J-Speaks: The Passing of Game Changing College Football Head Coach

This Monday night from Raymond James Stadium in Tampa FL, the Clemson Tigers (13-1) of the Atlantic Coastal Conference (ACC) will be taking on Alabama Crimson Tide (14-0) of the Southeastern Conference in the College Football Playoff National Championship, presented by AT&T at 8 p.m. on ESPN. Tigers’ head coach Dabo Swinney will be looking to win his first National title as a head coach and Clemson University first title since 1981. Alabama’s head coach Nick Saban is looking to lead the Crimson Tide to their second straight championships as they beat Clemson a year ago, 45-40 and Saban will be looking to tie former Alabama lead man Paul “Bear” Bryant with six National Championships. In the case of Swinney, he is looking to join that elite group of college football coaches to have a title on their resume, something that a former head coach achieved for the first and only time back in 1984. The college football world said goodbye to that legend, who put the institution he coached at on the map thanks to a new kind of offense.

The nation and the college football world lost Hall of Fame head coach former Brigham Young University (BYU) head coach LaVell Edwards passed away last month from to the effects of a broken hip he sustained at his home of Provo, UT on Dec. 24, 2016. He passed away at his home five days later. He was 86 years old. He is survived by his wife Patti Edwards and their children Ann Cannon, Jim Edwards, and John Edwards.

Edwards, who first was an assistant football coach for the Cougars from 1962 to 1971 before becoming the head coach for 29 seasons starting back in 1972. He compiled a 257-101-3 record in those 29 seasons (1972-2000), with the 257 wins ranking six in all-time wins and went 7-14-1 in bowl games. Edwards led the Cougars to 18 Western Athletic Conference (WAC) titles (1974, 1976-85, 1989-93, 1995-96) and one Mountain West Conference crown in 1999.

Only the late Hall of Fame head coach of the Penn State Nittany Lions Joe Paterno, who compiled a 409-136-3 record and led the school to two National Championships won more games at one institution than Edwards.

He in his career claimed the Bobby Dodd Coach of the Year Award in 1979; the American Football Coaches Association (AFCA) Coach of the Year Award as well as the Eddie Robinson Coach of the Year Award in 1984 and the Amos Alonzo Stagg (2003).

Edwards led the No. 1 Cougars (13-0 that season) to the National Championship as they defeated the Michigan Wolverines in the Holiday Bowl 24-17 on Dec. 21, 1984 at Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego, CA. BYU was the only undefeated team that season in Division I-A.

Upon winning the national championship that season, Edwards received offers to be the head coach of the Detroit Lions of the National Football League or at the University of Texas at Austin. He turned down both job offers.

One of the players on that title team in 1984 was current ESPN College Football Analyst Trevor Matich, who learned much from Edwards about life as much he did about the game football.

“His legacy,” Matich said of his former college head coach was brought home when many years ago, when BYU opened their new facility and the school’s Hall of Fame was their football trophy cases he saw some fathers who played for Mr. Edwards in those years bring their kids to stand outside those cases, look through the glass at the trophies that their fathers won back then. The reaction from the kids was they were very happy to see the trophy Matich said during the Dec. 30, 2016 edition of ESPN’s “Sportscenter” to anchor Michael Eaves.

“It dawned on me at that point that really the legacy of LaVell Edwards was not the trophy inside the case,” Matich said to Eaves, holding back tears. “It’s that father standing outside the case. Because wives have better husbands. Children have better fathers because of the way LaVell Edwards would mentor and not just guide you and steer you and make you go. He would mentor in a way that you found your own way. He just made sure you stayed within the lines.”

Matich told the story of when he was in his freshmen year at BYU that he thought he knew everything. That he was a hot shot, which he felt gave him permission to grow his hair a little longer than the honor code of the institution would allow. He thought he was cool enough to do so and Edwards let that infraction slide for a little bit and then he called Matich into his office.

Surprisingly, he never said a word about Matich’s hair at that moment, but then he looked at his hair. Then looked him straight in the eye and said, “All right you got that out of your system.”

Matich reacted by saying, “Yes sir! Yes sir!” He proceeded out and went to get it cut that day.

“For LaVell, it was so important to me that he respect me and that is a different kind of leadership and mentoring than someone who will make you respect them and I think in delivering that to his players, he made them better players. He allowed them to maximize themselves, but more than that, he made them better husbands. Better fathers. Better men and that’s the trophy. That’s the legacy of LaVell Edwards.”

