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Words From a Legend

A Record to Remember
Dan Devine didn’t always get the appreciation,
but his record speaks for itself.

By Scott Kraft

Risk and reward.

Maybe it’s no accident those two words appear so often together. It was the risk taken by Dan Devine, leaving his job as a Michigan high school football coach for a lower-paying job as a graduate assistant under Coach Duffy Daugherty at Michigan State that led to a long, highly successful coaching career, including a national championship as coach of Notre Dame.

Devine didn’t remain a graduate assistant for long. He soon became a full-time coach and, in 1955, left to take over as the head coach at Arizona State University. Using variations of wing and flanker offenses, Devine would spend three years at ASU, losing a total of three games, against 27 wins and a tie. In his last season, 1957, the Sun Devils went 10-0.

It then became time for Devine to follow a legend, even if it wasn’t clear at the time. With Frank Broyles leaving the University of Missouri after one season as head coach to take over at the University of Arkansas, Devine agreed to become Missouri’s head coach prior to the 1958 season.

By his second season, the Tigers had made it to a bowl game. By his third season, the program had won the Big Eight title and secured its first ever bowl victory, over Navy in the Orange Bowl.

It was during Devine’s tenure at Missouri that the school had its first African-American player, Norris Stevenson, in the late 1950s. Stevenson praised the battles Devine waged at the school, both on and off the field.

“In the midst of the most storied years in Missouri football, he waged a battle on the gridiron and with racism,” Stevenson said. “And we all won.”

He would win three more bowl games at Missouri and spend four years, 1967-70, as the school’s athletic director before leaving the program following the 1970 season for his first NFL job, as head coach of the Green Bay Packers.

The Packers job would be the only head coaching job where Devine would struggle, compiling a 25-28-1 record from 1971 to 1974. The high mark was in 1972, when Devine was named the NFC Coach of the Year as the Packers finished 10-4 and claimed a division title.

In 1975, Devine returned to the college ranks in a big way, replacing legendary Ara Parashegian as head coach of Notre Dame. He reached the top of the coaching mountain in 1977, leading the Irish to a National Championship with a Cotton Bowl victory over undefeated Texas.

During the championship season, Devine had a surprise for his players. Prior to the season, he had ordered green jerseys with the player numbers in gold. Prior to a key game against USC, he had the equipment managers hang the jerseys in the player’s lockers while they warmed up in their regular blue jerseys. The players would wear green that day and beat the Trojans 49-19. They stayed in green at home until Devine left the school.

He stayed at Notre Dame until 1980, when he ended his coaching career. But there was more work to be done. Devine returned to Arizona State to head the school’s Sun Devil fundraising program. In 1987, he changed jobs, directing an ASU program to fight substance abuse.

He still had one job left, however. From 1992-1994, he returned to Missouri as athletic director, spearheading an initiative to improve the school’s athletic facilities. A pavilion with a 90-yard indoor practice field and batting cages now bears his name at the school.

Devine was born on December 23, 1924 in Augusta, Wisconsin, and attended college at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, where he was quarterback and captain of the football team.