Erk Russell: More than a Coach

[HAAS]

Mike and I attend Georgia Southern University, a mid-size state university about 40 miles north of Savannah. At GSU, football is an essential part of our culture. That is mostly due to the work of one man, Erk Russell. Erk was more than just a coach though, he is one of my biggest heros. Sadly, Erk passed away last August the day before I was actually going to be able to meet him. Strangely, I feel like I knew him even though I never met him. When I first got down to Georgia Southern, I knew little about football other than you wanted touchdowns, basic rules, and positions. I came to orientation and found out that we had Six National Championships at the I-AA level and football was huge at my school. I was excited as my high school team was miserable. Then I started hearing all this talk about some guy named Erk. The more and more I heard about this fellow the more intriguing he seemed. I knew I had to find out more about him. So I did research, read his biography, and this is what I learned:


Erk Russell grew up in Alabama. He was a normal guy growing up and just like all boys, found a little mischief every now and then. He stayed out of trouble by playing sports. When it came time to go to college, he decided to attend Auburn University where he played football, track, basketball, and wrestled earning ten varsity letters in all.

After he graduated from Auburn, he went into coaching. He began at the high school level and eventually found his way to the University of Georgia where he was Defensive Coordinator under Vince Dooley. He was known for his infamous "Junkyard Dawgs", a nickname for his defense that was ferocious and protected the field like a pack of pit bulls protecting a junkyard. He won the 1980 National Championship with Dooley at Georgia achieving a perfect 12-0 record.

From the American Football Coaches Association's Defensive Football Strategies, the chapter penned by Erk defines the Junkyard Dawgs, "By our own definition, a Junkyard Dog is a dog completely dedicated to his task, that of defending his goal line. Further, he is very often a reject (from the offense) or the runt of the litter. Nobody wants him, and he is hungry. We had three walk-ons, four QBs, and three running backs in our original Junkyard Dog starting cast, which averaged 208 pounds across the front. In short, a Junkyard Dog is one who must stretch and strain all of his potential just to survive. Then he can think about being good."

Erk had an uncanny ability to communicate with his players. He was known for doing unconventional things such as sending out calendars to his players during the summer with things like "Run three miles, hate Georgia Tech four times." One time at Georgia Southern, a player died of a drug overdose. Erk decided he would make a statement so he brought a live rattlesnake into a team meeting and threw it on the floor. Everyone scattered. He then went on to say "You see how you ran from that snake, if anyone ever brings that white stuff (cocaine) into a room you run from it just like you ran from that snake".

During the early 80's, Georgia Southern President Dale Lick decided to bring football back to Georgia Southern. Football had been missing since WWII when it was canceled as part of the effort to send boys to war. By a miracle, we were able to lure Erk away from UGA and down to Statesboro to build a program from scratch. UGA, jealous that we did so, managed to make this difficult for Georgia Southern and Erk but using their various political ties to pass laws saying that no state funds could be used for college athletic programs. Erk had to build a program from scratch. Ever heard of the phrase "If life gives you lemons, make lemonade."? Erk said that about starting the program at GSU. With almost no money, he went around house to house, church to church, and started a grassroots campaign to raise funds for the football program. His charisma paid off and attracted enough boosters to build a stadium, buy simple uniforms, and fund enough scholarships to field a team. In the beginning it wasn't pretty but Erk made the best of what he had. He always found ways to turn those lemons into Lemonade. Our stadium was tiny, but Erk called it "The Prettiest Little Stadium in America". By our practice field there was a drainage ditch. One day Erk did a back flip into it after noticing how hot it was and deemed it "Beautiful Eagle Creek". He would take jugs of the water from the creek to the away games and pour it in the end zones to "keep the bad spirits out". Before our first home game, with our plain Blue jerseys/helmets with white numbers, and white pants, Erk threw a roll of athletic tape to captain Tracy Ham and told him "Put a stripe down the middle, we are going to look classy today boys."

The first season was rough. He had no players, and nobody wanted to play for a brand new team that wasn't even a member of the NCAA yet. Erk went door to door to every dorm room on campus and asked every male to come play. The result as Erk called it, the biggest group of non-athletes he had ever seen. It shows how much heart and attitude play into the game of football as just 3 years later in it's first year of NCAA competition, Georgia Southern won the National Championship. In the playoffs Erk told his boys to go out there and get the job done "Just One More Time'". They did, and again and again they did till they beat Furman in the title game. The runt filled crew of non-athletes from Statesboro, Ga. had proved anything is possible if you believe and want it bad enough. Erk always said that team had "a bad case of the wants".

The next year, 1986 Georgia Southern would again go on to win the National Championship. Support sky-rocketed and Erk looked like a genius. He didn't accept any of the credit for himself as saying that his players were the ones playing, not him.

Erk's last year was 1989. He led his team to a perfect 15-0 record, and won the National Championship game in front of an overflow, record breaking crowd in Statesboro. The standing ovation for Erk would last nearly half an hour.

