Nearly half a century of loyal service to the University of Illinois's Division of Intercollegiate Athletics (DIA) will conclude next May when Rod Cardinal steps down from his role as Coordinator of Special Projects.
The affable Minnesotan, who turns 70 on Saturday, is now the senior member of the Illini staff, but he says it seems like only yesterday that he was head athletic trainer Skip Pickering's one and only full-time assistant. Conversely, today's DIA staff features 16 full-time trainers, three graduate assistants and countless student aides.
"It's been an amazing transformation of our athletic program from the old Athletic Association to the department that (athletic director) Josh (Whitman) now leads," Cardinal said. "I look at the facilities and I'm jealous in one respect. But at the same time, I'm so proud of our ability to keep pace with our competitors.
Cardinal grew up on a farm near Blaine, Minn., with his three brothers and two sisters. He played basketball at Coon Rapids High School and was recruited by Southwest State University in nearby Marshall.
His work-study scholarship mandated that he perform duties as a part-time athletic trainer. For road games, Cardinal both taped up his teammates and came off the bench as the sixth man.
"We were up at Michigan Tech one time and some guy got popped underneath his eye and was bleeding," he remembers. "That's the first time I'd ever experienced something like that. Their head coach actually came over and said 'just put your thumb over this to stop the bleeding'. It was quite a learning experience."
After graduating from Southwest State in 1971, Cardinal was drafted into the Army.
"(President) Nixon sent me a letter that said 'Greetings, your student deferment is up,'" he said. "The (Vietnam) war was starting to wind down when I went in. Mary and I had just gotten married. I was aware that the military academies had civilians to help support the corps, so after my basic training at Fort Leonard Wood I got my orders to report to West Point and serve the rest of my term there."
Cardinal's assignment was to assume the athletic training role as a grad student. He became friends with Army's gymnastics coach, a former Illini gymnast named Ed Raymond, and while chatting noticed a posting in a University of Illinois job placement flyer. When Cardinal dialed the number, Pickering answered the phone.
"He seemed to be a very likeable person," Pickering recalls. "Everything was 'Yes, sir. No, sir." In those days, our salaries were terrible (Cardinal received $7,000), but we got him here and he never left."
Cardinal credits former Illini track and field coach Gary Wieneke for showing him the ropes during those early days. He also treated athletes on the football, baseball and tennis teams.
But it was with the Illini men's basketball team where Cardinal gained his most significant notoriety. In his first three years, he worked with three head coaches: Harv Schmidt, Gene Bartow and Lou Henson.
"I enjoyed working with Harv because of him being a former Illini basketball player and a former captain," Cardinal said. "He was an Illini guy and he carried that on his shoulders."
"Coach Bartow was really good to work with from the standpoint that he had just come off of a Final Four appearance," Cardinal said. "He was almost the opposite of Harv in terms of his ability to recruit and bring in a diverse group of athletes. I always had the sense that he was destined for greater things. When UCLA came knocking on the door, there was no way he could turn it down."
Of course, Cardinal's longest coaching relationship was with Henson, a man who he served for 21 years.
"One of my great accomplishments was earning Coach Henson's trust," he said. "I served as his operations guy and was involved with a lot of logistics stuff. I learned an awful lot from Coach Henson and his ability to let loose the reins a little bit and allow me to help him and the program. It was a great, great learning experience."
Henson has mutual respect for Cardinal.
"Rod was a highly professional trainer who provided our players with excellent care," Henson said. "With his position came many other roles that he willingly fulfilled and never complained. In many ways, Rod was a father figure to the athletes."
Numerous games, teams and athletes are indelibly etched into Cardinal's memory bank.
• Illinois's upset in 1979 over No. 1 Michigan State and Earvin "Magic" Johnson: "I thought I was going to jump out of my skin when Eddie Johnson hit that shot."
• UI's 54-51 loss at Kentucky in the 1984 Mideast Regional Finals: "I swear to this day if we had played them on a neutral court, I'm convinced that we would have beaten them 10 out of 10 times. We were a better team than they were. Efrem Winters stepped up big time despite an ankle injury and played an awesome game for us. We had all the pieces for us to be a Final Four team."
• The "Flying Illini" of 1989: "I just remember how well oiled that team was. The ability of Coach Henson and Nagy and Collins to make quick decisions, and our guys' ability to adapt and adjust throughout the course of the season. They just hit all the right buttons correctly and it was a magical situation that ended unfortunately for us. But the journey to get there was just so incredibly exciting."
• Nursing Kenny Battle and Lowell Hamilton back to health before the 1989 Mideast Regional final game vs. Syracuse: "I can remember John Mackovic telling me 'when I was at Wake Forest, Doc whatever his name was would be up all night with those players. He'd have them ready the next day.' And that was my cue. Mary and the kids were up there with me at that time and I had to get up every couple of hours and go check on these guys. I just set the alarm, had a key to their room, and kept changing the ice. The good Lord willing, they were able to play, not a hundred percent, but they were effective."
• Andy Kaufmann's game-winning shot vs. Iowa in 1993: "Coach Henson would diagram a play on copy paper on his clipboard. He would draw his free throw lane and his X's and O's, and then just rip it off and throw it underneath the chair. He'd say 'T.J., you do this and you do that. And Andy, you're going to come off this screen.' It was very reminiscent of the play he drew up for Nick Anderson. If I'd have been smarter back then, I would have picked up some of those drawings."
• Illinois's Big Ten champions in 1998: "We got the magic beans with that group. Coach Kruger, who was just an awesome guy to work with, just hit on some gold with those guys. They bought into everything that he said. Individually, they weren't all that great, but together they just hit gold. It was so much fun to be around them. Matt Heldman was the glue to a group of guys that played so well. That's a proud group of Big Ten champions, I'll tell you."
• UI's miraculous performance at the 1999 Big Ten Tournament: "All of us just packed one suit, one shirt. When you're the 11th seed, you're coming up and going home. We'd got to that fourth game and nobody wanted to raise our arms or jump up and down."
Cardinal quickly points to his wife as being a key to his success.
"Mary doesn't get enough credit for the amount of work she put in raising three kids (Troy, Brian and Lisa) and dealing with the lifestyle I had as an athletic trainer," he said. "She's been a saint and a wonderful partner. I'm so blessed to have had her in my life as we've made this journey."
Pickering, Cardinal's old boss, says that his longtime friend is quite simply an Illini icon.
"He really is," Pickering said. "Rod has been there so long and he's survived all the things that have gone on. He was so well liked and so respected in what he did. You talk to the players … oh, man, they think he's the greatest thing since sliced bread. If he were in the world of big business, he'd be a multi-millionaire."
