Enduring Influence : Former Coach Joe Howell’s Signature Offense Passes Test of Time at Thousand Oaks

A recent addition to Joe Howell’s Moorpark home is a spacious den that stands where foliage once nestled against the back door.

The television set, on which the former coach no longer watches much football, sits diagonally across from an impressive fireplace whose intricate stone mosaic stretches from the hearth to the peak of a cathedral ceiling.

Howell stopped to admire his artistry recently, gestured to the stones, and rhetorically asked, “Do you know how I had to build that?”

“From the top, down,” he answered in his soothing Oklahoma twang. “You have to start with the top stones and work your way to the bottom. Otherwise, the cement drips down on all of the other stones.”

How curious that he would find pleasure and satisfaction in that process. For it is Howell, the architect of a successful football program at Thousand Oaks High as coach from 1968-76, a program that bears his stamp to this day, who distinguished himself working from the bottom to the top.

From the belly up.

Joe Howell, half Pawnee Indian, was a junior at Central State University in Edmond, Okla. The year was 1953, and Howell was a football player, a scholarship basketball player and a candidate for student body president.

About the same time, the University of Wisconsin was winning football games using a new offensive scheme called the belly series.

“It was the single wing or, in the old days, the buck lateral series,” Howell recalled. “Now you put a quarterback underneath the center and you run the same play. It took me three or four years to finally know enough about it to accept it. But since then, it has really been a great, great offense.”

Howell took that knowledge to his first head coach’s position in Pawnee, Okla., then to Comanche, Okla., and on to Oxnard High, where he became an assistant in 1963. Five years later, Thousand Oaks High was searching for a coach to replace Ron Barney, whose teams had won two games in the previous two seasons.

Howell was its man. And the belly series had wriggled its way to Thousand Oaks.

“Every year it was more and more refined,” Howell said. “For many years I was waiting for a team to defense it, but no one could stop the entire series of plays. They could stop one or two or three or four, but they always leave themselves weak in other spots.”

The belly series is based on strength: Our linemen are better than yours. Not bigger, necessarily, but better.

“I’ve run it every year and I never found a single year where I couldn’t find people to run it,” Howell said. “First of all, you better have people with a tough attitude to put out the effort every play. Then you’ve got to have a fullback like a battering ram that’s not ready to go down quickly. I don’t care what size he is.

“My idea of a football player is first . . . desire, second . . . speed, and third and last in order . . . is size.”

Twenty-one years later, the Lancers are still winning games, but with a more streamlined belly series and the basic 4-3 defense that was Joe Howell’s trademark.

Thousand Oaks is 3-0-1 and the favorite to win its fifth league title of the decade and fourth in the past five seasons. The Lancers defeated Channel Islands, their chief league rival, 30-20, last week and are 1-0 in league play entering tonight’s homecoming game against Simi Valley.

Thousand Oaks is favored not because of an overwhelming offense--Mike Lindsay, who rushed for 1,046 yards last season, injured his knee and is just regaining last season’s form--but because of a defense that features eight returning starters. It was the best defense in the league last year, allowing fewer than 200 yards a game, and it is again so far this season.

The offense this season has been at its most effective running out of the belly series. Foster, also the starting fullback, has rushed for 257 yards and eight touchdowns.

Coach Bob Richards said that the players are the components in a system that works. Works hard .

“We’ve had a lot of the same type of kid,” he said. “Kids that buy into a philosophy that you have to get better in practice every day.

“There’s a good work ethic. If there’s one thread that runs back 20 years, it would be that. It’s an attitude statement.”

It was never more clear than on a cool December night two years ago when Lancer fullback Mike Moore stood at midfield as a celebration of championship proportions raged around him at Thousand Oaks High. Thousand Oaks was a Southern Section champion for the first time, having defeated Channel Islands, 27-12, for the Coastal Conference title.

Moore, normally the blocking back, had rambled for 143 yards and a touchdown in 20 carries. When Moore ran the ball, it was as part of the belly series.

In one of the few times since his retirement in 1976, Howell watched the game from the home stands. He felt a part of that team, and why shouldn’t he?

The coach, Richards, was Howell’s junior varsity coach and a varsity assistant from 1968-76. Two current assistants, Paul Gomes and Larry Mohr, were Lancer team captains in Howell’s final season.

