable. I’m going to focus on personal experiences in this post.
When he was at USC, he would regularly take me and another student reporter to lunch and invited us to his house to eat pizza and watch college basketball games. That just doesn’t happen anywhere else.
And decades later, I still remember it because it made such an impact.
Raveling would rent a van (not a car) on USC road trips because he would always take a group a writers to his favorite restaurants in whatever Pac-12 city the Trojans were playing in. And he always knew what restaurants had the best food.
I went to his office on Monday morning after the NCAA Tournament pairings were released in 1992 and he already had a list of restaurants in Milwaukee, where the Trojans were headed.
His weekly press conferences at Julie’s restaurant were popular because he loved to talk about anything.
I last spoke to him a few months ago and he said, “I still have an eye for a good restaurant.”
He used to subscribe to more than 100 newspapers (pre-Internet) and the basketball office at Heritage Hall used to have five-foot stacks of papers outside the doors. The athletic director, Mike McGee, eventually complained about the mess.
And he wrote a weekly column in the L.A. Herald-Examiner while USC coach because he had so many interests and things to say.
Here’s a story on how he asked Martin Luther King for his “I Have A Dream” speech.
InsideUSC with Scott Wolf 
Do you think Lincoln Riley will take to heart your comments?
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I had always heard George Raveling was a foodie, and these anecdotes confirm it. He also had one of the Trojans’ best teams and player in Harold Miner
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KAM: Who can forget when USC AD Mike McGee introduced George as the new USC basketball coach?https://www.lerctr.org/~transit/healy/ravling.wavlol
DON: Healy played that all that time.
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Most people who die at 88 outlive most of their friends, but it sounds as if Scott remained a friend
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Wonderful observation, John.
#MaybeFolksWillReflectOnItBeforeTheyTakeCheapShots
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Scott, I heard that Yogi Roth is always over at Lincoln’s house watching games and playing Nintendo. You weren’t invited?
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Two words: Fight On!
ok, that is technically 4 words – so I might as well ad a few more. It’s wonderful to hear about a great Trojan leader and coach, and to know he was also just a great Trojan!
Thanks for sharing.
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Very nice write-up Scott.
When I hear his name my first thought is how he terminated the scholarships of Lewis, Kimble, and Gathers the first week of his tenure. They were star incoming Freshman and wanted some say in who would be the next coach and Raveling was having none of that. Kimble and Gathers ended up playing for Loyola and had a great team that went far into the NCAA tournament.
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That was an odd sequence of Rav coming in and immediately revoking the scholarships of a great recruiting class. One also wonders if Hank Gathers would still be alive today at nearly 60 years old but for his moving from SC to Loyola
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KAM: Antisemite Mainstream Moderate Democrat Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey pandering to Minnesota’s mini Somalia might be the cringiest video you watch todayhttps://x.com/libsoftiktok/status/1962658458857009511?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1962658458857009511%7Ctwgr%5Ed0d3471f014ff93cdabc18eabb790d44356eba2d%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Finstapundit.com%2F741722%2Flol
DON: He loved the criminal George Floyd too. And Democrats wonder why normal men have abandoned ship.
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Scooter,
I put dibs on the speech. That is mine.
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Scooter,
Sincerely, this is one of the nicest write ups you ever have had. I was impressed that you did not have anything negative to say about him. May he RIP. He was also Catholic. I wonder where the funeral will be.
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100% –This one goes in the Scott Hall Of Fame….
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Michael,
You have been offically elected by all of us, (Even though I am speaking for everyone, LOLOL) to be the official Scooter Hall of Fame Blog recorder. You will do an execellent job.
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Love it, P. T.!
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Great toast from the Great Gatsby….. Thanks, So Cal!
#MyFavoriteAmericanNovel
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“Before you criticize anyone, always remember that not everyone has had the same advantages you’ve had.”
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Scooter,
Where is the score card against the Mo St. team? I am sure you will give all A+’s. LOLOL.
I did not care for Maivia throwing off his back foot. He will throw interceptions by doing that.
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Yep …good call, P. T., [but I only saw him do that 3 times —I trust Lincoln works that out of his system this week]…..
