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AFM Magazine


Win-Win Situation

Dennis Erickson and Oregon State discover it's nice to be wanted.
by: Ron Bellamy
The Register-Guard, Eugene, Ore.
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If it had been a marriage last January - so sudden, so shockingly surprising - the town gossips would have had a field day.

Dashing Dennis Erickson, the coach who won two national football championships at Miami, and Oregon State, the ungainly spinster of college football?

No way.

It can't last, the gossips would have said. Oregon State just got him on the rebound from that nasty mess in Seattle. Gosh, he can't be the desperate, can he? After all the bright lights, and the fame, he'll never be happy in a little town like Corvallis, where the college football team hasn't had a winning season since 1970. Good grief, does he know what he's doing?

And yet, as the 1999 college football season drew closer, it was clear that Dennis Erickson knew exactly what he was doing when he picked up the telephone to inquire about the suddenly vacated head coaching position at Oregon State.

To be sure, it's still the honeymoon period for Erickson, who was to make his OSU debut on Sept. 4 at Nevada. And, to be sure, both parties were hurting some when they met last January.

Erickson had just been fired by the Seattle Seahawks, four seasons into a five-year rebuilding plan in which the Seahawks had improved dramatically. At 8-8, they'd probably have been in the playoffs last season if not for a horribly blown call by officials in a loss to the New York Jets. Erickson was clearly not seen as the long-term answer by owner Paul Allen, who purchased the team two years ago.

And the Beavers were reeling, too. After all those years - after the decline of the Great Pumpkin, Dee Andros, and the failed regimes of Craig Fertig, Joe Avezzano, Dave Kragthorpe and Jerry Pettibone - they'd finally found hope, only to see that hope dashed.

They'd hired Mike Riley before the 1997 season. He'd been a high school hero in Corvallis; his dad had been an OSU assistant coach in the good times. He'd be the answer, and he'd be the future, because the homespun Riley is a Corvallis kind of guy.

When Riley led the the Beavers to five wins in 1998, including a double-overtime win over arch-rival Oregon in the "Civil War" - later, Erickson, those national championship rings on his fingers, would shake his head sadly over all the excitement about "five" wins - there was a sense of momentum at OSU. And then, just like that, Riley was gone, to become the head coach of the San Diego Chargers, and the mood in Corvallis turned grim again.

It was shortly afterward that OSU Athletic Director Mitch Barnhart returned to his desk to find a phone message. "Call Dennis Erickson," it said. No hint of what the message really meant. Barnhart, who was considering Colorado State's Sonny Lubick and Idaho's Chris Tormey (both former Erickson assistants), figured Erickson was calling with his recommendation.

Except Erickson, who'd had offers to stay in the NFL as an offensive coordinator after being fired in December by the Seahawks, had had a feeling about the OSU job as soon as Riley left it. "This might be something for me," he'd thought, and he told Barnhart that when they finally connected.

Barnhart's first reaction, other than "Who is this really," was that the Beavers could never make the money work. But the Seahawks still owed Erickson $1.4 million for the last year of his contract, he could have stayed home and golfed for a year and money wasn't an issue.

Erickson wanted to coach. He wanted to coach in college again. He wanted to be in the Northwest. He wanted to coach at Oregon State.

The Beavers introduced him as their new coach on Jan. 12. The band played. Cheerleaders danced. Erickson walked into the room through doors framed by a giant inflatable helmet, so that he seemed to appear, like magic, from inside the helmet itself. He got a standing ovation from boosters.

It was love at first sight. The Beavers, who needed a savior, couldn't imagine that they'd found one with Erickson's credentials. And Erickson - well, after the Seattle thing - he needed to be needed. He saw the looks of hope on the faces of the players and the boosters and the OSU staff members; he came to know how tough it had been. He felt the old competitive fire - he wanted to get it done, wanted to win, but not so much for himself, because he didn't have anything left to prove in the college ranks anymore. He wanted to do it for them.

It is a warm day in late June in Corvallis, Oregon, and Dennis Erickson's face is smooth and tanned from a week outside at the Oregon State football camp - his first camp, for kids from junior high through high school, in four years - and from occasional rounds of golf at the Corvallis Country Club.

Writers from Seattle newspapers, who've come to Corvallis to chronicle the resurrection of the fallen coach of the Seahawks, have invariably focused on how relaxed the 52-year-old Erickson looks now, how happy he seems to be after the stress of that final year in Seattle.

