An Old 49er Brings Hope to California

He has studied at the feet of some pretty fair masters, learning consistency and stability from LaVell Edwards, attention to detail from Bill Walsh, discipline from George Seifert.

But no one taught Tom Holmoe how to stop a train.

He has watched California lose to USC, and has seen the engine’s light coming at him though the tunnel. And lose to Louisiana Tech, and it got brighter. And to Washington, and last week to Washington State, 63-37, and he has stood there, wondering if somebody was going to throw a switch before he is run over.

He’s still wondering, with 13th-ranked UCLA blowing the whistle before Saturday’s game in the Rose Bowl.

“It’s been very difficult for me,” Holmoe said. “I’ve never even been on a team that lost four in a row. At BYU [where he played and later coached under Edwards], we lost four in my first season, but not in a row. With the 49ers, we lost six in a year, but not in a row.”

The Golden Bears have lost four in a row, and most people could see it coming, but maybe not their first-year coach, a bespectacled, slightly built, bookish-demeanored man who looks a little like Orel Hershiser.

Holmoe was told what he was getting into when he became Cal’s third coach in 13 months, succeeding Steve Mariucci, who passed through for a 6-6 season en route from Green Bay to the San Francisco 49ers.

Bill Walsh told him. Walsh also told John Kasser, Cal’s athletic director, what he was getting.

“He’s an ethical, honest man, and he hit like Ronnie Lott, except he had to come out of the game after he hit and Ronnie stayed and made all-pro,” Walsh said. Holmoe was a backup safety under Walsh for seven seasons with the 49ers, earned three Super Bowl rings and worked with Walsh as a secondary coach and recruiter at Stanford for two years.

Walsh sold Holmoe hard to Berkeley, and Kasser listened. Everybody in the Bay Area listens to Walsh.

“He’s very intelligent,” Walsh said of Holmoe. “Cal Berkeley is a brutal place to coach sometimes, and it takes somebody special to coach there. Somebody like Tom or maybe Marv Levy [Cal’s coach from 1960 to ‘63].

“But it’s an attractive school. I think if anybody can do it there, he can.”

Holmoe is sure of it, but he also had an idea he had some magic going in his first job as a head coach when Cal was 2-0 after beating Houston and Oklahoma.

“When you win the games, you see things in a different vein,” Holmoe said. “Maybe I didn’t see some things wrong with the team. But against Houston, we committed 21 penalties.

“I wanted to say, ‘That was just the first game.’

“In the second game, there were still a number of penalties and quite a few mistakes, just stupid mistakes. But you’re feeling good. You’re 2-0, but you’re making mistakes. . . .

“Then against USC, they jumped out on us. And Louisiana Tech, we lost one in the fourth quarter. I started seeing that we had some guys who weren’t winning individual battles. Some of it was because of talent, some just because of mistakes that we were making. It exposed us.”

It was bound to happen. Cal football is 115 years old, but the Bears have had only one winning season since Bruce Snyder left for Arizona State in 1991 and Keith Gilbertson took over.

Worse, the coaching upheaval that has seen the Gilbertson, Mariucci and Holmoe regimes in as many seasons has taken its toll. Seven freshmen started at one time or another last season, when Holmoe was Mariucci’s defensive coordinator. Six freshmen or sophomores start now on a defense that is the Pacific 10’s worst.

“It’s made the players strong in one way,” receiver Bobby Shaw said. “It helps you understand that it all comes down to you as a player. I’ve never seen a coach come out on the field and throw passes to me.”

But it also has made them confused.

“I think it’s very hard on the kids,” Holmoe said. “One of our coaches kind of put up the comparison to being with foster parents. You know, these kids have had three head coaches in three years, and it’s like moving from one family to another.

“It’s toughest on the older players. Everyone kind of thought, ‘Who’s going to be coaching us next year?’

“I’ve told them that I’m not their foster parent. I’m their parent. Kasser hired me to build a program, not from the top down but from the bottom up. I’m not going anywhere.”

His contract runs through 2001. He plans to fulfill it.

He didn’t come in and tell 49er war stories about Joe Montana and Jerry Rice and Lott. He didn’t flash his four Super Bowl rings, the last earned as the defensive back coach under Seifert. He’s more concerned about the here and now.

He’s different, and the players had to learn how.

“With Mariucci, he believed in motivation,” Shaw said. “He was always pumping us up. Holmoe treats us more like men and expects us to motivate ourselves.”

It’s the Walsh way.

“I’m not going to stand on a soapbox and try to get them to play,” Holmoe said. “The teams I was with, players motivated themselves.

“But I realize I was dealing with the greatest players ever and college players might not understand that.”

The Super Bowl rings are trotted out infrequently, and usually for effect. They offer an identity.

“Sometimes I wear a Super Bowl ring during recruiting,” Holmoe said. “Lots of people don’t know me. I have walked around in a little anonymity.”

When they learn about him, they find he has an idea of the future. Holmoe has played or coached football for 22 seasons and has been on teams that won some kind of title in 19 of them.

Now he’s in charge of a team that last went to the Rose Bowl in 1959.

“It’s difficult for the players, but I understand where the program was when I came in and I knew we weren’t going to turn the program right away,” Holmoe said. “As coach, I have to have a vision of where we are going.”

And a willingness to stay around until they get there.