Sweaty and winded, yet widely alert, Lute Olson walked straight out of Arizona's fitness center one recent afternoon and into the McKale Center interview room.

Without saying a word, the Arizona basketball coach signaled that he was ready for his weekly news conference, sat behind the microphone in dark-blue Wildcat workout gear covering his 6 feet 4 inches, 235 pounds and began fielding questions.

Nobody flinched.

His staff and the local media alike have seen it all too many times. The oldest head coach in Division I basketball has conducted interviews while on elliptical trainers, as he pumped weight machines, as he walked the Catalina foothills near his home.

Writers around the Pac-10 know him nearly as much for his perennial powerhouses as for the fact that, during weekly media teleconferences, his comments are accented with huffing and puffing. That's because he takes the call on aerobic machines.

"I always take my cell phone with me" on machines, Olson says, and he often does so during the relatively calm lunch hour, too. One energy bar before the workout, one after, and Olson's back to work. No additional dining necessary. No time wasted.

That is what Olson's life is like today.

Let's take a walk

At 72, there is no telling how much longer Olson will coach, but also there are no signs that he is coasting toward retirement. His demanding workout routine, hectic recruiting itineraries, intense coaching demeanor — even his "lunch" habits — all speak of a commitment to work.

"I really don't have a timetable" for retirement, Olson said. "I've always said if a coach isn't doing his job he's really being unfair to those athletes who put so much into what they do. … I could never do that and just go through the motions."

So Olson keeps moving. When there is no time for a proper workout in New York City, he will walk from Madison Square Garden to the hotel. He will spend airplane rides pouring over DVDs of the Wildcats' last game or next opponent. He will sometimes ask those who wish to talk to follow him as he goes somewhere.

"He never sits still," said Paul Weitman, owner of Royal Buick and a frequent travel companion. "He never sits down and watches TV. On the road, he's constantly busy. One time on the road, we got off a long bus ride, and I wanted to take a nap. He wanted to go work out."

Believing exercise puts him in a better mind-set, Olson also prods his assistants to work out before all practices, but he hardly needs to. Jim Rosborough, his longtime right-hand man, is an avid tennis player. Josh Pastner spends early mornings boxing at a South Tucson gym. Miles Simon has revamped his workout routine after a series of injuries that shortened his playing career.

They joke about which sport provides the best conditioning — "we're always discussing the attributes of playing tennis," said Rosborough, who is alone on the staff in his belief — but nobody jokes about Olson's conditioning.

"He was in here with his first high school team (that he coached), and he looks younger than those guys," Pastner said. "He's an amazing man. He exercises, eats right, and he's sharp as ever."

Hectic off the court as well

Longevity is on Olson's side, too. Though his father died of a heart attack at 47 — a fate Olson attributes, at least partly, to hazardous World War I service — his mother's side is of hearty Norwegian stock: His mother lived to 89, and his maternal grandfather lived to 92. His sister is 80 and still going, too.

"So I think the gene pool is a good one," Olson said.

All this does not mean Olson will coach forever, of course. But it does help explain why he holds seniority over all his Division I peers and why, frankly, he does not care about that fact.

"It doesn't bother me," Olson said. "I think age is a number, and energywise and healthwise and all, I certainly feel a whole lot younger than a whole lot of other coaches I know."

The year-round intensity of elite college coaching, which overflows with recruiting, camps and appearances, is an easy recipe for burnout. Olson has seen it happen even to those who still enjoy being on the floor.

"When I talked with Dean Smith, he said it wasn't the coaching that got him out,'' Olson said of the legendary North Carolina coach, who stepped down in 1997 at age 66. "It was all the other things that wore him out, charity things and having to represent the university at a lot of functions and fundraisers."

Olson took Smith's words to heart, but he has not been able to act on them yet. The problem: Olson remains in tremendous demand, and, those around him say, he wants to help. Maybe too much.

"He's got a heart as big as anybody I've been around, and it's very hard for him to say no," UA athletic director Jim Livengood said. "I try very carefully to shelter and shield him as much as I can. But he's just such an institution in this community. If you want to have a successful event, the chances are a lot better if he's involved."

The way it is now, Olson tries to cram most of the "Lunch/Dinner With Lute" type of events into June, when he's at home running his summer camps and recruiting is largely dormant.

But every year, Olson said, the load gets worse because one-time appearances often become annual obligations. His daughter Jody Brase said he is now in much more demand than when he was Iowa's overwhemingly popular coach in the late 1970s and early 80s. Since Olson's first wife, Bobbi, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1998, he has become much more involved with the Arizona Cancer Center.

So what will give?

Many appearances "are going to have to be done maybe with the assistants," Olson said. "Josh has been here a long time and is very popular, and Miles is popular from his playing time here. Coach Roz has done a great job in the community for years. It's time for me to just step back from some of those responsibilities."

Rosborough is fine with it. He is just not sure how much good it will do Olson.

"I try my very best to do everything I can go to — Rotary, civic groups, whatever," Rosborough said. "But then once you get into the season, from my own experience, every year you're busier for whatever reason. Maybe it's just that you just don't want the Joneses to creep up on you, and you want to keep the program at a high level."

