NEVER SAY QUIT : Big Ten Glory Is Gone, but Pride Spurs Earle Bruce

Earle Bruce, a Buckeye forever, is wearing green and gold, teaching Ram Pride to a Colorado State football team that has gone 2-21 over the past two seasons.

This is not Columbus, Ohio, and this is not Ohio State. That much is for sure. There are far fewer hands to shake and backs to slap, but don’t think that bothers Bruce, who never has been much for that.

There are people downtown here, but there are no People Downtown, no contributors who wield more influence than an athletic director, and sakes alive, no one who would be disappointed in 9-3 seasons, which is the worst Bruce gave Ohio State in his first eight seasons there.

“If he went 9-3 here, he could become mayor . . . “ said Gary Ozzello, Colorado State’s assistant athletic director for media relations.

This is not the Big Ten. Success here would be contending for the Western Athletic Conference title. Wild success would be winning the Holiday Bowl. But it is Division I football, and it is what Bruce is left with at 58, in the twilight of a career that has seen him compile the eighth-best winning percentage among active coaches.

That mark is on a downward curve now. Bruce could have preserved it, could have put it in a glass case or etched it indelibly by walking away after his swift and perplexing firing from Ohio State in 1987, when he was banished from the job and the school he loved.

But what is a man to do when his own lesson turns on him, demanding that he adhere to it or make himself a hypocrite?

That’s what happened to Bruce, and partly in order to avoid becoming a hypocrite, he remained a football coach.

After a lifetime of telling players to get up after being plowed over, never mind whose fault it was, and of expecting to see them at practice Monday, he was dealt the biggest blow of his own career. After winning 75 of 97 games in his first eight seasons, he was fired in 1987.

His firing was one that stirred emotions. The athletic director, Rick Bay, resigned in protest before the firing was announced by university President Edward H. Jennings.

After it was announced, the Ohio State Marching Band showed up in Bruce’s neighborhood, marched down the street and played “Across the Field” for the former coach.

Bruce, a gruff, bristling, cursing, pot-bellied man who can turn gentle at a moment’s notice, stood in front of his house with his wife and wept.

And then, fired for the first time in his life, he brushed himself off.

“If you’re gonna be in football, one thing I learned very quickly is you’re going to get kicked and knocked down, and you have to jump up and fight back,” Bruce said. “You’re gonna get knocked down in football. You have to snap back up, play the next down and compete.”

After letting an opportunity at Kansas pass by in hopes that he had a chance at the Southern Methodist job that went to Forrest Gregg, Bruce’s options were few. Then came an offer from Northern Iowa, a Division I-AA school.

His wife, Jean, turned to him and asked, “Why are we doing this?” With a $471,000 out-of-court settlement from Ohio State and plenty of money squirreled away, he did not have to coach.

To Bruce, the answer was simple: “I want to coach in 1988, and I want to get out of Columbus before football starts.”

Steve Szabo, who had been an assistant to Bruce at Iowa State and briefly at Ohio State, went with him to Northern Iowa.

“To walk away from it, he couldn’t have done it. No way,” Szabo said. “You have to settle that score in your own mind. You have to prove something even if you have to prove it to yourself.”

Bruce went 5-6 at Northern Iowa last season. Frustrated with the situation and lack of funds, he wanted out. Anticipating a desire to move on, he had negotiated a clause in his contract providing for his release if he were offered any of five jobs he had picked as likely to come open. Colorado State wasn’t one of them, and it cost him $110,000 to buy his release.

Colorado State felt it had bolstered its program with one move.

“The day we named Earle Bruce head coach, that gave us instant credibility,” said Athletic Director Oval Jaynes, a former assistant football coach who came to Colorado State from Auburn. “When we said his name, people knew we were serious about getting competitive.”

Bruce brought with him a version of football fundamentals: blocking, tackling and discipline.

The players have found the going tougher than it was in recent years under Leon Fuller, a more easygoing coach who resigned after last season and is now an assistant at Texas.

Under Bruce, there is more conditioning, and less understanding when mistakes are made. In comparison, the players say, last year was a walk in the park.

Being late for a meeting means a player will run sprints for every minute he is overdue; making mistakes in practice can call for more sprints, known as Ram Reminders. Coaches are not always immune. One day at practice, after a player’s mistake, the position coach was held responsible as well. He ran, too.

The fans, encouraged by Bruce’s arrival and the example of success set in the basketball program with Boyd Grant’s arrival, bought more season tickets. This year, sales are between 4,000 and 5,000, up from about 3,000 last year.

In the Rams’ first game, against Tennessee in Knoxville, Colorado State lost, 17-14. Tennessee beat UCLA handily the next week.

Last week, the Rams lost to nationally ranked Colorado, 45-20, in a game that was tied when Bruce’s quarterback, Kevin Verdugo, went out because of a shoulder sprain in the second quarter.

So after two games at a school that has been to one bowl game in its history and has had two winning seasons this decade, Bruce is 0-2, his winning percentage diminishing all the while. His third chance at victory comes today, when the Rams play host to host Cal State Fullerton at 11 a.m. in Hughes Stadium.

The scores of the first two games are fairly pleasing to the citizens of Fort Collins, but Bruce will have none of it.

Asked if he was proud of his team after one of the losses, Bruce said he was not, because the Rams did not win. He was proud of their effort, he allowed.

“We’re not satisfied with what we did because we had an opportunity to do better in each of those games,” he said.

“I don’t have any less expectations here. I wanted to beat Tennessee. I wanted to beat Colorado. I’m a coach and a competitor. . . . I’ll be honest with you, check my record, there aren’t many coaches who have the record I have.”

His record is 132-68-1, and that doesn’t include a high school coaching record of 82-12. His college record covered one season at Tampa, six at Iowa State, and the nine at Ohio State.

Bruce is striving for a winning season this year, hoping for 7-4 or 8-3 with a chance at the WAC title in the future.

“My motivation is to deal with young people. I like to be around them. I like to coach them,” Bruce said.

But he acknowledged that what happened at Ohio State was to him “a form of failure,” and as much as he loves Ohio State still, he also bristles at the thought of Jennings--”I’m more well-known than that president, I’ll tell you that”--and at that of the influential Wolfe family, which owns the city’s only newspaper, the Columbus Dispatch, and is a major contributor to Ohio State.

Although speculation on the reasons for Bruce’s firing ran the gamut, most eventually settled on one thing: He wasn’t popular with the right people, including the Wolfe family.

“If they didn’t own you, they didn’t like you,” said Bruce, never one for playing political games.

“If I had to pick my druthers, I’d do the same thing over again,” Bruce said.

So a career that might have ended at Ohio State will end elsewhere.

“I think his heart will always be there,” Szabo said.

Instead, Bruce is at Colorado State, and it could well be the last stop.

When Jaynes brought Bruce to Colorado State, there was no particular discussion of provisions for Bruce leaving.

“If Earle Bruce stays here two years or three years, I feel we’ll be in a better situation by him having been here,” Jaynes said. “It’ll make our job that much more attractive.”

And what of Bruce’s future? At 58, could there be another job ahead?

Bruce says that he will coach about five more years, most likely here.

“They wouldn’t want me to leave after a year,” he said. “Maybe it would be different after two or three. But I don’t think I’m gonna leave. Where would I go? It’s too late for me to go back. . . . I’m not looking for any more steps. I like football. I like this school. I want to coach here.”

That is good enough for Jaynes.

“Losing Earle Bruce, we don’t think about it,” he said. “I know if he’s leaving, we’ve probably been winning.”

That would be success enough.