One of the requirements for being at BYU, which is the unofficial epicenter of the Mormon world. Edwards to accommodate his players so they can complete that part of their education would juggle the depth chart.

Upon retiring at the end of the 2000 season, where Edwards and his wife Patti, who have been married for 60 years were carried off the field after a victor against the rival Utah Utes and two years later got the call to head to New York for an 18-month public affairs assignment.

“I had no plans to do anything with football,” Mr. Edwards recalled from an interview he did with ESPN The Magazine. “I had promised Patti that football was done and we were really enjoying our work there in New York.”

Edwards would not be away from football very long as a group trying to revive football in Harlem, NY that did not have a team since before the union of Mr. and Mrs. Edwards heard about him being in town. They asked for help from the legend and he was more than happy to oblige.

“Next thing you know, there I am back on the sideline, in the middle of Harlem, coaching football again. I love it,” Edwards, who as part of his assignment had to teach a youngster on the fledgling team said. “I loved teaching the game to kids and using football to teach them how to be better people. I loved getting those kids in touch with other football people to help them keep growing even after I left. We built something from nothing. That’s always the best part of the job.”

That was how Coach Edwards built his offensive scheme from the ground up and figuring things out from there.

When he was hired to be a part of the BYU staff as an assistant in 1962, he was not hired at that time for being a coach who had the same offensive philosophy as every other coach back then.

“Believe it or not, I was a single wing guy,” Edwards remembered saying one time before. “I’m pretty sure I was the only Mormon in the world running the single wing, so that’s how I got the job. When I took over as head coach in ’72 we actually led the nation in rushing. But I knew if we were going to take the next step as a football program, we had to do something different. So, my second year we started throwing it.”

Many coaches at that time predicated their offensive philosophy was based around strong running back. Edwards at first used that same scheme and the result was a 5-6 season and no postseason for the Cougars. In 1974, BYU started to throw the ball all over the field as Edwards shaped an offensive scheme around strong armed quarterbacks he had like Super Bowl champions Steve Young and Jim McMahon; 1990 Heisman Trophy winner Ty Detmer, Robbie Bosco, Gary Scheide, Gifford Nielsen and the new offensive coordinator for the Crimson Tide, who will be calling the offensive plays in Monday’s National Title contest Steve Sarkisian and the resulted in BYU leading the nation in passing offense eight times; in total offense five times and in the nations of three times.

BYU turned the WAC into an offensive explosion that became a midnight staple of ESPN’s Saturday programming and created a generation of high scoring-loving, pass-happy football fans who watched matchups between the Cougars and Hawaii go up and down the field until 2 a.m.

“I watched up-tempo offenses now and I hear them called ‘revolutionary’ and I just kind of laugh,” BYU’s running back and all-world return specialist in the mid-1980s Vai Sikahema said back in December. “Those of us that played in the WAC back in the day, we were already setting the pace 30 years ago. Sometimes it feels like it just took the rest of the country that long to catch up.”

Edwards’ offensive approach was not always well received by other college football conferences like the then “Big 8,” who offensive power was the wishbone; the SEC was represented by the I-formation; USC was still rocking “Student Body Right,” and football in the eastern part of the U.S. played football via the option.

To make their point that their offense was no joke, they went out against the best of those areas and won. The Cougars defeated the top-ranked University of Miami Hurricanes, now referred to as “The U,” on a Thursday night 27 years ago. In the 1980 Holiday Bowl, eventual Super Bowl winning quarterback for the Chicago Bears Jim McMahon erased a 20-point fourth-quarter deficit against Southern Methodist University (SMU) and Robbie Bosco and his pals defeated Michigan in the 1984 Holiday Bowl to be the improbable National Champions of college football.

“That was just how it was for us, constantly feeling like we needed to prove something, but in my book, that was never a bad thing,” Edwards explained once. “Feeling like that makes you willing to work harder. It makes you take chances.”

Besides having some of the best offensive signal callers that made the offense work, Edwards had some good assistant coaches and graduate assistants, who went on to have amazing careers elsewhere, both at the college level and even in NFL.

