Cal Lutheran to Replace Shoup as Coach : News That ’89 Will Be His Last Season Stuns Kingmen’s Football Patriarch

Cal Lutheran University, a school that has known only one coach in 27 years of football, will begin a search for its second later this fall.

Bob Shoup will be permanently replaced as coach at the conclusion of the upcoming season, Bob Doering, CLU’s athletic director, said Tuesday.

Shoup, 57, had been granted a one-year sabbatical for the 1990-91 school year but was under the impression that he would return to both his faculty and coaching positions the following year.

Doering said that Shoup would retain his “regular teaching responsibilities” but would not be the head football coach.

All of which was news to Shoup, who was reached by telephone Tuesday afternoon at his home in Thousand Oaks. “If that is true, it’s a surprise to me,” Shoup said. “We met this morning and I specifically outlined things to the contrary.”

Shoup said the that idea of his retiring as coach was discussed in a meeting with Doering and two other CLU officials. “They suggested it as a possibility,” Shoup said, “and I said no.”

Doering declined comment on why Shoup will be relieved of his coaching duties, deferring to a school statement that is scheduled for release to the media on Thursday. Cal Lutheran will conduct a national search for Shoup’s replacement, Doering said, and hopes to have a new coach by January.

Shoup started the Cal Lutheran football program in 1962 with a $5,000 budget, borrowed equipment, a Navy bus rescued from a war-surplus store, and a field cut out of an orange grove. Nine years later, the Kingsmen won a National Assn. of Intercollegiate Athletics championship and in the process gave the financially strapped school such a public-relations boost that it was saved from extinction.

Shoup is also credited with playing a major role in convincing the Dallas Cowboys to use CLU as a summer training camp facility. The alliance with the NFL team has resulted in field, locker room and weight training facilities that were paid for by the Cowboys and later used by the Kingsmen.

In terms of longevity, Shoup is fourth among active college coaches in years of service. Only Grambling’s Eddie Robinson, Minnesota-Duluth’s Jim Malosky and Ashland College’s Fred Martinelli have coached longer.

In terms of success, Shoup’s record of 182-81-6 is also among the best in the nation.

“There’s no question he has a very successful won and loss record and he has built a fine football reputation at CLU,” Doering said.

Under Shoup’s guidance, Cal Lutheran won 13 NAIA District 3 titles and played in three national championship games before joining the NCAA Division II Western Football Conference in 1985.

Since then, however, the Kingsmen have fallen on hard times. In the past four seasons, CLU is 16-27 overall and has won only two of 21 conference games.

The Kingsmen won their first two games in 1988 then lost eight in a row, prompting the school to withdraw from the WFC at season’s end.

Cal Lutheran will join the non-scholarship Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, which is affiliated with the NCAA Division III, as soon as its scholarship athletes complete their eligibility.

Shoup, who preferred to add rather than subtract scholarships, was publicly critical of CLU’s decision to join the SCIAC. He would have preferred a return to the NAIA as an independent without conference affiliation.

The year’s leave, Shoup believed, would be a time to travel, do some consulting, and study his options as he entered the twilight of his coaching career.

“I’m certainly at the stage in my professional career where it’s best to keep my options open,” Shoup said Tuesday morning, before a reporter informed him of the school’s decision. “As of now, I’m not ruling anything out. This will give me time to evaluate my situation, something I wouldn’t normally be able to do while recruiting and fund-raising and doing all the things that need to be done for the football program.”