He then addressed the crowd with his famous retirement speech which is as follows:

"I'm gonna get out of here while I'm still alive....and I'm gonna say it one more time. We are Georgia Southern. Our colors are blue and white. We call ourselves the Bald Eagles. We call our offense the Georgia Power Company...and that's a terrific name for an offense. Our snap count is "rate, hike". We practice on the banks of Beautiful Eagle Creek and that's in Statesboro, Georgia--the gnat capital of America. Our weekends begin on Thursday. The co-eds outnumber the men 3 to 2. They're all good looking and they're all rich. And folks, you just can't beat that...and you just can't beat Georgia Southern. And you ain't seen nothin yet..."


Erk was a father figure to many of his players. He had a motto- "Do Right". A player once came to him and didn't know what to do. He looked him straight in the eye and said "Do Right". The player went "What?". Erk explained that when you are faced with a situation, figure out what is right and do it. He held his players to that standard and kicked guys off the team if he found out they had not done right.

His 70-14 record and charismatic demeanor caused him to be recognized with various awards. Among them:

- Georgia Sports Hall of Fame Coach of the Year - 1984, 1985, 1986
- Inducted into the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame - 1987
- Inducted into the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame - 1991
- USA Today Coach of the Year - 1989
- USA Today Coach of the Decade - 1980's
- Chevrolet-CBS Sports I-AA Coach of the Year - 1989

Erk was a legend. A true man. Humble, intelligent, witty, bold, strong, and inspiring. His presence can still be felt in Statesboro, and his memory will live on in the hearts and minds of those who have been touched by him.

Erk Russell - 1926 - 2006

[HAAS]

Here is a collection of quotes from him that I found:

"Do right."

"Just one more time"

"A good story just makes you feel better."

"If you don't have the best of everything, make the best of everything you have."

"If life gives you lemons, make lemonade."

"The best way to win a game is not to lose it."

"I was a pretty good kid, I really didn't get into too much trouble. On one occasion, just after school, a group of boys met in the boys bathroom and somebody was rolling dice. ... I remember I stepped in and said, "My turn," and I put a dime down there and my point was 10. ... I was saying, "Come on 10, come on 10," and I looked around all of a sudden and there was nobody there. And I turned all the way around and our shop teacher, Mr. Sparks, said, "Come on, Russell." ... I learned a good lesson: Don't try to make 10."

"My dad always had a job that he really didn't relish getting up and going to every day. He said, 'Boy' --- that's all he ever called me --- he said, 'Boy, you do something that you enjoy doing.'"

"I had an opportunity (to play) at Alabama. I told them that that was what I always wanted to do and that I was coming, and when I got back home an Auburn coach was sitting on my front porch, and he said, 'Come on, we're going to Auburn.' And I said, 'I just got back from Alabama, I told them I was gonna go to school there and that's what I want to do.' And he said, 'Well you've got to take a look at Auburn.' So I said, 'OK.' We drove to Auburn, he put on a change of clothes, picked up his bag and we went to Gulf Shores, Alabama, and fished for two days. When we got back, I said, 'I've always wanted to go to Auburn.'"

"Attitude might be worth 80 percent of any athlete's makeup."

"You know what a consultant is, don't you? A consultant is a guy that knows 100 different sex positions but doesn't know a woman."

"The South, to me, is fried chicken and catfish caviar --- that's grits --- and good-looking women."

"Communication is the most important technique in teaching and in coaching, eyeball to eyeball, one on one: 'This is what we want to accomplish, and this is the way we're going to accomplish it.' Not memos, not bulletin boards or announcements, one on one."

"I had a handmade card hanging in my locker at Georgia that said, 'If I do, they will. If I don't, they won't.'"

"We lost a 3-year-old at one time, a child, and that is real pain. But time, blessed time, is the greatest healer. ... It ain't gonna quit hurting until enough time passes."

"I have very little use for cell phones ... but they seem to be free on the weekends."

"Our recruiting budget at Georgia Southern was $200 our first year. I had just left Georgia, whose recruiting budget was a quarter of a million dollars. And as I drove down the Woodpecker Trail, trying to touch base with people in Claxton and Alma and Jesup and Ludowici, sometimes I wondered, "What have you done?'"

"In the interest of economy, we had plain white pants, we had plain navy-blue shirts, a number on the front and a number on the back. We couldn't even put a stripe down the middle of our helmets. We used a strip of tape. ... Those kind of things screamed, 'Team'."

"I wouldn't allow them to put names on the back of our jerseys. We had to sell programs."

"The 1980 season at Georgia, I came out of the dormitory where we ate our pregame meal. I looked down and there was a dime on the ground. I picked it up, put it in my left shoe. I was wearing saddle Oxfords, which I did all the time anyway, and we beat Clemson that day, maybe it was the second or third game of the season. I taped the dime in my shoe so I wouldn't lose it, and made sure that I wore it throughout the season. We were 12-0 and won the national championship, and I'm sure the dime did it."