And, make no mistake, Erickson is very happy. He's finally settled into his office in the Valley Football Center, the bookshelves decorated by his wife of 28 years, Marilyn. There's the photograph from the 1989 national title victory over Alabama; there's the celebration from the win over Nebraska that climaxed a perfect 1991 season and a share of the national title with Washington.

The Ericksons have bought a house - huge, with five bedrooms, and a large rec room to entertain recruits, and Marilyn has filled the walls of the rec room with photographs from Erickson's career, starting as a quarterback at Montana State, and going through his coaching career at Central High School in Billings, Mont., and assistant jobs at Montana State, Idaho, Fresno State and San Jose State, and head coaching jobs at Idaho, Wyoming, Washington State, Miami and the Seahawks.

Ironic, isn't it, that Riley, the erstwhile Corvallis kid, had been given a huge, controversial allowance by Oregon State to build a house, but never broke ground, simply renting for two years, while Erickson, sometimes criticized as a coaching vagabond, seems to be putting down some roots?

"I've never seen Dennis happier," OSU offensive coordinator Tim Lappano, who followed him from the Seahawks, said earlier this year. "To go from where you weren't wanted to where you are, well, it does a man good. . . This is refreshing for him. He got beat up pretty good in Seattle by the media and the fans. Now, he comes to work with a smile on his face. He likes working with high school and junior college coaches. He likes working with the kids. He likes being wanted."

As he sits behind his desk, Erickson reflects on the latest transition in his life and the impact of coaching four years in the NFL.

"I think I'm a better coach," he says. "I think everybody gets better every year if they want to learn. I think where coaches get in trouble, regardless of the level, is thinking they have all the answers. Nobody ever has all the answers; there's always a learning process.

"I think in the four years in the NFL I learned a little bit about Xs and Os, because in the NFL that's what you spend your time on. And dealing with a different kind of player - they're more talented, their personality is much different than what you face in college - helped me because it gave me experience with all types of football players. I've coached in high school, college, and now the NFL."

Unlike some former NFL coaches who return to the college ranks, Erickson doesn't have bad things to say about NFL players.

"The NFL player is not a lot different," he says. "They still want to win, they still want to be successful, they're still going to listen toyou when you have something to tell them that will make them better. . . "There aren't very many of them that aren't (dedicated). Some aren't. Some are lazy. Some upset you because they don't give 100 percent to be the best they can be, and that becomes very obvious in that league. But you also see the guy who's a great player, and how they take care of themselves, and what they do physically, and the mental aspect of preparing for football games. You learn a lot about players."

What Erickson learned about players in the NFL, and what they do to be successful, might make him even stricter, in some ways, than in his first incarnation as a college coach.

"I think I'm flexible," he muses, "but I'm maybe even less flexible in regard to a kid doing the right things to be successful. What you see in the NFL is work ethic, and the things that the guys who have been real successful in the game do to be successful."

Still, Erickson missed the closeness with players that is possible at the prep and collegiate levels.

"That aspect of it, I probably missed more than anything," he says. "Just being around those players in college and being able to have some kind of an influence, and when they graduate and they come back, or they have some success and they come back, and you see that you had an influence on a guy, and an aspect of his life, and that's not how it is in the NFL."

In spring drills, Erickson and the Beavers got a chance to get to know each other.

"It's really been a pleasure for me," Erickson says. "They all want to learn, they all want to win, they all want to be successful. You can have an influence on that, and they listen to you, and they're going to do what you ask them to do.

"They know that you've had some successes coaching, and I think they feel that if they do what's asked by the staff that they have a chance to be successful. And, obviously, we haven't had a lot of success here, and so those kids are dying, starving, to have success."

They are, and they believe that Erickson can lead them toward it.

"The guy's won national championships," quarterback Jonathan Smith said last spring. There's something about those rings on his fingers that brings out something about him - that's success. There's something that pushes me, because I know he's been successful, and I want to be on the level where he's been. I want to perform for the guy."

The son of a successful, innovative high school coach in the state of Washington - Robert "Pink" Erickson, now 76 and retired in the Seattle area, ultimately became a volunteer tight ends coach for his son at Idaho - Dennis Erickson grew up riding high school team buses and hanging around practices and locker rooms.

He was a record-setting quarterback himself at Montana State and, after a year coaching high school and eight years as an assistant at three colleges, Erickson took a major step in his coaching career from 1979-81 as Jack Elway's offensive coordinator at San Jose State.

It was there, with Elway, that Erickson developed the offense that would become the trademark of his collegiate teams - a single back in the backfield at a time when that was unusual, and three wideouts, sometimes four, and sometimes with an empty backfield when the running back went in motion to become, in essence, a fifth wideout.