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Michael,
that is because he was running for his life either by going to the right or to the left.
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Exactly what I noticed too, P. T…..
#HopeTheO-LineDoesn’tCauseProblemsForHimAllSeason
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Serpentine! Serpentine!!
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KAM: REPORTER: “This past weekend, 54 shot, 7 dead…”
PRITZKER: “Look, big cities have crime!”
DON: The acceptance of disorder in the US, including levels of violence in poor neighborhoods that’s near top across the world, is simply stunning. We don’t have to live like this, but because most of it happens to poor people, out of sight of an incurious media, we do.
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What do most poor people want. The same thing that we all want. Safe streets, good job opportunities, and excellent public schools. But these blue city politicians are not offering it. They are always at odds with the police – want to defund them, replace them with social workers, sue them and nullify their arrests through no cash bail and decriminalization of our laws. Trump is trying to rebuild the industrial base through tariffs and they are opposed to that. And they always side with the leftists teacher’s union. These kids need and deserve school choice. Tenure and collective bargaining for public school teachers must go. The only way up for these kids is to develop skills and the blue politicians are blocking it.
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KAM: CNBC Admits The Awful Truth: With California’s $4 trillion gross domestic production, Gov. Mimbo likes to boast that his state is the world’s fourth-largest economy. But a new CNBC report by Kate Rogers reveals more than it meant to about how “Trump’s immigration policy threatens key sectors” of Mimbo’s state.
“As the Trump administration continues to ramp up immigration enforcement, industries key to the state’s $4 trillion economy like agriculture, construction and hospitality could be among those hardest hit by the loss of California’s [illegal] immigrant workforce,” Rogers reported.
“These are the [illegal alien slave] workers that are keeping our economy afloat. They’re keeping businesses open,” Abby Raisz, research director at the Institute, told CNBC.
DON: Who knew Alta Kalifornia was a Slave State?
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DON: I hear Ton-o-Hel is bragging that his team is no Mo State
KAM: -And that no way does SC rack up 73 on his squad
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KAM: Cowardly Sparrow Gabby, Tranny Bruin and Cowardly Gabby are Global Warmist Cultists who have lied to us for decades.
Alarmist Claim #1: Antarctic Peninsula is shrinking
FACT: NASA’s own satellite data from 2023 shows that East Antarctica has been gaining ice mass at an unprecedented rate, adding approximately 200 billion tons of ice annually over the past decade. This massive ice sheet, which contains about 60% of the world’s fresh water, defies the simplistic narrative that all Antarctic ice is disappearing.
Alarmist Claim #2: The IPCC stated the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035. .
FACT: The IPCC got that unsubstantiated and false statistic from a World Wildlife Federation brochure. In
January 2010, Time magazine article, Himalayan Melting, How a Climate Panel Got it Wrong: “Glaciergate” is a
“black eye for the IPCC and the climate-science community as a whole.”
Alarmist Claim #3: Polar Bears are disappearing.
FACT: Director of Wildlife Research with the Arctic Government of Nunavut: “Of 13 populations of polar bears
in Canada, 11 are stable or increasing in number. They are not going extinct, or even appear to be affected at
present.”
FACT: In the 50’s and 60’s there were between 5,000 and 10,000 polar bears. Today there are between 15,000 and
25,000.
Alarmist Claim #4: May 2013, President Obama claimed the climate is warming faster than anybody anticipated five or 10 years ago.”
FACT: Nature reported “For the period [1998-2012] the observed trend of temperatures is … not significantly
different from zero and suggests a temporary hiatus in global warming.”
FACT: The Economist reported “over the past 15 years, air temperatures at the Earth’s surface have been flat …”
Alarmist Claim #5: Global warming is causing more tornadoes.
FACT: A NOAA scientist rejected global warming link to tornados stating “no specific consensus or connection
between global warming and tornadic activity.”
Alarmist Claim #6: Global warming is causing hurricanes to increase in intensity and frequency.
FACT: Geophysical Research Letters found “since 2006 tropical cyclone energy has decreased dramatically” to the
lowest levels since the 1970s. Global frequency of tropical cyclones has reached a historic low. So far in 2025, there has been one hurricane… ONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You Global Warmists are pathetic!