"We had a president that came to Georgia Southern and during one of our booster luncheons to kick off the football season --- he's the new president, his name was Nick Henry. ... He got up before the group and said, 'It's so nice to be at a college that's not on probation.' He said, 'I taught at Georgia, they were on probation. I went to Arizona State, they were on probation.' ... I followed him with my remarks and I said, 'Dr. Henry, you don't have to worry about Georgia Southern cheating. Because it takes money to cheat, and we don't have any money.'"

"I haven't been very smart, but what I have been is lucky. Somebody asked me about the last year that I coached at Southern, 'What would I like for people to say about me after I'm gone?' And I told them, "I would like for them to say, 'He was the luckiest S.O.B. that I've ever seen.' " And I have been that. Smart? No. No way."

"As a young coach, I ran with the players. As a 55-year-old coach, I jogged with the players. As an old coach of 60, 64, 65, I had to start woggin'. A wog is a little bit faster than a walk, but slower than a jog."

"I think most golfers would just about swap their front-row seat in hell for 30 more yards off the tee."

"People ask me, 'Do you miss coaching?' And my reply is, 'Every day that rolls around.'"

"Fame wasn't important. I didn't even know it existed. I saw my name in the paper and my picture in the paper a lot, but I felt like I could overcome that."

"A good sense of humor even helps in football."

"We played the Florida State junior varsity, the Ft. Benning Doughboys and Magnum Force. ... Their cheerleaders looked like meter maids." - On GSU's schedule early on. He said the Magnum Force was composed of Jacksonville, Fla., policemen.

"Emotionally, our players are just as tough as theirs. It's more physical than anything. Their players are taller. We've both got 260-pound linemen. But the ones at Georgia are 6-5, while the ones at Georgia Southern are 5-10. ... We've got a bus that, conservatively speaking, has about five million miles on it," - On the differences between major college football and I-AA.

"I've been bald so long I really don't remember when I had any hair. I know I didn't have any when I coached at Auburn in 1958. I had a thin crop when I played for Auburn (1946-49). That's it. When I went to Auburn to coach, I had fringe hair, the kind some men part down low and comb across their heads to cover up the bare spots. Haircuts went up to $1 about then. I wasn't about to pay anybody a dollar to cut what was already falling out, so I got me a razor." - On going bald.

"Why would you stay in this room with this potential killer, cocaine, and then leave when a snake comes in? I want you to promise me that if anybody ever brings that white stuff into the room where you are, you'll leave the way you did just now." - In his famous meeting where he brought in a live rattlesnake and watched his players scattered in fear.

"That's overworked. Heck, once you get a few scabs on the forehead, they're bound to bleed some when popped open. I've quit that, anyway, because I've got to uphold the image of a head coach." - On the blood that trickled down after he'd head-butt his linemen before games at Georgia.

"Here's Tennessee-Chattanooga, obviously a very good football team, beat the top (Division I-AA) team in the country two weeks ago. They've been playing football 100 years and we've been playing 2. That's why I think it's ridiculous." - On a No. 17 ranking back in 1984, the week GSU was to play No. 20 Tennessee-Chattanooga, a motivaton he did not want UTC to have.

"They'd just as soon be old Georgia Southern, in plain white pants, Navy blue shirts without any trimming and just play football." - On his team's reaction to that ranking.

"In football, like in life, you've got to do what you've got to do to get the job done. I've always believed that. Football is still football, it's a game of tackling and blocking and competitive people. Every time I told a joke or told a story or pulled a stunt, there had to be a moral behind it." - at an Augusta speaking engagement in 1998

"I told myself that golf was not a sport and shouldn't even be on the sports page. On the other hand, I said when my body falls completely apart and I couldn't do anything else, I'd give it a try. So the first of the year I gave it a try, and it's got me hooked. And I mean that, literally, because everything I hit hooks." -On his new hobby after retiring from Georgia Southern.


"My first 31 years in this business were like a guy eating at a buffet table. Later, when I came here to Georgia Southern, it was like eating the desert." - Reflecting on his career in 1998

[Tornadom]

Amazing! That is a one outstanding man.

[Patriot]

geez, wish we had some people like that at our school...or even in our community

[Tornadom]

Originally Posted by Patriot

geez, wish we had some people like that at our school...or even in our community

If there are a shortage of men like that Hunter, become that man.

[HAAS]

Originally Posted by Tornadom

If there are a shortage of men like that Hunter, become that man.

No offense, but there will only ever be one Erk Russell. If you can get anywhere close, you're doing amazing.

[Tornadom]

Originally Posted by HAAS

No offense, but there will only ever be one Erk Russell. If you can get anywhere close, you're doing amazing.

I understand that nobody will be like Mr. Russell, but if they set their goals that high, they will definitely become a great person.