"At San Jose State, we were in two-backs, and we'd motion out and go one-back," Erickson recalls. "We were probably the first team in the country to go one-back.

"Then when I was at Idaho in 1982 we went almost all one-back, and we were one of two or three teams running that then. We'd go with three wideouts for sure, maybe four, with that one running back, but we'd motion him out so we'd be empty, and we did that before most people in football did.

"It was all about matchups. When we originated it, nobody in college football played nickel, so you had a receiver on a linebacker covering. . . It all started out being about mismatches. Now, people are defending it better, but three quarters of the teams in college football are doing what we were doing in 1982."

Erickson's trademark, in taking over college jobs, has been to bring in some fast junior college receivers and put the ball in the air. At Idaho, they were running the veer before he got there in 1982; he went airborne and won nine games his first season.

At Wyoming, they'd been running the wishbone and had won just three games the year before he arrived; he put in his offense and the Cowboys won six, and then the Western Athletic Conference title the next two years, after he'd gone to WSU.

The only place that Erickson's offense was controversial was at Miami, where the Hurricanes had had success with the pro set, but Erickson made it work there, too, and he will at Oregon State. He's clearly excited that he'll be calling all the plays again, for the first time in four years; he's also working closely with the quarterbacks, in conjunction with quarterbacks coach Michael Johnson.

"You need a quarterback who's smart, No. 1, and who knows where the matchups are," Erickson says. "He has to be an accurate thrower; he doesn't have to have a rocket on him. And he has to be someone who can move around and be athletic and make things happen. When they blitz, he has to be able to react and throw hot. . . If they're going to blitz, make them pay."

Erickson's record in 13 seasons as a college head coach is 113-40-1, a winning percentage of .737. Opponents have paid, indeed.

As the months pass since he was fired by the Seahawks, after a four-year mark of 31-33, Dennis Erickson finds the hurt to be diminishing.

"People get fired," he says. "That's the nature of the game. The thing that bothered me the most is that we worked our asses off for four years to build that thing, and we didn't get the fifth year of the contract to finish things out.

"But I'm away from it now, and I'm much more objective now than I was right after it happened. The thing about professional sports is that if one guy wants to make a change, he makes a change, and that's what happened. We don't have anything to hang our heads about at all. I'm proud of what we did there, and they know what we did there, and they know it's better than it was.

"I'm removed enough from it now that I don't even worry about it; I have things to worry about here. But nobody likes to get let go; nobody likes to get fired, but anymore that's the nature of professional athletics."

At Oregon State, Erickson returns to some coaching roots. He's lived in small towns - Moscow, Idaho; Laramie, Wyo.; Pullman, Wash. - and won in tough places and is comfortable in Corvallis. He'd applied for the OSU job once before - in 1984, when the Beavers hired Kragthorpe - and sees it as a much better job now. He wouldn't be at Oregon State if he didn't think the Beavers could win.

In an era in which Kansas State has become a national power, in the era of 85-player scholarship limitations and the increasing attractiveness of small college towns to recruits and their parents,anything is possible, even at Oregon State.

The Beavers have a surprisingly good football locker facility, the Valley Football Center, which also houses the weight room, meeting rooms, training facilities and football offices. They are installing a new artificial turf surface and, despite an athletic department deficit that was $8 million when Erickson was hired, are planning an indoor practice facility.

"It's not going to happen overnight," Erickson warns. "My biggest fear is that these people think I'm going to come in here with a magic wand and all of a sudden we're going to win 10 games. That's obviously impractical. But you have to take a step at a time, and you have to have a plan to take a step at a time. The kids have to have some success, and the success has to be measured by where you're at, and the direction you're going."

For the Beavers, 1999 could be tough. A ton of veteran defensive players had finished their eligibility when Riley left. The Beavers will move the football - tailback Ken Simonton, who surpassed the 1,000-yard mark as a freshman, is perfect for Erickson's system - but can they stop the opposition enough to give Erickson and the offense one last meaningful possession at the end of the game?

That remains to be seen, and so, too, how long Erickson stays inCorvallis. He's acquired a reputation as a job-jumper, but that wasearlier in his career, when he was climbing the mountain. He's been to the top now, won those national titles, and what's left to prove? Maybe, simply, that he can establish roots in a town that already feels very much like home, and win in a place that hasn't won in almost 30 years, and be the hero for a program that dearly needs a hero. A program that needs Dennis Erickson.






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