|
Dan Devine |
 |
Pictures from the 2000 Season Not affiliated with the University of Missouri or Missouri Tiger
Athletics. |
||
| Dan'l was a
tiger of the first stripe By Bob Broeg |
For more than 40 years, Dan Devine enjoyed the close friendship of Bob Broeg of the Post-Dispatch. And for many years Broeg was Devine's partner in an in-season television show about Missouri football. There is perhaps no better person in Missouri who can speak with the authority and experience of Bob Broeg regarding Devine. Dan Devine's turn-the-corner conquest at Missouri began in his second year there. Yes, 1959 was a significant season. And it had amusing aspects for Dan'l, at my expense. In a driving September rain, Ol' Mizzou led mighty Michigan until the last two minutes when the Wolverines kicked a field goal, giving them a 15-13 lead. Aware that a Devine predecessor, Don Faurot, had over-scheduled and lost so many near-miss games, I profanely blew my stack. Incredibly, second-string Tigers quarterback Bob Haas led a 98-yard drive against the clock, scoring with two seconds to go. Final: Mizzou 20, Michigan 15. I laughed with relief and joy. Faurot, seated behind me in the press box, grinned and whispered, "Ye of little faith." I made the mistake of telling Devine the anecdote. Exactly 20 seasons later, in the 1979 Cotton Bowl when Joe Montana led Devine-coached Notre Dame to the Irish's greatest rally -- three touchdowns in the last seven minutes for a 35-34 victory over Houston -- I received a telegram from the jolliest Irishman, Dan Devine: "Ye of little faith." I was close to the little man who died Thursday of complications from heart surgery. Dan'l looked, and acted, taller than his height -- 5 feet 9. Truth is, he looked like a friendly druggist and most of his coaching years he seemed like a traffic cop in a Brooks Brothers suit. But he was a fierce competitor, sensitive, good-looking, dark-eyed and fighting an inferiority complex he explained in a recently published autobiography, "Simply Devine, Memories of a Hall of Fame Coach." I did a lengthy epilogue, probably too long, because, somehow, Devine never showed his humor. Publicly, he spoke softly, repetitively, almost dull. But he gave Missouri its finest hours in football and also guided Green Bay to an NFL division title and Notre Dame to the national collegiate football championship. He also was as effective at East Jordan (Mich.) High School and at Arizona State University. Between the East Jordan and ASU jobs was a stop at Michigan State, where he was an assistant.
Learning a lesson Snapped Biggie, "You're the coach, aren't you!" Devine learned to trust his assistant coaches. Former star guard and longtime assistant, John Kadlec, said Dan gave assistants liberal leeway. Kadlec smiled, "Until Thursday," he said "then Dan moved in and played with the athletes' emotions until game time." Don Faurot saluted him for this. "Dan was a great game-day coach," he said. By Devine's definition, he liked to play on the road. "I'd like to convince them that there are 55 players against 55,000 fans on the other side," he said. At 33 when he succeeded Frank Broyles at Mizzou, he set ground rules of conduct that were etched in stone. No smoking or drinking in-season, no gambling of any kind and curfew by 10:30 on weeknights and 1 a.m. after Saturday games. He was Sir Boss. Like MU's Gary Pinkel now. Players' meetings were both feet on the floor, helmets in the lap. When I wrote a national story just after his near-perfect 1960 season, he said, "I'll save you the trouble of describing. I'm what you would call a 'fussbudget.' I've got three pet peeves: Failure to pursue, failure to block downfield and failure to at all times behave like a football team. The little things bother me more than the big ones." Like in the season of Devine's greatest upset, 1968, when a star center ignored once too often an edict to tuck in his jersey in practice. The old coach sent him home. "I'm especially sorry because one of his parents is a football coach," Devine said. This was before the Gator Bowl, when Alabama's Bear Bryant was the dimpled darling of the media. Missouri romped over the Crimson Tide 35-10. Groaned the Bear in a gravel voice, "They ran through us like we were a barber's college." Devine was 3-0 against the legendary Bryant.
