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Remembering Weeb Ewbank
Posted: Thursday December 03, 1998 01:58 PM
It was a beautiful, blue-sky day in Oxford, Ohio, about
three years ago. I was standing on the porch of a quaint
little brick home just outside of town, getting ready to
ring the door bell, when a thought raced through my mind
and forced my hand away from the buzzer. I was about to
meet one of the the greatest football coaches of all time.
Had
I given this visit the reverence it deserved?
I had not. I was a snot-nosed idiot who, until that day, had
had little regard for old-timers or sports history. And
here I was about to visit football royalty. The thought
froze me in my tracks.
This was the home of
Weeb
Ewbank , the man who taught
Joe
Namath and
Johnny
Unitas
how to quarterback a championship team. The only coach to
win championships in both the
AFL and NFL. A Hall of Famer. The protegé of
Paul
Brown . The winner of two of the most important games in pro
football history, including the Colts-Giants 1958 title
game, a.k.a. The Greatest Game Ever Played. I froze. I just
stood there on the porch, until the door suddenly swung
open and Weeb, dressed in a golf shirt and these incredible
plaid pants, chuckled a bit and said, "Well, I saw you
standing out there so
I just decided to go ahead and open the door. I walked all
the way over and I didn't want to waste the trip. Come on
in."
Wilbur Charles Ewbank died Tuesday at his home in Oxford at
the age of 91. And in the first few news reports that came
out
I noticed that both Namath and Unitas were too upset to even
make a statement. Recalling my brief visit to his home that
one summer day, I can understand perfectly how these guys
felt. Weeb was humble and humorous, but strong -- a
fatherly type of man. You only needed to meet him once to
understand his
magic.
We decided to talk downstairs in his memorabilia room -- a
small den in his basement where every inch of wall and
shelf space was covered with souvenirs of a 45-year
coaching career that began in 1928 at the tiny Van Wert
(Ohio) High School. Weeb asked me to head down the stairs
first. That way, he explained, if either of his bad hips
gave out and he fell, "I'll land on you instead of the
ground."
The room was a treasure trove of football history.
Trophies, plaques, photos, keys to cities, game programs,
cartoons, press clippings, honorary degrees and countless
other artifacts covered the walls. There was a signed
soccer ball from Pelé. There were a couple of
mounted fish Weeb had caught. Pictures of him with
presidents and dignitaries. Gifts from actors.
I wandered around just soaking up the atmosphere. Then I
asked Weeb which was his best team ever? What was he most
proud of?
In life, he said, he was most proud of his family -- his
wife, Lucy, his three daughters, eight grandchildren and 17
great-grandchildren. "I told Lucy at our anniversary,
if
I had to do it again, I'd gladly make the same mistake all
over again," Weeb said. Later, upstairs in the kitchen
just before
I left, I caught them holding hands.
Weeb then pointed to a photo of a high school football team
that had gone undefeated and unscored upon. An
NFL legend, pointing to a dusty old black-and-white team photo
from a prep squad, saying it was his best team ever. That
pretty much sums up Weeb
Ewbank.
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Ewbank tutored Joe Namath; Namath won Ewbank a championship. Rich Clarkson |
In the middle of the room Weeb still had an old-time
projector that he used to watch canisters of film. Next to
that he had a couple of plastic chairs. We sat down and
went through several of his old scrap books. To our right
I noticed a bookshelf stuffed with thick binders made out of
black leather, aged like the tops of old cleats.
These were the books Weeb had kept on each season. The
yellowish pages held plays and game plans as well as
itineraries, team rules, fines and the home addresses of
players like Unitas and
Art
Donovan and
Don
Maynard . The diagram of the famous play that gave the Colts the
win over the Giants in overtime was in there. Later I
started jotting down who had been fined what, way back in
1955. Weeb stopped me. "That kind of thing should not
leave the room," he
said.
He told me that before one big game he couldn't think up
anything to tell his nervous team. Finally, he said,
"Men, let me make something perfectly clear,
after
we win today, I do
not want to be carried off the field." The players got
it. They lightened up and played great. It was perfect
coaching.
As a player at Miami University and later as a coach, Weeb
hated touchdown celebrations. "You should use that
time to go back and pat the linemen on the fanny and thank
them for getting you there," he said. He favored rules
that eliminated unnecessary violence from the game.
"It's a contact game," he said. "Not a
killer game." His golden rule was he would never ask a
player to do something he wouldn't ask his own kids to do.
He never had to bully or belittle anyone -- the kinds of
things most coaches seem to get off on nowadays. Weeb was
equal parts compassion and precision. In a game that is
overrun by ridiculous amounts of machismo and testosterone,
he was tough but never
unkind.
After a few hours we went up to his kitchen for something
to drink and, a little bit later, I was on my way. As
I stepped back onto the porch for a second time,
I was once again overwhelmed by a thought that stopped me in
my
tracks.
Any idiot can be a great football coach. Weeb Ewbank was
also a great
man.
Spanning the strange and wonderful world of sports, the Flem File has visited
a nudist colony, investigated nasal strips, tried out for the Olympic bobsled
team and endured injury and humiliation at the NFL Experience. What, or who,
should we riff on next week? If you've got a suggestion, a comment or a
question, don't just sit there, bring it on! Click here to send an e-mail to
Flem, or address it yourself: flemfile@aol.com.
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