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Friday, September 8, 2006
Russell taught athletes how to be men
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Erk Russell didn’t fit the mold. He was a football coach, “a hard-charging disciplinarian,” as Vince Dooley once said, but he trained athletes to be men, and if they made the grade, then they could play football for him. Coaches are rough and tough, and some bark like prison guards, and some make a game sound like doomsday. This is the truth: Erk never raised his voice, he never caused a scene, and in the words of Loran Smith (as in “Loran, whatta yuh got”) “he was the most unbelievable person I ever knew.”
Once that has been said, there would seem to be little need for moving on. But you’re not going to get off without my having a say at this time of his shocking, sudden death in an automobile. Just the other day I sat in a restaurant in Fernandina Beach, Fla., and a portrait of Erk looked down from a wall. Since he had no hair to turn gray and an expression that was always tuned into the same channel, he seemed ageless.
Dooley hired him at Georgia because Erk let him know how much he wanted the job. “If you had the chance to go from Vanderbilt to Georgia, wouldn’t you?” he said. “I was delighted.”
In fact, when Dooley didn’t hire him right away, Erk dialed his number and told him how much he wanted to come to Georgia. They had worked on the Auburn staff at one time or another, Erk preceding Vince. “It was a wise decision that Vince made, bringing Erk to Georgia,” it is so written in the book “The Dooley Years.”
“What a coach, what an unforgettable character,” Dooley said. “I would be unfair if I didn’t pay special tribute for the exceptional contribution he made to the Dooley era at Georgia. He was the cornerstone of our coaching staff for 17 years.”
He left his label, “Junkyard Dogs.” It’s the term he gave his defensive players in 1975, and it still sticks years later.
He carried his coaching beyond merely professoring. He would often stick his bald head in the middle of a scrimmage and came away from practice several times with blood streaming down his face. Once his wife protested, he quit. When the defense began to lose ground afterward, he went back to butting in, and his defensive side stiffened again. Or, so they say. There are pictures in evidence of his bodily damage.
But, that’s only the beginning. What followed at Georgia Southern is a near fairy tale in college athletics. It was remarkable. Football had been dormant on the Statesboro campus for years, and Erk was bold enough to tackle the situation. Once he got organized, the Eagles won two straight Division I-AA championships. But not without some of Erk’s trickery. There was a drainage stream running by the practice field that Erk first gave the name “Beautiful Eagle Creek.” Then he bottled some of the “magic water” and had players spread some of it on the playing field before road games.
When he arrived at Georgia Southern, enrollment was about 5,000. Today it is said to be 15,000, and you ask loyal Eagles, they’ll give credit to Erk Russell.
Once he left coaching, he could always be found standing by the Eagles’ goalposts during home games. He became almost statuesque. The relationship sprung a leak after his son was fired as an assistant coach, and for the longest time, Erk never showed his face on campus. This is ironic: On Thursday afternoon, at the invitation of Brian VanGorder, the head coach, Erk was invited to speak to the Eagles squad at practice. He accepted, his first time on the field since before relations became strained. Both he and VanGorder had been defensive coaches at Georgia, both head coaches at Georgia Southern. It must be considered that the wound had been healed before death looked up Erk Russell on Friday morning. He was 80. (Oh, and by the way, “Erk” is short for Erskine, three letters that describe a remarkable man.)
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College football doesn’t need playoff
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Those still whining over the lack of a playoff system in college football haven’t been paying attention. We’re entering the second week of the season, and we’ve already had the yearly slugging match between heavyweights Miami and Florida State. Not only that, Notre Dame had to prove its worth as a title contender by surviving punches and counterpunches in Georgia Tech’s hostile ring.
Added Dick Bestwick, among the all-time wisemen in sports, including a stint as an assistant athletics director at the University of Georgia, “Here [Saturday night], we’ve got Ohio State at Texas playing. That’s pretty darn big. Penn State is playing at Notre Dame [Saturday], and that’s pretty darn big. They’re all involved in a playoff right there. They [the whiners] just don’t get it.”
No, they don’t. Even beyond the fact that the Bowl Championship Series is a somewhat flawed but mostly adequate way of determining a national champion, college football is doing just fine, thank you. We needn’t go further than what we’ve already alluded to, and that is, given the do-or-die, tension-filled nature of the sport nearly every week, more than a few top-15 teams have several unofficial playoff games built into their schedule. Oklahoma versus Texas. West Virginia versus Louisville. Virginia Tech versus Miami. Nebraska versus Iowa State. Cal versus Arizona State. Georgia versus Florida. Notre Dame versus everybody. LSU versus Auburn. Tennessee versus Alabama.
I mean, what do you want? And we haven’t even mentioned the riveting matchups each November during Rivalry Weekend, ranging from Columbus, Ohio, or Ann Arbor, Mich., to The Flats or Between the Hedges. In other words, to all of those whiners: Just sit back, enjoy the wonderful ride from now through those other unofficial playoff games called conference championship games and shut up.
“Every year, there is another half dozen to a dozen schools increasing the size of their stadium, putting on new sky suites, new sky boxes, so I have to believe that you’re already doing something right in college football [with no playoffs],” said Bestwick, now retired in Athens. Just so you know, according to NCAA statistics, attendance at the Division 1-A level of football has increased during each of the past 12 years — you know, without a playoff system. “If attendance was plunging, and if they weren’t building all of these kind of things, then you’d have to look and say, ‘Well, maybe, regarding the lack of a playoff system, we don’t have the right model here.’ “
Instead, it is the right model that showed its worth last weekend by exposing Cal as a fraud. After enjoying the summer with West Virginia as a chic favorite to come out of mostly nowhere to contend for greatness, the Golden Bears spent their first game becoming the Tarnished Bears after getting smacked around Neyland Stadium by Tennessee. It also is the right model that likely will turn West Virginia into this year’s Auburn.
Maybe you remember the silly furor over Auburn missing the BCS championship game after going undefeated in 2004. Well, here’s the rest of the story: Southern Cal and Oklahoma also were undefeated, and they were ranked higher than Auburn, and they rightfully played for the title. Plus, neither Southern Cal nor Oklahoma had anything resembling the Division I-AA likes of Louisiana-Monroe, The Citadel or Louisiana Tech on their schedule.
Auburn did. As for West Virginia this season, all you need to know is that in addition to the Mountaineers facing mighty East Carolina, UConn and Marshall, they are playing Washington. Not the University of Washington or Washington State, but Eastern Washington.
What a waste, especially since the NCAA went to a permanent 12-game schedule this season to give teams more of a chance to add an unofficial playoff game. Or at least something in the vicinity.
“Even better, any conference that doesn’t have a playoff at the end of the year, then the winner of each of those conferences should have to play each other in a game at the end of the season before the bowl games start in December,” Bestwick said. “That would shake, rattle and roll that thing, too. In those situations, it won’t change what bowl game the winner or loser goes to, except when it comes to the national championship game.”
Then Bestwick paused, chuckled, before saying, “As long as I’m living, there will be at least one anti-playoff guy around.”
Make that two.
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