Leading those great quarterbacks in the film room and in practice was Mike Holmgren, who would go on to the NFL, going from Quarterbacks coach for the San Francisco 49ers (1986-88) to their offensive coordinator (1989-91) and being part of back-to-back title teams in 1988-89, to becoming the head coach of the Green Bay Packers (1992-98) and leading them to a Super Bowl XXXI. He also coached the Seattle Seahawks from 199-2008 and they even reached the Super Bowl XLV, where they beat the Pittsburgh Steelers 21-10.

Other members of Edwards coaching tree included Detmer, who is the current offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach at BYU. Mike Leach, who coached at Texas Tech (2000-09) and is now the lead man on the sidelines for Washington State; Kyle Whittingham, who served as a graduate assistant and then went on to Utah and moved up the ranks to head coach from 2005 to now for the Utes. Super Bowl (XXXV) championship head coach of the Baltimore Ravens Brian Billick was a graduate assistant at BYU in 1978 and the current head coach of the Kansas City Chiefs Andy Reid also served as a graduate assistant for Edwards.

Edwards was a coach who effected on not just the players he coached, and the assistants that worked for him, but he had an impact on many coaches of other institutions, who he became great friends with and vice versa.

“Coach was a great friend of mine. He was a mentor to all of us when we were coming up as young coaches,” National Championship coach Mack Brown, who was the head coach at Tulane University, North Carolina University and the University of Texas Mack Brown said during commentary of the 2016 Valero Alamo Bowl between No. 12 Oklahoma State versus #10 Colorado University back on Dec. 29, 2016 on ESPN.

“Never met a better coach and nicer person. Wife Patti, we hate so much for Patti to have to be going through this. We lost a great man today for college football.”

Former UCLA Bruins, Colorado Buffalos and Washington Huskies head coach Rick Neuheisel echoed those same sentiments the next day during the Geico Halftime Report of the Hyundai Sun Bowl between No. 18 Stanford Cardinal versus North Carolina Tar Heels when he said, “College Football lost a prince yesterday.”

Former head coach at Virginia Tech and eventual Hall of Fame head coach Frank Beamer, who turned the school’s football program into national power in his tenure said of Edwards’ career, “What a story like his does is it gives others hope. If you work hard and you do it the right way, then one day the dream comes true. That’s what I learned from LaVell Edwards and I can’t even imagine how many other people out there who knew him or admired him all learned that same lesson.”

His first game as the head coach of the Huskies, they lost the game late and Edwards came over to Neuheisel and he showed more concern for the fact that a new head coach lost his first game than he was about his own team that won.

“Rest in peace LaVell Edwards. You’re definitely going to be missed.”

Before LaVell Edwards became the head coach at BYU, they never finished a season ranked. They never been to a bowl game or won a conference title in 50 years of football.

In the 20 seasons under Edwards’ direction, the Cougars finished in the Associated Press (AP) Top 25 a total of 18 times. They played in 35 bowl games, including winning four Holiday Bowl games, and claimed at least a share of 22 conference titles in either the WAC or MWC.  

Edwards was a game changer. He changed the way how offenses can execute through the air. He changed the attitude of BYU Football and he molded young people who came into his program and turned them into winners both on the field, in the classroom and made them into individuals who can take on the world.

“Those trophies, they might as well be made out of rebar,” Edwards said of hardware his Cougars claimed in their Holiday Bowl wins. “We used them as a foundation for the construction of a very successful program. We knew the Rose Bowl wasn’t going to call or one of the Florida bowl games. Not yet, anyway. So, we took what we could get and we used that to really build something."

Information and quotations are courtesy of 12/29/16 9 p.m. ESPN Bottom Line news crawl during the 2016 Valero Alamo Bowl between No. 12 Oklahoma State Cowboys versus No. 10 Colorado Buffalos commentated by Adam Amin, Mack Brown and Molly McGrath; 12/30/16 2 p.m. of the Geico Halftime Report with Adam Zucker, Rick Neuheisel and Brian Jones during CBS Sports’ coverage of 2016 Hyundai Sun Bowl between No. 18 Stanford Cardinal versus North Carolina Tar Heels with Brad Nessler, Gary Danielson and Allie LaForce; 12/30/16 www.espn.com story, “College Football Lost A Legend In LaVell Edwards,” by Ryan McGee; www.espn.com/college-football/game?gameid=400876570; www.google.com; http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaVell_Edwards and http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Neuheisel; http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mack_Brown.