Charger Fortunes Are Ross’ to Bear : New Coach to Sign Contract Thursday

Bobby Ross will sign a four-year contract Thursday and be introduced at an afternoon press conference in San Diego as the Chargers’ ninth head coach.

On the urging of Georgia Tech Athletic Director Homer Rice, Ross announced Tuesday that he has resigned as the school’s head coach effective today.

“(Rice) felt we needed to get a statement out,” Ross said. “I’m looking forward to the challenge in San Diego and I’m very excited about it.”

The Chargers were prepared to name Ross as Dan Henning’s successor last week, but Ross asked to wait until Jan. 1 because of pension considerations in his Georgia Tech contract.

Ross, 55, is expected to offer assistant coaching positions to Georgia Tech offensive coordinator Ralph Friedgen, defensive coordinator George O’Leary, special teams coach Mark Hendrickson and quality control supervisor John Misciagna.

O’Leary, however, is also high on Georgia Tech’s list as a possible replacement for Ross.

Jack Reilly, who was fired last week along with Henning, is expected to return here as an offensive assistant. Special teams coordinator Larry Pasquale, who was also considered a candidate to return, no longer figures in the team’s plans.

“I think Charger fans are going to be excited about Bobby Ross,” General Manager Bobby Beathard said. “We’re excited about it, and we think we’ve got the right man.”

Beathard, the former Washington Redskins general manager, first became familiar with Ross when Ross was head coach at Maryland (1982-1986). When Beathard began his search to find a replacement for Henning, he sought the counsel of Redskins’ defensive coordinator Larry Peccatiello, who has been one of Ross’ longtime friends.

“Larry’s very insightful, and he has a way of evaluating a guy where everything isn’t going to be flowery,” Beathard said. “He’ll be very, very honest, and I talked to him a lot about Bobby, and he came highly recommended.”

So who is this Bobby Ross?

He’s all football coach. Lots of hard work. Lots of X’s and O’s. Lots of cliches.

“I’m no Jerry Glanville,” he said in a four-hour interview conducted in his Atlanta home last week. “I’m not good with the jokes or the quips. I’m a listener and a communicator, and there are certain things I think that are right.

“I believe in discipline, but the biggest and most important thing is self-discipline. I think I have a lot of that; I have an awful lot of that in every aspect of my life.”

Beathard went looking for a coach who guaranteed an attention to detail. He found a coach who went to the Virginia Military Institute, a man with one son in the Air Force and another in the Marines.

“I guess people associate discipline with my because I have a military background,” Ross said. “I’m demanding things be on time, work ethic on the field, and I want people paying attention. I put a board up there and we mark the play down and you better know it.

“When I first went into professional coaching I was taken aback by the lackadaisical approach, the almost indifference to practice, and I was told that’s the pro way. The longer I was in it, the more I realized it doesn’t have to be that way.”

Ross, the taskmaster, turned Maryland into a perennial bowl visitor while compiling a 39-19-1 record. In his first four years at Maryland, his team won 21 of 22 Atlantic Coast Conference games.

His program received national acclaim after overcoming a 31-0 halftime deficit in the Orange Bowl in 1984, and defeated Miami 42-40.

Ross also drew attention for chasing an official off the field after a close loss. “Yeah, I chased him, but I didn’t chase him to hit him,” he said.

“I chased him to get his name; he had blown a call. I was very upset with his call; he gave me wrong information on the number of timeouts remaining and it cost us a ballgame.

“It was raining that day; I didn’t have a jacket on and I looked wild and haggard and I guess I looked like an insane guy. I pulled my damn hamstring chasing him, but I kept going.”

Ross’ wife, Alice, said, “He was not only frustrated, but in pain. He really looked like a crazy man, but that picture of him on national TV was so unfair.”

Ross’ Maryland teams averaged 28.1 points a game during his five years on the job. The fun stopped, however, in 1986. Ross resigned at Maryland after the controversy that accompanied basketball player Len Bias’s death had taken its toll on his football team.

“I might still be at Maryland if Len Bias hadn’t died,” Ross said. “He died of an overdose of crack cocaine, and the story came out that he had come back from Boston after signing a contract to play with the Celtics and had had dinner with some of my football players.

“Then this guy comes and picks him up and they go to a bar and my kids aren’t involved. It was three basketball players and Bias, but the attorney general at that time comes out with this big statement that he’s going to clean up Maryland athletics and he’s going to call Ross before the grand jury.

“That really irritated me. We had a clean program, and that’s a matter of record. We went through a very tormenting year. They had a task force that went through the whole season investigating things, the president of the university was having weekly press conferences and the media was constantly coming to the stadium to interview the football players.”

The task force found no wrongdoing in Ross’ football program, but the school lost its basketball coach and athletic director. When Ross was told that a new athletic director wouldn’t be hired for at least nine months, he submitted his resignation.

Ross, who worked with Coach Marv Levy in Kansas City (1978-1981), accepted a passing coordinator post with the Levy-coached Bills after leaving Maryland. But before he signed the contract, he got a call from Georgia Tech and became the Rambling Wreck’s head coach.

It’s not easy to recruit at Georgia Tech because of the high admission standards and its downtown location, and therefore it’s difficult to win at Georgia Tech, but Ross gave the school a national championship in 1990 with an 11-0-1 season, including a 45-21 Citrus Bowl victory over Nebraska.

However, Ross went 5-17 in his first two years at Georgia Tech, and he seriously considered quitting after his first year.

“It was a very tough year and I guess I’m a little idealistic and there were some things happening that I didn’t like,” Ross said. “I was coming off a tough year at Maryland. . . . You can have a team that isn’t very good and it can play hard, but we weren’t doing that. And that was bothering me.

