[Husker] Past Coaching style ( long )

[DUXAN...@aol.com]

Not that Bob was a total stranger to all Nebraskans.
Another World-Herald staffer, roving reporter
Tom Allan, claimed that the hiring of Devaney had
spiked the guns of Nebraska Panhandle secessionists
who have long agitated for that part of the state to
be joined to Wyoming. Allan reported:
"With Devaney moving from Wyoming to Nebraska,
the staunch fans out west aren't sure they want
to be moving from Nebraska to Wyoming."
He was coming from the West. But he was an
"Easterner" from Michigan.
Bob Devaney was born and raised in Saginaw, a
Great Lakes town, where his father was a sailor on
the iron ore boats plying the lakes from Duluth. He
played football, basketball and baseball at high
school. He was graduated in 1933- cut loose from
school in the depths of the Depression. There just
wasn't any money in the Devaney household for
more education, so for two and one-half years Bob
worked in a Chevrolet foundry.
"I was happy to have the job," he said. "But one
day I woke up to the realization that there must be an
easier way to make a living than spending the rest of
my life in a foundry. I decided to go to college to see
if I could find one."
He enrolled at near-by Alma College, a Presby-
terian-related, liberal-arts school. There weren't any
athletic scholarships at Alma, and young Devaney
pumped gasoline, waited tables and worked
summers at various factory jobs around Saginaw and
Alma to finance his education.
Somehow he found time to play end on the foot-
ball team. In his senior year he was captain, most
valuable player and all-conference end.
After graduating in 1939 with a Bachelor's Degree
in Social Sciences, Devaney took a job as football,
basketball and baseball coach at Michigan's Big
Beaver High School. He also taught six different
subjects to six different classes. The pay was 125 dollars
a month. But Mrs. Devaney (he had married a class-
mate, Phyllis Wiley, in 1936) was teaching, too, and
somehow they got along.
There was a succession of high school coaching
jobs in Michigan -including a stint at Alpena,
where his teams won 52 and lost only nine. Then,
after 14 years as a high school coach and at a time
when he was thinking seriously of leaving coaching
for a career in school administration, Biggie Munn,
Michigan State head coach at the time, offered him
a job as an assistant on his staff. That was in the
summer of 1953.
At the close of the 1956 season, Devaney read
in the newspapers that Phil Dickins, who had achieved
considerable success as Wyoming coach, had re-
signed to go to Indiana. Devaney applied for the job.
Biggy Munn and Duffy Daugherty put in a good word
for him and another strong endorsement came from
Bowden Wyatt, a former Wyoming coach. Without any
head-coaching experience at the college level
Devaney was hired by Wyoming.
Now Nebraska was to be his second collegiate
head-coaching position. But for a time "was to be"
Trustees met January 7, 1962, to consider the mat-
ter. The meeting ended with the contract still in
force. It seems that Devaney was the third coach in
succession to ask for a release from a Wyoming con-
tract to go to a bigger university. "We just wanted
to make him sweat a little," one trustee declared
later.
The coach-to-be did sweat -for nearly a month.
And so did Nebraska football fans, all 1,500,000 of
them.
In the meantime, there was the big job of re-
cruiting to be done -at both schools. So, Devaney
and Wyoming Athletic Director Glenn Jacoby arbi-
trarily split up the Cowboy coaching staff between
Laramie and Lincoln. Members of the Wyoming staff
who appeared certain to follow Devaney eastward
were assigned Cornhusker recruiting chores -along
with two holdovers from the Jennings period, George
Kelly and Cletus Fischer. Officially Devaney was di-
viding his time between both campuses. It got so
that some fans took to calling the peripatetic Mr. De-
vaney the coach of the "Cow huskers."
Early in February, the Wyoming trustees met
again, and after keeping Devaney waiting outside the
conference room for six hours they finally freed him
from the contract.
At last Nebraska had a coach of its own. At last
Devaney could go to work in earnest.
Mike Corgan, Jim Ross, Carl Selmer and John
Melton of the Wyoming staff moved to Lincoln with
him. Ross, by the way, spent seven years at Alpena
and all five years at Wyoming with Devaney.
Devaney is a warm, sincere, straight-talking,
straight-shooting gent. Nebraskans opened their
hearts to him. Veteran scribe Gregg McBride, who
had seen a couple of platoons of Nebraska head
coaches come and go, had this to report in his
column after an early Devaney press conference:

"He dodged no questions. He rolled with the
punch at some pointed queries and occasionally
eased the tension with a quip. This was the first
time in six years football writers have been able to
talk to a Nebraska head coach who had the answers."
And McBride continued:
"In his first interview, Devaney left the impression
he will be the boss of Cornhusker football; will
not permit interference with his program to turn out
winning teams."
Wally Provost, World-Herald sports editor, was
similarly impressed:
"The first meeting with Devaney created the
pleasant impression that he is a down-to-earth gent
who would have no trouble making friends in
Nebraska. There also was every indication that he knows
exactly what he needs to build winning football -
and how to get it."

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