Being seen is the deal in recruiting

Maybe that is why Olson has been seen in Las Vegas gyms late on July evenings, watching second-tier AAU games when many other head coaches are on the town or in bed. Maybe that is why Olson flew to California on Jan. 28, 2005, after the Wildcats had lost to then-lowly Washington State at home, just so he could watch Chase Budinger play.

Or, as it should be said, just so he could be seen watching Budinger play.

"I knew he could play, but I had to be there and be seen," Olson said. "I think (recruiting) has changed considerably. The standard statement that I hear is that, 'He wants to hear from the head coach because that's who he's going to be playing for.' They need to have great relationships with the assistants, but when it comes down to it they want to see you there as much as they can possibly see you there."

So Olson showed up. Seven months later, Budinger announced a verbal commitment to play for Arizona, a recruiting coup hailed as one of Olson's best ever.

"It showed me that he really cared about me, coming down in the middle of the season and watching me," Budinger said of that game 23 months ago, when he dropped 51 points on perennial Southern California powerhouse Mater Dei. "It felt great. It kind of touched me inside to know he would do that."

Olson's omnipresence on the recruiting trail serves another purpose: It dismisses negative recruiting from opposing coaches who tell recruits not to play at Arizona because Olson soon will retire.

For Budinger's father, Olson's actions spoke louder than anybody's words.

"He's the youngest coach I've met out there I tell you, absolutely, in terms of energy level," Duncan Budinger said upon his son's commitment. "His schedule was just incredible compared to what the other coaches were doing. He was beating them on the recruiting trail left and right. They'd send assistants. He was there."

Relationships with youth

That all-out intensity will not change, Olson says, because recruiting is too important in a profession he still enjoys after 48 years on the job.

Only three things could stop him, Olson has often said: if his health suffers, if he stops enjoying coaching or if he can no longer relate to his players.

The relationships have become tricky of late, but Olson has survived. In 2001, three of his underclassmen bolted for pro basketball. Then, over the past two seasons, he has had to suspend Salim Stoudamire, Hassan Adams and Chris Rodgers, all as seniors at the time they were suspended, and guys who presumably knew Olson's rulebook well. Perhaps not coincidentally, the Wildcats have suffered from leadership and chemistry issues recently, too.

"There isn't a coach who's not tested probably every year in terms of handling how you deal with players," Olson said. "We've always based our recruiting on getting kids who fit well into a team concept, and every once in a while you make a mistake. The good thing is that we've not made many mistakes."

Besides, Jody Brase said, it was not as difficult an ordeal as it might have appeared on the outside.

"He surprised me last year," Brase said. "I was feeling a little drained for the team, saying, 'Oh, poor Dad.' But he would always say, 'We'll be OK. Practice was good today.' You never got the sense of him being disheartened.

"Once he gets out on the court with the kids, it's just like they revive him."

Olson quickly answered the 2001 questions. He said he had a "very stressful summer" wondering if he would wreck the young 2001-02 team's confidence with a brutal schedule designed for the departed veterans, but the Wildcats beat two top 10 teams to open the season and reached the Sweet 16 with an effort that may have helped push Olson into the Hall of Fame in September 2002.

Instead of fretting over the losses, Olson merely adjusted his recruiting. He actually oversigned his 2007 recruiting class last month, offering more scholarships than he theoretically had at the time, while expecting he would lose at least Marcus Williams to an early NBA departure.

Five days for vacation

He has adjusted on the court, too. Junior guard Jawann McClellan has said Olson has showed the energy of "a 21-year-old" this season, installing three defenses to overcome the Wildcats' man-to-man weaknesses. Olson has successfully coped without a true experienced big man so far this season, moving Ivan Radenovic to center.

At home, he is constantly running through all these strategies in his mind, too. That is how Brase knows her dad is much the same coach he was 30 or 40 years ago.

"He's always so distracted during the season, and that doesn't change," Brase said. "You can talk to him, and he'll just say 'Uh-huh,' and then you know he isn't listening. He's so into basketball. For me, that's heartwarming because I know, no matter what his age, he isn't losing it at all. But he does overpack his life. There's something about recruiting he can't give up, and then all those appearances."

So Olson's annual calendar just keeps spinning. There's the season from November to March. Recruiting events in April, May and July. UA camps in June, Nike camps in August. Then school starts.

It never ends. Thanks only to NCAA rules that force a six-day hiatus in the middle of the hectic July recruiting season, Olson and his family managed to escape to a friend's house on Alaska's Kenai Peninsula last summer.

"It was great," Olson said.

He was there five days. Then he flew back to the Lower 48 to recruit some more.

Summer vacation was over, in the middle of the summer.

"That's the hardest thing," Olson said. "You don't get time like other people get to where you have a two-week vacation, a three-week vacation, a four-week vacation where you can just go and do what you'd like to do."

Maybe someday he will. Maybe someday Olson will take 52-week vacations. But there is still no telling when that might be.

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©The Arizona Daily Star, 2006