Transition times When Broyles fled to Arkansas, where as coach and director he became a legend, he was quoted as saying, "They think they can win with the material they get -- cloud nine!" But Devine, always attending faculty meetings like the professor of pigskin, called in student leaders asking them to switch from "Dixie" to a new song, catchy "Fight Tiger." He urged a fraternity to stow the Confederate flag. Blacks were recruited and that boosted the bar, helping MU achieve a sterling record in the 1960s. Ol' Mizzou was the only major school to avoid a four-defeat season. In Devine's second season at MU, the Tigers were 6-4 before getting an Orange Bowl bid when Big Eight champion Oklahoma was ineligible. The Tigers lost to heavily favored Georgia 14-0.
Trail-blazing They junked their soft pass defense in which they dropped their ends into the secondary. Instead, they went to a wide-end, six-man line in which they used only one linebacker. They put in an extra defensive back and turned loose their ends to meet at the opposing quarterback's throat. The next week at Faurot Field, they upset sharpshooting Rick Mayo and unbeaten Air Force 13-0. "Out of that game," said Devine, "was born our defensive philosophy that the best pass defense is a strong pass rush." That defense was a major factor in a stretch of 10-plus seasons -- from Weidner's heroics at Colorado to Lynn Dickey rallying Kansas State in 1970 -- in which Devine's teams never lost a late lead. In another refinement in '59, the Tigers set up a balanced attack on offense for the bowl game against Georgia. It was set in a 'T,' with old single-wing blocking. The next year Devine had chunky little quarterback Ron Taylor blocking on the power sweep in spring ball. Not only did both guards pull to lead the interference, along with the fullback and the near-side halfback, but also the quarterback. He would pitch a lateral to the ball-carrying back. Devine simplified it for Taylor, who was eager to pass. "The coach told me to take the first opposing jersey I saw in the hole," said grounded signal-caller Taylor, who almost took the Tigers to the national championship. Fussbudget Devine was hard to please. Over the sideline phone, the head coach grumbled, "What happened to that play?" Long-time assistant Clay Cooper would say, "Gained 8 yards." "Oh!" Air Force coach Ben Martin labeled the mass sweep as "student body left" or "student body right."
MU's closest call The Tigers were undefeated heading into their next-to-last game, prompting the top ranking in the country. But they had to travel to Oklahoma. After his first MU team (in 1958) was clobbered there 39-0, Devine leaped onto the training table in Norman. He called for attention and, in a quivering voice, said: "You seniors, I promise you that two years from now these sophomores will win the game and dedicate it to you." With many MU fans in the stands, the Tigers were led by Stevenson's touchdown runs of 66 and 70 yards. They won 41-19, creating a cockeyed, distracting campus in Columbia before Kansas' sleeping giants came to town. And the big one got away from Ol' Mizzou. The Jayhawks stacked the running attack and won at a time bowl games did not count in the final poll. Minnesota, beaten in the Rose Bowl, won the brass ring. Kansas was required to forfeit its last two games, but consolation was not quite the answer. Missouri topped Navy 21-14 in the Orange Bowl, holding Heisman Trophy winner Joe Bellino to 4 yards rushing. The tainted Big Eight title was eased by the brush-off bowl between Missouri and Minnesota the following year. The Tigers' 6-0 triumph eased the pain, but ... "I let my team get away from me," Devine said. "Too much pregame national attention that last week, and I worked the players too hard. We lost with tired legs. If I ever get a second chance ..." It came at Notre Dame in 1977, when he gained the national championship with a team that had fresh legs.
