The Nice-Guy Tactics Didn’t Pay Off for CSUN’s Keele

Maybe Leo Durocher was right.

Maybe Leo Durocher was talking about Tom Keele.

The longtime baseball manager once said that nice guys finish last. Nobody could argue the fact that Keele, the Cal State Northridge football coach until a week ago, was a nice guy. Everybody liked him. He smiled a lot. And people smiled back.

Maybe that was the problem.

Because while Keele didn’t always finish last, he finished second-best more often than not. He was the Matador head football coach for seven years. Five of those were losing years. His career mark at Northridge was 31-42-1.

An assistant coach complained earlier this year that everybody was always complimenting CSUN on how nice its players were. That was great, unless you happen to be in charge of getting some killer instinct out of the defensive unit. It just didn’t seem to be there often enough, the assistant coach said.

There were charges by people close to the team that some players quit when they fell too far behind, that some players acted like they wanted to be elsewhere when the opposition seemed unstoppable.

Tailback and team leader Mike Kane felt the behavior of some of his teammates after losses was unacceptable.

“It seemed like losing the past couple of years wasn’t that big a deal anymore on the team,” Kane said. “For me it was, but as a team, people would be having a good time on the bus after a loss and that’s not right.”

“Tom would get up and tell them it shouldn’t be like that after a loss, but just the fact that it happened and the atmosphere was like that wasn’t good.”

Bob Hiegert, CSUN athletic director and a key figure in the decision not to recommend the reappointment of Keele for another year, believes that the responsibility for that attitude lies with the players as much as the coach.

That’s not entirely so.

These are not hardened pros earning big bucks to produce. These are 18-to 22-year-olds who need leadership and inspiration.

It doesn’t have to be, “Win one for the Gipper.” But it also shouldn’t be, “Lose one for laughs.”

Now that Keele is gone, what next?

Northridge officials have launched a nationwide search for a successor.

Nobody asked, but here are three suggestions closer to home.

Suggestion No. 1: Offensive coordinator Rich Lopez.

He knows the team. He has been in charge of the Matador offense for the past five years. It was he, under Keele’s orders, who oversaw the installation of the complicated run-and-shoot offense last season and made it work for much of the year.

And most importantly, perhaps, Lopez has the confidence of many of the players. Several squad members, including Kane, have been quoted as saying they could win under Lopez.

Often in college football, saying is believing.

Suggestion No. 2: Cal Lutheran College Coach Bob Shoup.

Probably a useless suggestion. He’s the only head coach the Kingsmen have had in nearly a quarter century of existence and he’s never shown any serious intention of leaving.

But oh, if he would.

He started, in what was then the middle of nowhere, in Thousand Oaks, won a National Assn. of Intercollegiate Athletics championship, made various appearances in postseason play and sent several players to the National Football League, including Hank Bauer of the San Diego Chargers and Brian Kelley of the New York Giants.

It would be fun to turn him loose at Northridge.

Suggestion No. 3: Pierce College Head Coach Jim Fenwick.

Another miracle worker.

Battling budgetary problems for the five years he has served on the Woodland Hills campus, Fenwick has built one powerhouse after another on the junior college level.

Given some scholarship money and four years to develop players, who knows what wonders he might work.

Everybody complimented CSUN on how nice its players were. That was great, unless you were in charge of jamming a killer instinct into the defensive unit.