Putting Together All the Kingsmen : Joe Harper, Cal Lutheran’s New Football Coach, Faces a Challenging Rebuilding Task

Joe Harper took the Cal Lutheran football coaching job with his eyes open, but now he feels like a blind man.

Sure, he knew there would be challenges in taking over the program, but he’s groping toward the Sept. 15 season opener without many of the benchmarks coaches use to evaluate their teams.

He’s hurtling into his first Cal Lutheran season without the benefit of a spring practice to break in players and coaches, without a returning quarterback and without any of the knowledge that comes from working with the team a previous season.

“It’s very exciting and it’s frankly a little scary going into a complete unknown,” said Harper, who has been out of coaching the past five years. He succeeds Bob Shoup, the only other football coach Cal Lutheran has had.

Now, Harper--whose team could not hold spring practice under NCAA Division III rules--is working behind an eight ball the size of Mt. Clef, a hill near the Kingsmen’s stadium.

Yet, when all appears darkest, Harper can take comfort from the light gleaming off a very large and shiny national coach of the year award that occupies a prominent place in his office.

He won the privately sponsored award in 1980, when he led Cal Poly San Luis Obispo to the NCAA Division II national championship. Harper won’t be resting on his laurels, but if he wanted to, he would be pretty comfortable.

In 14 years at SLO, Harper had a 96-43-3 record and only one losing season. The American Football Coaches Assn. named him NCAA District 9 coach of the year five times.

Not embarrassed to use an occasional biblical parable to inspire his players, Harper played schedules that frequently placed his scrappy SLO teams in the position of David fighting Goliath.

“You talk about a coach that got his players to run through a wall for him, he was that kind of guy,” said Craig Johnston, quarterback of the national championship team. “There was never a Division I school that physically outhit us. If we didn’t win the game, we physically hurt them.”

But a dispute with the administration over the direction of the program eventually drove Harper to look elsewhere, and he headed for Division I-AA Northern Arizona in 1982.

In his three seasons at NAU, Harper’s teams finished 4-7, 4-7, 4-6.

Harper put up better numbers on the academic side, however. Wylie Smith, the NAU sports information director, estimated that the football team had a 75% graduation rate during Harper’s tenure.

“I think his total picture in college athletics is preparing them for life,” Smith said.

But again, Harper had philosophical differences with the administration. This time he left coaching and joined a commercial real estate firm in Flagstaff. He continued to look for a job as a coach or athletic director and was a finalist for the Cal State Northridge football job in 1986.

“Basically, I couldn’t find a job,” Harper said. “I didn’t want to go to the wilds of Montana. I wanted to go back to California. I came very close on a number of things.”

Having moved back to his native California in 1988, Harper ended his figurative wandering in the wilderness of commercial real estate when he beat out more than 50 applicants for the Cal Lutheran position.

“I cried when I heard he got the job,” Johnston said. “I just felt so good for him.”

The choice was mutually beneficial in that Cal Lutheran achieved a minor coup in luring a former Division I-AA coach with a national championship on his resume.

“That was very gratifying to find a person with Joe’s experience and background to bring to this university at this time,” Cal Lutheran President Jerry Miller said.

Harper has built a reputation for upsetting bigger, stronger teams, and he should have ample opportunity to do that this season at Cal Lutheran.

Preseason practice begins Aug. 23, and Harper will have 15 practice days to prepare his team for the opener against UC Santa Barbara. That period could be the shortest 15 days of Harper’s life--and the longest 15 days of his players’ lives.

“Obviously, we can’t go too far afield,” said Harper, 54, a former UCLA lineman who still looks as though he could strap on a helmet and play a few downs. Harper coached the offensive line for five seasons at Colorado and will work with the Kingsmen line.

“We’ve got to really work on basic fundamental skills with the individuals, and yet we have to work on team coordination enough that we can go out and play a ballgame. . . ,” he said. “I anticipate we’ll be a better football team at the end of the football season.”

All Harper can do now is try to ensure that his team will be ready to hit the ground running when practice begins.

“He gave us a heck of a (conditioning) program to follow this summer,” said Dave Deisinger, a tight end and co-captain. “We have to learn the offense, so we can’t waste time getting in shape.”

How good the Kingsmen will become remains to be seen. Harper refuses to speculate, partly because it is difficult and perhaps because the outlook is grim.

Harper estimated that 45 players will return from a team that finished 3-6 last season. There are gaping holes in a lineup that was never particularly strong.

Harper has handed out playbooks to returning players but has yet to mold his offense. Much will depend on the quarterback, and all four of last year’s quarterbacks have either left school or quit the team.

“We have no real experience with the people that look like they’re going to play quarterback for us,” said Harper, who has recruited two freshman quarterbacks.

The quarterbacks are members of a recruiting class that will include 25 to 30 players. Harper had a late start in recruiting this year, but in the future he hopes to bring in 50 to 60 players a year, enough to stock junior varsity and varsity teams.

“Our recruiting left quite a bit to be desired this year in my estimation,” Harper said. “It was a learning experience for me just in terms of assessing what it takes to recruit a kid. . . . They have to be good, strong students and there has to be a way for them to be able to matriculate economically.

“That’s a key thing, too. We spun our wheels quite a bit on people who ultimately didn’t wind up making the lineup, so I’m a lot smarter.”

While Cal Lutheran is in transition from Division II to the Division III Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, it must abide by four sets of rules: those of NCAA Division II, Division III, the National Assn. of Intercollegiate Athletics and SCIAC member schools.

“We’re getting the worst of all worlds right now,” Harper said. “As soon as the transition is made to SCIAC I will feel more comfortable.”

Moreover, Harper negotiated the recruiting labyrinth without a full complement of coaches. He didn’t complete his staff until the middle of July.

“Putting together a part-time staff has been more challenging than I anticipated,” Harper said.

Though several of Shoup’s assistants will remain on staff, Harper remains in the uncomfortable position of replacing the coach who put Cal Lutheran on the football map, yet who was also fired after 28 years.

Harper views Shoup’s legacy not has a burden but as a foundation.

“It’s difficult and yet it’s very good also,” Harper said. Cal Lutheran “has a rich tradition. There are a lot of excellent football players that Bob had recruited and coached here that have a very strong feeling for the university, and I think that’s a real plus. . . . I think any time you have a turnover, for whatever reason, there are always comparisons that will be made and challenges to be met.”

Harper is a man of few words, and his stoic demeanor carries over to the sidelines.

“One of the things I took from him is you don’t have to yell, scream and call people names to motivate,” Johnston said of Harper. “When Coach Harper said something, you jumped. He was firm, but he was fair. He was probably one of the fairest men I have ever known.”