KS(book)Report: They Call Me Goose | by Jack Givens

Welcome back to another edition of the KS(book)Report. In our inaugural feature, I broke down Rex Chapman’s New York Times best-selling memoir, It’s Hard For Me to Live with Me. It was an all-gas, no-brakes, whiplash-inducing ride around every corner in the whirlwind life of one of Kentucky basketball’s most cherished icons. Despite being another autobiography from a Wildcat legend, the second book up for review could not be the more polar opposite in style. In They Call Me Goose, Jack Givens takes us readers on a much more gently paced stroll through his fascinating and unconventional life.

I will try to review They Call Me Goose in a vacuum, but having just gotten out of the Chapman racecar, not to mention some overlap in subject matter, it will be hard not to compare Rex’s book to the Goose’s. Race relations, financial struggles, and time in court are showcased in both men’s lives, but it is remarkable how differently each man addressed these difficulties.

With that small disclaimer, let’s dive into They Call Me Goose, a 264-page light-hearted easy summer read.

Initial knee-jerk reactions

One of the best parts of reading this book was getting a glimpse into the life of a player before my time. Jack Givens has his jersey retired in Rupp Arena, but save for seeing his name near the top of the all-time Kentucky scoring list upon stat research, I never fully embraced what he meant to the program until diving into his book. Sure, he has been great at calling games on the radio since replacing Mike Pratt in 2022, but it is easy for fans of any age not to explore Kentucky basketball before their fandom began.

I learned a ton of incredible factoids about the Goose, but what fascinated me the most was his approach to life, both in his successes and challenges. Givens is incredibly gracious, appreciative, and humble throughout his journey and if there’s a lesson to be learned, the world would be a better place if we all emulated Goose’s personality in our daily lives. His love for people and belief in the underlying good of mankind is evident in nearly every detail delivered.

And there are a lot of details.

If I’m being entirely honest, this book could have used some tighter editing. Coming from someone whose writing can be unnecessarily lengthy, the delete key on the keyboard can be your best friend. Givens doesn’t get to his commitment to Kentucky until over a third of the way into the book and while his time growing up in a poor part of Lexington helped shape the man he would become, I didn’t necessarily need the names of his favorite elementary school teachers.

However, after reading the book, I could see where Jack’s personality might insist callouts like this be kept in, making sure he recognized as many influential people as he could. That’s just who he is.

Before he was the Goose, he was Jackie

Jack Givens was born Jackie Lamont Givens and is one of 10 kids from a mother who sounds like a saint. As he grew up in the 1950s and ’60s, he likened her life to that of a character from the 2011 movie, The Help. She was a Black woman who performed the cleaning, cooking, and child-rearing for wealthy white families.

She provided what she could, but Jackie grew up with his brothers and sisters in Bluegrass-Aspendale, the Lexington “hood” as Givens described it. While his living quarters were already cast aside from rich neighborhoods, there were further societal divisions within the Aspendale where Black and white families were literally separated by a barb-wired, chain-linked fence.

It would have been easy to grow up bitter due to his circumstances, but Jack expressed these were some of the happiest times of his life. Working at a local restaurant with his brothers to help the family out gave him a sense of pride, and he aspired to walk in the footsteps of successful Black role models in his community.

What others saw as a flaw, Givens wore as a badge of honor. So, when he watched Kentucky, comprised of all white players, take on Texas Western, full of all Black players, in the 1966 National Championship game, he rooted for Texas Western. It wasn’t anything against Kentucky, but he wanted to see fellow Black athletes succeed. At the time, Kentucky basketball wasn’t integrated, so he never considered playing basketball there to be a choice…until Givens helped integrate it.

Integrating Kentucky

Rex Chapman spent a lot of words in his book criticizing what he viewed as an anti-Black sentiment during his time on Kentucky’s campus, but Jack Givens, one of the first Black athletes to suit up for the Wildcats, did not have that experience. During Givens’ freshman year in 1975, all of Kentucky’s starters were white, but he did not view it like that. He simply knew he was on a team with great players and he was one of them. It wasn’t until later that he fully appreciated the fact he was one of the first African Americans to play for the school and helped trailblaze the future.