“But I just stuck to my beliefs, and I said, ‘By damn, we’re going to play hard and get better.’ We had kids who just weren’t going to class, and I came in with a real hard class-attendance rule, and then I came in with a breakfast-attendance rule. They didn’t like that and they fought it.”

Ross dug in.

“I had a group of alumni ask to meet with me and I told my wife that this was it--I was going to be fired,” he said. “I was ready to do battle, but they came in and said they just wanted me to know that I had their support.”

Ross had Tech winning by his third season, but he was put to the test in other ways, having to contend with a series of personal disasters.

His mother, who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, required nursing-home care. One of his best athletes, a 6-foot-5, 245-pound tight end, drowned after his first season. His strength and conditioning coach was killed in an automobile accident.

“We buried him,” Ross said, “and then I had a granddaughter born with a major heart defect. My son was in the Air Force and stationed in England at the time, and he calls and he’s elated with her birth.

“The next day he calls me at the office and he’s crying like a baby. He says they have serious problems and can we come over. We left immediately for London.”

The doctors said the family had three choices: Surgery, allow her to die or a heart transplant.

“I told my son,” Ross said, “‘that we’ve got to go for it. We’ve got to give her a chance.’

“They gave her about eight weeks to live and in the eighth week they got the heart. It was the heart of a little boy--I’ll show you a picture of the little boy. It’s an ironic thing, his name was Chris, just like my son’s.

“They transplanted his heart, which was the size of a walnut with our little Rebecca. She was doing well. . . . We went to Sea World and the zoo together in San Diego, matter of fact.

“But one Sunday morning about 15 months later we were preparing to go to Mass and my son called. He said there was trouble, they were rushing Rebecca to the hospital and we should pray for her. They never got her there; she died in their arms.”

There are pictures of Bobby and Alice Ross’ five children and four grandchildren, including Rebecca, everywhere in their home. The proud grandfather needs no prompting to show them off.

“I always take the approach with my players,” Ross said, “that I want to treat them with the same respect that I would give to my children.

“I want to know my players. I know you don’t have the involvement in their lives that you do with a college kid, but the better I know a player, the better I’m going to know what makes him tick and what makes him play up to his abilities. I’ll spend time getting to know them, and I’ll be demanding.”

Ross already has expressed disappointment, however, with the number of players who choose to leave San Diego during the off-season.

“Off-season preparation is extremely important to me,” he said, “and I’m surprised at the few number of players who live in San Diego, especially considering what a great place it is to live. Football is a 12-month thing, and I’m going to want certain things done.

“It’s not going to be something where you come in and sign your name and that’s it. I’m going to want to watch and observe. I’m in the weight room a lot during the off-season. I don’t lift--you can tell that--but I want to find out how guys are working.

“I don’t believe in guys laying around. My God, there has to be something they can be working on. They have a work day just like you have a work day and I expect a full work day.”

On the practice field, he said, “I’m a very hands-on coach. I’m involved with everything. I will have an offensive coordinator and I will have a defensive coordinator. I’m an extra set of eyes; I watch everything.”

Ross said he will tailor his offense to the Chargers’ personnel. While at Maryland, he had Boomer Esiason throwing the football. At Georgia Tech, he had his offense running the option.

“I look for a balanced attack,” Ross said. “The pro game is such that you obviously have to be able to throw the football, but it’s not to the point where you throw every play. I’m a believer in multiplicity. I’m a believer in balance the run to pass.

“I’m not either a two-back or a one-back guy; I’ll take a look and see what San Diego has. There’s a place for both a two-back and one-back set.”

On defense, “I think one of the keys on any level of football anymore is to be dominating in your up-front people. I think you’ve got to be good on the defensive line and keep pressure on the passer.”

Ross has experience in pro football, but he’s been away from the game for the past decade. He’s not concerned.

“Coaching is coaching,” he said. “But as a college coach I didn’t usually visit other colleges; when I wanted to study football, I studied professional football. You can go into my office now and I’ve got reel after reel of pro football games.

“There are differences between college football and the pro game. But I’m ready for this challenge.”

Obviously Beathard agreed, and on the final day of 1991, he had difficulty containing his enthusiasm.

“After talking to him again I’m hearing things that are even better than I anticipated,” Beathard said. “I wish we could start training camp tomorrow.”

The Bobby Ross File * VITALS Full name: Robert Joseph “Bobby” Ross Birthdate: Dec. 23, 1936 (Richmond, Va.) College Coaching: VMI defensive backs (1966) William & Mary offensive backs (1967-68) William & Mary defensive backs (1969) William & Mary defensive coordinator (1970) Rice linebackers (1971) Maryland linebackers (1972) The Citadel head coach (1973-77) Maryland head coach (1982-86) Georgia Tech head coach (1987-91) Professional Coaching: Chiefs special teams and defense (1978-79) Chiefs offensive backs (1980-81) Married: The former Alice Bucker (Richmond, Va.) Children: Chris, Mary Catherine, Teresa, Kevin, Robbie Grandchildren: Kimberly, Timothy, Alicia * RECORD

The Citadel Maryland Georgia Tech 1973--3-8 1982--8-4(Aloha) 1987--2-9 1974--4-7 1983--8-4(Citrus) 1988--3-8 1975--6-5 1984--9-3(Sun) 1989--7-4 1976--6-5 1985--9-3(Cherry) 1990--11-0-1(Citrus) 1977--5-6 1986--5-5-1 1991--8-5(Aloha) Total--24-31 Total--39-19-1 Total--31-26-1 Bowl appearances listed in parentheses