Finishing up what are sure to be the final two large writing assignments of my lifetime, I recently complained to my son that I wasn't altogether sure what to do with all this time I am suddenly going to have. He said, "Write your stories."
I had no idea what he was talking about.
"Your stories, Dad. All those old sports stories you've been boring me with for my whole life. Write them down."
"Why?"
"So I will have them when you're, you know, gone."
Ouch. My son, the ultimate realist. And that ultimate realism is going to get his name erased from the will. Or so I have threatened through the years.
"But I've got a million stories."
"Nobody knows that better than me, Dad."
I'm calling my attorney Monday morning. He's getting nothing.
"Write down the story about Danny Ford that you tell people over and over and over and over and over again. I'd like to have it on paper."
So, I did. It's short. Very brief. But it's a great story that, for those who don't really know Danny Ford or who he really is/what he is really like, reveals a side of him known only by those who know him.
For those of you old enough to remember, Danny Ford officially took over the Arkansas football program in 1993 after the ill-fated experiments with Jack Crowe and Joe Kines.
After Frank Broyles, Lou Holtz and Ken Hatfield (who left Arkansas to go to Clemson, only to find that winning at Clemson wasn't enough in those days---you had to drive a tractor, chew tobacco and, well, at least give the impression that you were willing to cheat to win), Arkansas fans were used to winning. Needless to say, neither Jack Crowe nor Joe Kines gave them what they were used to. So Coach Broyles, who was the AD, hired Ford as his new head coach.
Anybody who remembers Danny Ford as a coach remembers that the foundation of his football teams were rightly to be found in the trenches. If you played on the D-Line or O-Line for Danny Ford, you'd better be as tough as you were talented. And he had line coaches who coached toughness before anything else.
Concerned about the toughness of his D-Line in Fayetteville, Ford reached back into his past and reached out to Jim Washburn. Washburn, who is from Shelby, had come to South Carolina with Joe Morrison from New Mexico in 1983. He was a first-rate recruiter---think, Todd Ellis---and a first-rate D-Line coach. He coached technique, to be sure, but he considered toughness and get-after-it to be necessary qualities in successful linemen. And watching him on the sidelines during a game was like a day at the circus---shouting, yelling, cussing, waving his arms, cord boys trying to pull him back off the field, etc. But his players always played for him and they loved playing for him.
Coach Washburn got caught up in the steroids controversy that played out around the time of Coach Morrison's death. He was neither as guilty as some said nor as innocent as others said, but he accepted a couple of months in a halfway house and three years of probation and got on with his life. I last talked to him when he was trying to make a living cutting grass and doing lawn care in Shelby and I didn't much get the sense that he thought he had a future in football.
He bounced around for a couple of years, coaching a semi-pro team in Charlotte, an American football team in London, and even working for an arena league team. You get the picture.
And then Danny Ford called. With a job offer. Defensive line coach at Arkansas.
What people don't know is that Ford had to go to the wall with Coach Broyles to get him to agree to hire Washburn. Ford put his job on the line about Washburn's character---I never knew how anybody could not like Jim Washburn---and vouched that he would be a solid citizen and solid member of the staff. And, in the end, Coach Broyles agreed to it.
Jim Washburn got another shot at football only because Danny Ford went to the wall for him. He left Fayetteville when Danny did and eventually made his way to the NFL, where he has had a solid career (he is, I think, now a defensive assistant with the Dolphins). Indeed, he had an 11-year stint with the Titans---not bad for an NFL assistant.
So, when I think of Danny Ford, my first thought is about him doing what he did to, in essence, save Jim Washburn's coaching career and, in the end, perhaps his life. My first thought is about him being a stand-up guy, which he was and is.
My second, third, fourth, ad infinitum thoughts about Danny are not quite as kind, given the beatings he laid on the Gamecocks during his Clemson tenure. But that first thought softens the other ones.
I had no idea what he was talking about.
"Your stories, Dad. All those old sports stories you've been boring me with for my whole life. Write them down."
"Why?"
"So I will have them when you're, you know, gone."
Ouch. My son, the ultimate realist. And that ultimate realism is going to get his name erased from the will. Or so I have threatened through the years.
"But I've got a million stories."
"Nobody knows that better than me, Dad."
I'm calling my attorney Monday morning. He's getting nothing.
"Write down the story about Danny Ford that you tell people over and over and over and over and over again. I'd like to have it on paper."
So, I did. It's short. Very brief. But it's a great story that, for those who don't really know Danny Ford or who he really is/what he is really like, reveals a side of him known only by those who know him.
For those of you old enough to remember, Danny Ford officially took over the Arkansas football program in 1993 after the ill-fated experiments with Jack Crowe and Joe Kines.
After Frank Broyles, Lou Holtz and Ken Hatfield (who left Arkansas to go to Clemson, only to find that winning at Clemson wasn't enough in those days---you had to drive a tractor, chew tobacco and, well, at least give the impression that you were willing to cheat to win), Arkansas fans were used to winning. Needless to say, neither Jack Crowe nor Joe Kines gave them what they were used to. So Coach Broyles, who was the AD, hired Ford as his new head coach.
Anybody who remembers Danny Ford as a coach remembers that the foundation of his football teams were rightly to be found in the trenches. If you played on the D-Line or O-Line for Danny Ford, you'd better be as tough as you were talented. And he had line coaches who coached toughness before anything else.
Concerned about the toughness of his D-Line in Fayetteville, Ford reached back into his past and reached out to Jim Washburn. Washburn, who is from Shelby, had come to South Carolina with Joe Morrison from New Mexico in 1983. He was a first-rate recruiter---think, Todd Ellis---and a first-rate D-Line coach. He coached technique, to be sure, but he considered toughness and get-after-it to be necessary qualities in successful linemen. And watching him on the sidelines during a game was like a day at the circus---shouting, yelling, cussing, waving his arms, cord boys trying to pull him back off the field, etc. But his players always played for him and they loved playing for him.
Coach Washburn got caught up in the steroids controversy that played out around the time of Coach Morrison's death. He was neither as guilty as some said nor as innocent as others said, but he accepted a couple of months in a halfway house and three years of probation and got on with his life. I last talked to him when he was trying to make a living cutting grass and doing lawn care in Shelby and I didn't much get the sense that he thought he had a future in football.
He bounced around for a couple of years, coaching a semi-pro team in Charlotte, an American football team in London, and even working for an arena league team. You get the picture.
And then Danny Ford called. With a job offer. Defensive line coach at Arkansas.
What people don't know is that Ford had to go to the wall with Coach Broyles to get him to agree to hire Washburn. Ford put his job on the line about Washburn's character---I never knew how anybody could not like Jim Washburn---and vouched that he would be a solid citizen and solid member of the staff. And, in the end, Coach Broyles agreed to it.
Jim Washburn got another shot at football only because Danny Ford went to the wall for him. He left Fayetteville when Danny did and eventually made his way to the NFL, where he has had a solid career (he is, I think, now a defensive assistant with the Dolphins). Indeed, he had an 11-year stint with the Titans---not bad for an NFL assistant.
So, when I think of Danny Ford, my first thought is about him doing what he did to, in essence, save Jim Washburn's coaching career and, in the end, perhaps his life. My first thought is about him being a stand-up guy, which he was and is.
My second, third, fourth, ad infinitum thoughts about Danny are not quite as kind, given the beatings he laid on the Gamecocks during his Clemson tenure. But that first thought softens the other ones.
