Great College Football Coaches

New York: Gallery Books [An imprint of W. H. Smith Publishers Inc.], 1990. Second printing [stated]. Hardcover. Good/Fair. Approximately 9.375 inches by 12.25 inches. 192 pages. Illustrations (some in color). Index and Acknowledgments. DJ is worn, torn, soiled, and chipped. Mr. Clary is a free-lance writer, the author of 67 books, including P. B: The Paul Brown Story, Army vs. Navy; An American Classic, Navy Football: Gridiron Legends and Fighting Heroes, and Field of Valor: Duty, Honor, Country, and Winning the Heisman. Clary was a graduate of Fordham University. Clary was the classic hail fellow well met. The minute you met him you felt like you could trust him with secrets that wouldn't go A-1 with the afternoon edition ball scores. It was a perfect trait for his times. After receiving his Master's as the recipient of the Grantland Rice fellowship from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in the heart of the 1950s. Teams were still riding the trains. TV was more a curiosity than a necessity. Free agency was still decades in the works and social networking was a world away. It was still same day telegrams and not this second Instagrams. Clary knew the best coach of the 21st century when he was Navy assistant coach Steve Belichick's little son. Bill Belichick, noted football historian and PB expert, once invoked the book before a 2004 Bengals-Patriots game. He grimly noted that the family dog had defaced his copy and when the media asked what kind of dog, Belichick's reply of "a dead dog," was truly one of the great one-liners of any weekly opponent conference call anywhere. Great coaches have guided the sport of football from its rudimentary beginnings of flying wedges to the current sophisticated era of flying footballs. Fans cheer the weekly stars of the game, who, like comets, brilliantly appear and then suddenly vanish from the scene. Great coaches are different, they remain every season to find and coach, to produce, new comets for the fans and grads. These are men who rule a grassy patch of sod 120 yards in length and slightly over 53 yards wide, who are teachers on classrooms called practice fields, with athletically gifted and skilled students who they teach intricate lessons. Each week there is a pass or fail examination under the most strenuous physical and emotional conditions, in full view of millions. Men such as Amos Alonzo Stagg, who began coaching a decade before the 19th century ended and continued into the age of jet travel; Glenn (Pop) Warner, the game's master innovator; Knute Kenneth Rockne, it's master motivator; Earl (Red) Blaik and Bud Wilkinson, the modern dynasty makers; Woody Hayes and Bo Schembechler who, in the age of television, lit up the screen with their fiery dispositions; Paul (Bear) Bryant, who rumbled and growled beneath his checkered hat; John McKay, who ran his "student body right and left" and immortalized "the USC tailback" for Southern Cal; Joe Paterno, who gave the term "street smarts" and the position "linebacker" new and loftier dimensions; and Eddie Robinson, who has won more college football games than anyone in the history of this very esteemed profession. The lives and careers of 40 heralded football coaches are highlighted alphabetically. Each had a single-minded devotion to detail and perfection, with an absolute abhorrence of defeat, while maintaining a full appreciation of total effort. Their lives are earned success stories, in a profession where the pressure to succeed is suffocating at times, with weekly judgment from fans and media... and themselves. Among the coaches discussed are: Eddie Anderson, Paul (Bear) Bryant, Jerry Claiborne, Dan Devine, Vince Dooley, Woody Hayes, John William Heisman, Lou Holtz, Robert Neyland, Ara Parseghian, Joe Paterno, Knute Rockne, Darell Royal, Amos Alonzo Stagg, Glenn S. (Pop) Warner, and Bud Wilkinson.