There Won’t Be Another Coach Like John McKay

Imagine arriving at USC in the fall of 1962. Imagine seeing your football team go 12-0 and win the national championship. Imagine never seeing your team lose a conference game throughout your four years at USC. Imagine beating Notre Dame four times in a row. Imagine always beating UCLA.

Imagine what it was like to have a coach like John McKay. It was unimaginable. He brought humor. He brought joy. He brought pride. His like will not soon be seen again and he will never be forgotten.

Judi Welch

Pacific Palisades

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With many others, I was at Craig Fertig’s roast where McKay made his last public appearance. He came up to the dais, following his son J.K., looked over at the seated lad and commented, “Hmmmm, I didn’t know he could speak.”

You’ve heard the one when his temper riled and he told the sportswriters: “You don’t know a football from a bunch of bananas.” The next day, there were bananas on his doorstep. So he responded, “I take that back. You don’t know a football from a Mercedes.”

McKay was my hero, my second dad, my coach, and I am one of many who will miss him. As Ben Wilson, our fullback, once said, “He is the Man.” Truer words never spoken.

Ken Del Conte

Whittier

Blocking back,

1962 national champions

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Talk about not appreciating someone until after they’re gone. I remember being upset when the Trojans would lose a game under McKay. I guess I expected him to win them all. If I had ever had the chance to express my disappointment over a loss to him, I think his reply would have gone something like this, “We never lose. We’re just behind when the gun goes off.”

I’m certainly not a John McKay . . . for I really feel at a loss today.

Robert H. Williams

Monterey Park

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McKay was one of the most successful college coaches and also a cold-blooded martinet feared by many of his players, according to a couple I knew.

Oh, he could be a funny, funny fellow with the quips and one-liners when his team won, which was most of the time. But when they lost, he didn’t hesitate to publicly berate his players.

Many big-time coaches readily admit their coaching might have been partly responsible for a loss, but I can’t recall McKay ever taking the blame.

That winless streak in Tampa Bay must have taught him that you can’t intimidate the pros the way you can eager college kids.

Charles F. Queenan

Encino

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The death of McKay brings back all kinds of memories, not least for Bruin fans. His rise at USC, together with the overmatched Bill Barnes at UCLA, produced a Bruin dark age that lasted until Tommy Prothro’s return to Westwood in 1965. McKay accomplished what Red Sanders came close to accomplishing in his foreshortened career: four national championships, combined with a great winning percentage and a consistent national profile.

McKay’s all-out aggressiveness, his innovative simplicity, his humor and obvious intelligence, his complete absence of whining or sandbagging, in short his willingness to win from in front made his teams a joy to watch (except, of course, when he was stomping your team).

The stark contrast between giants like McKay and Sanders with all their various merely mortal successors is enough to make the local college football fans despair of ever seeing another national championship team. Despite consistently fine recruiting classes, these successors have not only failed to develop a consistent national profile, they’ve actually made the local schools into regional also-rans. And the future, unfortunately, looks like more of the same.

Charles Chiccoa

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