Turning down a bowl bid When MU won 10-7 in the season finale the Tigers were offered a spot in the Bluebonnet Bowl, but declined. Kansas took the bid and romped over Rice 33-7 in the game played in Houston. The Tigers thought better about the bowl bid in 1962, upsetting Georgia Tech 14-10 in the Bluebonnet Bowl. The game showed the compassionate side of Devine. Defensive end Don Wainwright suffered a concussion, and Devine stayed with him while the rest of the team returned to Columbia. "He's going to be unconscious until the swelling leaves the brain, but I won't leave him until his mom flies in from St. Louis," Devine said. Usually, the coach was as distant as his practice-field perch on a high tower. Except ... "Except when you cut or missed class," more than one player said, "then you were ordered to his office and got what-for." Once the varsity career ended for many players, Devine opened his office and his heart to help with job advice, etc. Even for Francis Peay who went from All-America offensive tackle to No. 1 choice of the New York Giants. Said Dan'l, "For trying to make him a defensive tackle, I was a prunehead." But Peay didn't see it that way. Said Francis, later head coach at Northwestern, "I learned from him to put something back into the pot. He's an introverted man, but he's also extremely sentimental, sympathetic and sensitive to the rights of others."
A wild side Privately, athletic director Don Faurot, who hired Broyles and Devine, congratulated Dan, but lectured him. "'Son,'" Dan related to me, "'you've got to settle down. You'll never last.'" Mizzou alumni in Kansas City formally presented Devine with a new clipboard, gold-tinted, to replace the one he had tossed in disgust. When Devine was honored in-season at a Knights of the Cauliflower Ear Dinner in St. Louis, he whispered that he would call St. Louis his favorite town. Cautiously, I advised that KMOX, which broadcast the proceeding, had powerful airwaves that reached Kansas City. Dan'l shrugged, exhibiting two king-sized Tigers cufflinks. "St. Louis is my favorite town," he proclaimed. When the Post-Dispatch began the Scholar-Athlete Dinner in 1967, he was front-and-center as a "name" coach. Time and again, he rescued the show. He was extremely proud of his single son in a family of seven children. Danny Junior had been labeled "Tiger" before the family moved to Columbia, their second home. Dan Jr. played guard in high school, enrolled in little Milton College in Wisconsin. He graduated with honors and was an end who was given a professional look-see by the Chicago Bears. He coached for years at Columbia's Rock Bridge High. Said Dan'l of his son's ball-boy status from the early years, "Tiger saw me at my best and worst in the dressing room. I'm happy he understood." In Devine's top effort of the 1969 season, his Orange Bowl-bound Tigers beat Michigan's Rose Bowl team 40-17. They handed Bo Schembechler his only defeat in a nonconference game at home in his first 10 seasons as the Wolverines' coach. Devine was 9-1-1 against the Big Ten.
Moving on I honestly wonder if back to back any coach ever hazarded such a challenge, most certainly with painful physical purgatory. In his first regular-season game with the Pack, in 1971, Devine suffered a broken leg when he was run into on the sideline -- an injury that brought him gamely back on crutches. At Notre Dame, learning about the icy slicks of South Bend, he skidded into a tree before his second season, 1976, and suffered a spinal injury that left him with a persistent whiplash ailment. With Green Bay he won the Central Division in 1972. Devine wasn't Packers legend Lombardi, so Dan'l wisely was receptive when Father Edmund Joyce called from Notre Dame. He stayed for six seasons, won a national title and three out of four bowl games. His 53-16-1 record would look great there now. After leaving Notre Dame he headed Arizona State's program against drug abuse, then heeded Mizzou's call and came back briefly as athletics director. He mended fences between the school and disgruntled alumni, and got contributors to contribute. As always, like the days when he persuaded the teams to play better than they knew how, he delivered. Grateful for contributions past and present, they built an athletic pavilion named for Daniel J. Devine. For the kid they called Danny and Dan -- and I called Dan'l -- he came a long way from the night nearly a half-century ago when he asked the Cardinals' colorful Dizzy Dean to speak before an Arizona State game. There, he learned, too, his knack of attracting the attention of prominent people. He never forgot the exhortations of the hero of the old Gas House Gang. Drawled Ol' Diz, "I wasn't the greatest pitcher, but I was amongst 'em. You ain't the greatest team, either, but you're amongst 'em. Listen to the coach. Hit' em hard and let 'em lay! About his lay-it-on-the-line challenge to his 1960 team, Devine explained: "I can tell 'Bear' stories to the media, but I can't fool my players and I can't be anything to my players. I can't be Knute Rockne ... Bud Wilkinson ... Biggie Munn or (grinning) not even Dizzy Dean." |
