CHARGED WITH EMOTION : San Diego’s Ross a Proven Winner Driven by Real Losses in His Life

He has the heart of a warrior, wounded time and time again, and yet the intensity in San Diego Charger Coach Bobby Ross remains luminous.

By his own admission he is a prime candidate for coaching burnout, and already there have been times, he says now, when he considered retirement or returning to college football.

Anyone who has watched him pour himself into his work along the sideline or seen the anguish of Ross following a defeat can appreciate how much effort the man expends, how much he cares, but it is the real losses in Ross’ life that define his indefatigable drive.

A tight end on the college football team he coached drowned. A coach on his college staff was killed in a car wreck, and a coach on his pro staff lost both his former wife and daughter. In the past two years, two of his Charger players have been killed in accidents.

He and his wife, Alice, lost a child shortly after birth. His granddaughter, Rebecca, required a heart transplant before her first birthday, and grandpa Bobby had the chance to carry her around Sea World and show her the San Diego Zoo, but she died before turning two.

His mother, a victim of Alzheimer’s disease, passed away after he became coach of the Chargers, and now, in his fifth year on the job here, the final blow.

“When they play the Star Spangled Banner [tonight] I will look at the sky and that’s the first thing that will come to my mind--my father,” Ross says. “That’s when it hits me the hardest--game day, right at the start of the game. I’m into the game and all that, but my dad loved football, and gosh almighty, he would be there. I mean he would be there watching that game and into it like you can’t imagine. He lived for the football season.”

Leonard Ross Sr. died this past June at age 92--a month after Bobby Ross dealt with the death of running back Rodney Culver in a Florida plane crash.

“I cannot tell you how much I miss my father,” Ross says. “He was at an age to die, but the way he died was tough. Three months of living hell.”

Leonard Ross Sr. beat colon cancer and survived bypass heart surgery, but he developed circulation problems requiring one of his legs to be amputated in May. A short time later his other leg had to be amputated, and Bobby Ross says, “I’m a praying person, and at the end I was praying for my father to die.

“He was really suffering. You put everything in God’s hands, and I was asking for that, but what I really was asking for was mercy.”

The pain his father was experiencing was tearing up Ross. All the while he consoled others who were hurting from Culver’s death. He delivered a eulogy at a service in Detroit marking Culver’s passing, and he had the right words for his players in San Diego. And after taking care of others, he made his way to visit his father.

“I never saw my dad after the first leg was taken,” Ross says. “I never saw him again live. I got on a plane to go see him, got off and my brother told me I had missed him by about four hours--almost the time I got on the plane. It wasn’t anything I could do, but it stays with me--I just wanted to say my goodbyes and I didn’t get that chance.

“You know, I used to call him [before every game] and my dad was an old defensive end,” Ross says. “He used to give me the same old instruction, ‘Get those ends to box them in, box them in.’ I’d say, ‘OK, Dad, OK.’ Geez, I miss that a lot, those calls. That’s why I have put this season in his name, why I have dedicated it to him.”

The Chargers versus the Raiders, good old-fashioned football before a raucous crowd tonight, and Leonard Ross would have been all fired up sitting before his TV.

“That damn TV would be blaring,” Ross says with a grin. “He’d be loving this.”

When Ross’ Georgia Tech team knocked off No. 1 Virginia in a nationally televised game, his players awarded a game ball to Leonard Ross, and when Ross’ Chargers defeated Denver early in his tenure in San Diego, the players turned the ball over to Leonard Ross. It was the only professional football game Leonard Ross watched his son coach in person.

“My dad had a real quality of life for almost 91 years and nine months,” Ross says. “You know my dad never drove a car. We never had a car growing up. I tried to teach him when he was 52. Banged up a curb and scraped a telephone pole. He was beyond it, and couldn’t care less. He rode a bike until he was about 80-some years old.”

Family and friends are constantly telling Bobby Ross he resembles his father, although his father was bigger than him. He was closer to his father, he says, than anyone else, and now shares the same toughness that allowed his father to work for 54 years as a railroad freight clerk.

“We had this little area next to the house about this wide and my dad would get these big guys down there and make me tackle them,” Ross recalls. “Full-speed tackle. Full speed. I was probably nine and they were probably 15 and 16 years old.”

And? “Yeah, I got them down, don’t know how, but I did.”

Down and out after his first two years at Georgia Tech, Ross considered quitting, but then that’s not how he was raised, and so he went on to win a national championship at a school that had no business winning such a title. He went 0-4 in his debut with the Chargers, and questioned his reasoning in leaving the college ranks, but eventually got his team into the Super Bowl.

But football--the way he pushes himself to coach--has taken its toll, and his wife constantly reminds him to ease up.

“[Professional football] is not as enjoyable as college; it doesn’t even come close,” Ross says, but there’s no denying the competition, and he thrives on that.

As if Ross needed any incentive this year, he now applies himself like a man who must win every game. It’s there in his 5 a.m.-to-midnight workdays and his emotional pregame speeches to his team. He has told his players to win for themselves, but he has also told them what this season means to him.

“I want to do well this season for a very special reason,” Ross says. “That’s my driving force--my dad.

“My situation is not unique; a lot of people have similar things, but I just haven’t gotten over it yet. I think about it when I run each day. I reflect on it on my ride home, before I go to bed. And I will really think about it tonight. It’s still an awful big part of my life and what I am all about.”

And while New Orleans and the chance to play in another Super Bowl tug at Ross, there is something more powerful grabbing at him.

“One of the things that I am really missing right now, and it might sound weird, but I want to go back to my dad’s grave site [in Richmond, Va.],” he says. “There is just this strong pull to do that. I thought about going during [the bye last week] but I would have been too tired coming back to commit myself to what we need to get done.

“But it’s pulling at me. I get great solace in that. I sit there and talk to him.”

A warrior at peace.

“Happy,” he says to be talking with his father. “I have a little baby, a son--that lived only 15 minutes--lying there right next to him, and so I get great comfort in that.”

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Bobby Ross at a Glance

THE COLLEGE YEARS

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Years School Record 1973-77 The Citadel 24-31-0 1982-86 Maryland 35-17-1 1987-91 Georgia Tech 29-26-1 Totals 88-74-2

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THE PRO YEARS

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Year, Team W L 1992, San Diego 11 5 1993, San Diego 8 8 1994, San Diego 11 5 1995, San Diego 9 7 Totals 39 25

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Note: In the four years before Ross’ arrival, the Chargers were 22-42

* TONIGHT’S GAME

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