This straightforward, simplistic, and borderline innocent worldview shines through multiple times throughout the book. In certain circumstances, it can even come across as naive. For example, when playing in New York City for the national title in 1978, he recalls being perplexed that the McDonald’s restaurants there weren’t in standalone buildings with parking lots like they were in the South but incorporated into large skyscrapers instead.

This boy scout-like approach plays out in other ways too. While Rex Chapman openly admitted to boosters handing him wads of cash, the Goose didn’t even know this was a thing. He heard rumors of it happening in other schools but never considered it might be going on at Kentucky.

This worldview also gave him the superpower to not take Joe B. Hall’s tough coaching style too harshly. We all knew Coach Hall as an affable old man before his passing, but during his time on Kentucky’s sideline, Givens described him as intense. As Givens progressed at Kentucky, Hall became extra hard on him, but he never took it to heart. They both wanted to win, and win they did. The Goose scored a career-high 41 points in the championship game as the Wildcats beat Duke to win the school’s 5th title.

Post Kentucky Life

The Atlanta Hawks selected Jack Givens 16th overall in the 1978 NBA Draft and signed him to a three-year, $300,000 deal. He admits it is tough to see the kind of money players drafted in this position today make and not wish that were the case during his playing days. I don’t blame him.

Givens only lasted two years in the NBA and confessed he did not play with the confidence he needed to succeed at that level. Instead, he found success playing in Japan. Aside from leading his team to a championship there, the most interesting part of his recounting of his time there was his aversion to eating sushi, or what he called it, raw fish. He liked his fish fried in cornmeal. A true Kentuckyian.

He admits to struggling with life after playing basketball and like so many other athletes got into a mound of personal debt by, “trying to keep up with the Joneses.”

After getting his Mercedes repoed, Goose learned his lesson. The former Kentucky great reinvented himself as a color commentator for the upstart Orlando Magic and coach of the Orlando Comets, a U16 girls’ team. You’ll never guess, but yep, he led them to a championship as well.

Givens also talks about the agony he went through when a mother of a girl, who did not make his Comets team, accused him of sexual battery on her daughter. This same woman made similar claims to three other men previously and from all accounts, they were all completely bogus. A jury found Givens innocent on all charges, but the toll the process took on him was extremely taxing. According to him, it was his Christian faith that pulled him through that tough time.

He used the time awaiting trial to get his real estate license, which he used in Florida after his acquittal to great success. Eventually, he took his family back to Kentucky. In recent years, he has found success in business, color commentary, and somehow found time to write a book.

Overall Impression and Rating

They Call Me Goose is a must-read for any Kentucky fan with an appetite for basketball history. Not only do you get a full breakdown of the life of a Wildcat legend, but you also get a peek into the old world of things like the Dirt Bowl, a group of basketball courts where some of the best pickup games would take place. In its time, it was essentially the Lexington version of Rucker Park.

Givens also gives his opinion on NIL (spoiler alert: he wishes it was around in his playing days), and his take on activists’ one-time push to rename Rupp Arena due to Adolph Rupp’s not-so-stellar reputation with Black people. It should be no surprise the Goose wants to always keep it Rupp Arena to preserve the school’s history, which is a strong stance from one of the first Black players to suit up for the blue and white. According to Givens, when he first met the legendary coach in Memorial Coliseum, Rupp told him, “I’m glad you’re here.”

Overall, I can quibble a bit with some areas where I thought the book dragged a bit, but overall this was an incredibly informative story told through the eyes of someone who has lived more Kentucky history than most of us will ever know. It’s not full of sex, drugs, and rock and roll like Rex Chapman’s memoir, but it gives you a chance to view the world through the eyes of an honest, decent, spiritual, friendly, humble, appreciative, and remarkable man, who just so happens to be the third on the list of all-time scorers in Kentucky basketball history.

On a scale of zero to eight banners, I give They Call Me Goose a solid six.