Despite Success, James Knows What It’s Like to Be Written Off

In college football, as in other sports, coaches are graded by fans mainly on their most recent accomplishments. Career records are of little consequence.

So it wasn’t surprising that Washington Coach Don James was criticized at the outset of the 1989 season because his team hadn’t been a strong contender for the Pacific 10 championship from 1985 through ’88.

James didn’t have a losing record in those years, but the Seattle natives were restless.

One magazine was bold enough to say that if James had another sub-par season, he would resign or be fired.

Ignored was the fact that James was the winingest coach in the conference, that his team played in bowl games nine consecutive years until he had a 6-5 record in 1988 and that he had only one losing season since becoming Washington’s coach in 1975.

“It’s incredible that I could be the president of the of the coaches’ association and the winingest coach in Pac-10 and Husky history, and still people are complaining,” James observed wryly last year.

However, James declined an automatic pay raise and a rollover contract extension for five years before the 1989 season.

“I’ve done that before, just to disperse more of the raise pool to the assistant coaches,” James said. “I didn’t deserve a raise. I had to take some of the blame, and that was a way to show it.”

James quieted some of his critics last season as the Huskies had an 8-4 record, including a 34-7 victory over Florida in the Freedom Bowl.

Now, everyone is scrambling to get on the Husky bandwagon. Washington (8-1) has already earned a bid to the Rose Bowl, has virtually destroyed its Pac-10 opponents and, as the nation’s No. 2-ranked team, is in sight of a national championship.

Even more amusing was a poll conducted by the Eugene (Ore.) Register-Guard at the outset of this season in which reporters from other newspapers voted James the most overrated coach in the conference.

While James was supposedly struggling, UCLA’s Terry Donahue was winning seven consecutive bowl games in the 1980s. His contract was even upgraded when he briefly considered leaving the Bruins to become the Atlanta Falcons’ coach a few years ago.

Donahue has fallen on hard times, a 3-7-1 record in 1989 and a 4-5 record this season. He will have another losing season unless his team can upset both heavily favored Washington in Seattle Saturday and USC on Nov. 17 at the Rose Bowl.

The Daily Bruin, the school newspaper, has already suggested that Donahue should move on while saying, in essence, thanks for the memories.

“It’s amazing how great you are one day and how much you’ve forgotten the next,” James said. “Terry is going to be just fine. There are cycles in everything in life. There are no franchises in college football. With the scholarship thing the way it is, there are going to be some years when you’re going to struggle.”

James has admitted making some recruiting mistakes, as has Donahue.

Said James: “We had a 6-5 record in 1988. A lot of schools would love to have a 6-5 record, and a lot of schools would love to be as competitive as Terry is this year. But we’re at schools that have higher expectations.”

James said the foundation for this year’s dominating team actually began late last season with a 28-27 victory over UCLA at the Rose Bowl.

“We came back from a 21-0 deficit, and up until then we hadn’t had a real happy locker room for a couple of years,” he said. “I know what Terry is going through. Even in some of the games you win, you walk into the locker room shaking your head because they were ugly victories.

“That’s what everybody was writing about in Seattle . . . that we couldn’t win and when we did, they were ugly victories. But that win (over UCLA) last year was one of the happiest locker rooms we’ve had, and we have sort of picked it up from there.

“We even had some guys give away their Freedom Bowl watches, saying, ‘Hey, we’re going back, we’re going to be in the Rose Bowl.’ ”

So what has James done to return Washington’s football program to national prominence?

For one thing, he had 13 returning starters from last year. But numbers don’t always signify the relative strength of a team.

James simply became more involved in the recruiting process, emphasizing speed. In the mediocre seasons, the Huskies had size but were comparatively slow.

“We had made a lot of mistakes and it started with recruiting,” he said. “We had gotten a lot of players who couldn’t run, regardless of what it said on their questionnaires.

“So we incorporated a speed class in the wintertime three days a week. We took a track coach’s approach, working with the start, body lean, hands pumping and breaking it down on a daily basis. And to be more realistic, we recruited more guys who ran track.” Speed is one factor of Washington’s improvement; preparation is another.

Instead of watching film of their opponents, Husky players take home videotapes, studying formations, plays and tendencies, according to the Tacoma News-Tribune.

“It seems like they pretty much know your assignments,” California offensive tackle James Richards said after the Huskies routed the Bears, 46-7, on Oct. 27.

“Their defense was calling out our plays when we came to the line of scrimmage. We’d come up, and they’d say, ‘Watch for the screen,’ and it was a screen. Or, ‘Watch for the pass,’ and there it was.”

James said the athletic department has been equipped for two years with 15 videocassette recorders.

Instead of running movie projectors as in the past, players are given copies of videocassettes that have been edited and spliced with specific plays and formations that the coaches want them to study. And many of the players have VCRs at home.

It may be too late now for UCLA to change its offense. However, with the Huskies intently studying them, it might be advisable for the Bruins to alter their tendencies.

The Purple Gang doesn’t leave anything to chance this year.