Alarmist Claim #7: Global warming is leading to an increased number of droughts.
FACT: IPCC Fifth Assessment report, previous “conclusions regarding global increasing trend in drought since
the 1970s were probably overstated.
Alarmist Claim #8: Sea levels rising.
FACT: The sea level hasn’t risen at Mission Bay, Marina Del Rey or the Ventura Keys or the people living there would be flooded out and the $3 million homes there would be worth zero. The sea level hasn’t risen at the artificial island at Mussel Shoals CA. No wonder Governor Mimbo wants to get rid of it to remove the evidence of the fraud of Global Warmists.
DON: Global Warming is a cult, a very lucrative cult for huckster Democrats like Al Bore.
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Breathes there a man with soul so dead. That never to himself hath said. This is my own my Trojan team !!!
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KAM: I note that the Trump Climate Report refutes the notion that we are headed to global disaster
DON: We have a difference of opinion on the matter. Can’t you see my argument?
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Trump is the global disaster Mr Sparrow. !!!!!!!!!!!!
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KAM: Cowardly Gabby hates:
— Defeating inflation
— Booming Economy
— Securing our homeland and making DC safe
— Ending worldwide conflicts
—Cheap gas, Drill Baby Drill
— Abolishing DEI from government, military
— Ending men in women’s sports
— Stopping chemical castration of children
DON: Cowardly Gabby, Tranny Gabby and Cowardly Sparrow Gabby lied to us for 5 years about Biden not being senile and yet they think we should listen to anything else they have to say. Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus.
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She denied responsibility for those conflicts. The fact they happened on Dementia Joe’s watch were merely coincidences. LOL!
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KAM: Come on, Donald, this is serious, something bad is happening to our planet, can’t we agree on that? We can disagree on the extent of the damage, can’t we?
DON: Let me get back to you on that one
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KAM: Come on Cowardly Sparrow Gabby, you are a joke. Where are all the hurricanes you Global Warmists predicted? The peak of hurricane season has passed and there has been only ONE hurricane!
DON: You Global Warmists should be punished like they used to punish false prophets in Biblical days.
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KAM: Protect the women and children, The Exaggerator is at large again. Come on, India and Pakistan said you had no say in their latest disagreement
DON: Wrong. I had a say
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KAM: Cowardly Sparrow Gabby is the Libtard Exaggerator. He loves corrupt Democrats ruining our cities and considers innocent blacks, whites and Hispanics being killed and beaten to be collateral damage.
DON: He is as bad as his fellow libtards Tranny Bruin and Cowardly Gabby.
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KAM: This dude is off the rails
DON: He might be more believable if he didn’t go to the extremes every time
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KAM: You have dementia from being a tackling dummy at USC.
DON: No wonder you identified with Senile Joe.
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Speaking of Scott Wolf, I don’t think we have to worry about all of his SC history ever being lost. Certainly the man has placed many of his writings in some book form for posterity
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KAM: AI Proves Cowardly Sparrow Gabby The Exaggerator is caught lying again:
Search Assist
Yes, Donald Trump announced that India and Pakistan have agreed to a “full and immediate ceasefire” following U.S. mediation, aimed at de-escalating recent tensions between the two countries. This agreement comes after a series of violent exchanges and is intended to prevent further conflict over the disputed Kashmir region.-NBC, BBC
DON: Why does Cowardly Sparrow Gabby lie so needlessly? He needs psychiatric help for his severely whipped condition.
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KAM: This guy cherry picks his articles as “proof.” Another publication wrote that “Amid repeated claims by Trump that he had mediated a ceasefire, the governments reiterated that it was worked out between the 2 countries
DON: You gonna believe them or me?
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KAM: You lie without proof and rage when your claims are debunked.
DON: Cowardly Sparrow Gabby is a lying libtard, thinking that serving Greater Libtardia will absolve him of his many sins.
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KAM: Cowardly Sparrow Gabby thinks AI is “cherry picking”.
DON: Cowardly Sparrow Gabby loves to lie for Greater Libtardia but his scams have been outed here by Buddhakarma. No wonder he feels so guilty. He is.
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