Great College Football Coaches - Hardcover

Clary, Jack

9780831739867: Great College Football Coaches

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 083173986X ISBN 13: 9780831739867

Publisher: Wh Smith Pub, 1990

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.

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