Born and raised in Gobbler's Knob, fifteen miles south of McLeansboro, Illinois, Sloan was one of ten children being raised by a single mother. He would wake up at 4.30 a.m. to do farm chores and then walk almost two miles to get to school in time for 7 a.m. basketball practice. Sloan graduated an all-state player from McLeansboro High School in 1960. He spent around five weeks at the University of Illinois then quit school due to homesickness. After working for a time at the oil fields, Sloan moved to the University of Evansville. He played college basketball under Evansville coach Arad McCutchan even as he worked part-time making refrigerators for Whirlpool. Sloan is known to wear John Deere hats and to collect and restore John Deere tractors as a hobby. After years of a self-confessed habit of drinking and smoking too much, he has since stopped both, although he has claimed that it never affected him nor his coaching.
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