And his pet offense, the belly series, was a factor in the school’s first title. Ironically, Thousand Oaks’ only loss that season was to Westlake, which was coached by George Contreras, who served under Howell as an assistant.

“I enjoyed that ballgame,” he said of the title game. “I feel a closeness to Richards and the football program at Thousand Oaks High School. As I did with George Contreras at Westlake. It really doesn’t matter what formation you run your offense from or what your offense is, it really comes down to the attitude of the coaches, the attitude of the players and that working relationship.”

That is what still belongs to Joe Howell. There is an attitude, a desire to which Thousand Oaks still clings. That attitude was there in 1969, Howell’s second season, when the Lancers won eight games and lost once. It was there from 1972 to ‘74, when the Lancers won three consecutive Marmonte League titles without losing a league game.

And it has been there since, through much of Bob Musella’s tenure from 1977-82, and in Richards’ career, during which Thousand Oaks is 46-23-3, including a 38-10-3 mark and three league championships in the past four years.

Richards, in fact, has had more success than Howell, who was 52-35-1. Yet the current coach considers Howell a mentor.

“So much of what we are doing today was developed from Joe Howell,” Richards said. “He developed an attitude at the school and an attitude among the coaches.”

Dave Murphy has been on the receiving end of that attitude, beginning more than 20 years ago. He was a Simi Valley player in 1968 and ‘69, when the Pioneers lost to Thousand Oaks, and is in his sixth season as coach at Simi Valley--he has not beaten the Lancers in his coaching tenure. His brother, Dan, was an assistant under Howell, as he is now under Richards.

From the opposite sideline, Dave Murphy has seen the Thousand Oaks program mature.

“There is a lot of continuity there,” he said. “There’s a carry-over still. . . . A lot of the stuff they’re doing right now they did in the late ‘60s. A lot of things change in football, but a lot of things stay the same.”

Mohr has been a varsity assistant at Thousand Oaks for nine years and was a junior varsity assistant for two years before that. He was a two-way starter, at running back and cornerback, in 1975 and ’76.

“A lot of his influence is still there,” Mohr said of Howell. “We’re still technicians. He was a perfectionist on technique. I think that’s what led to his success.”

Howell was a quiet mentor. He did not whip his charges into a frenzy with sideline antics. In practice and on the sideline, his demeanor was more Landry than Ditka.

Winning was expected. Losing, among other reasons, helped lead him to retire at age 45. In 1975, the Lancers won once and lost eight times. “I never expected to lose,” Howell said. “And that was damaging . . . it took a lot.”

Added Howell: “Have you ever seen after a ballgame where the football players are just so absolutely excited, like it’s a surprise birthday party? Like they were shocked they won? I hope our football players weren’t surprised they won. That’s what we had been working for all week.

“And when it came down to defeat, you know they say to be a good loser. Sure, be a good loser, but you only need to learn that lesson once. You don’t need to learn that lesson every week.

“I suspect everyone expected us to win the ballgame. And, if we didn’t, now there’s a big shock. Now there’s a big surprise. We didn’t prepare for that one. Oh, that is a terrible, terrible, terrible shocking feeling to lose that ballgame. It never seemed to cross our minds that we were going to lose.”

More often, they didn’t. And for much of that success Howell credits his coaches. Men such as Jim Hansen and Dan Murphy, Richards and Don Shotliff, Larry Stonebraker, Emett (Rosey) Nolan, Rob Elliot and Bob Riddel. The teams were theirs as much as his.

Maybe more.

“Can you just imagine one person thinking for all of them?” Howell said. “Whatever they had to say, we did it within a unit and we’d all talk about it as an idea.

“We had, I think, the most talented coaching staff. So what attitude should I have had?”

Joe Howell, the losing coach that night, opened the door to the locker room and turned toward the four officials, none of whom looked forward to the inevitable confrontation.

Earlier, in the fourth quarter of Thousand Oaks’ loss to Hueneme, the Lancer quarterback faked a belly dive to the fullback, danced backward and threw a touchdown pass to a wide-open receiver. It appeared to be the game-winner.

However, two of the officials, believing that the fullback had taken the handoff, had blown their whistles to stop the play. The score was disallowed.

The officials looked into Howell’s deep, brown eyes as he stared into their quarters and spoke.

“That’s the biggest compliment you could ever give me,” he said. “That’s exactly what the play is designed to do.”

Having had his say, he turned and left.