A Wizard in the Land of Oz

Tiny Washburn University head coach Tony DeMeo proves year-after-year that victories aren\'t always won on Saturdays and great coaches don\'t have to war houndstooth hats
by: Jamie DeMoney
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When Tony DeMeo left the tight confines of the East Coast for the wide-open plains of Topeka, Kan., and Washburn University in December 1993, what he found was pretty alarming.

The school, though getting ready to begin its 103rd year playing the game, was one of the barren wastelands of college football. Five years had passed since the Ichabods last posted a winning record and the program was languishing through a 12-game losing streak.

Even worse, DeMeo found only 29 players on the roster leftover from the previous regime, an equipment room with only 25 helmets adequate for use and a practice field without so much as a blocking sled on it.

"It was so bad Kevorkian was the team doctor," quips DeMeo, sitting with his feet up on a conference room table a few minutes before a Monday practice earlier this season.

A quick wit and a bag of quotes are just a couple of the things for which DeMeo is known. He is also thought of by coaches nationwide as one of the most innovative offensive minds in football. DeMeo's "Multi-Bone" offense combines a shotgun passing formation with the triple-option.

DeMeo has also earned the reputation as a program builder who, after turning his alma mater Iona into a winner in the late 1970s, started the program at Mercyhurst (Pa.) from scratch in 1981 and had a winning record that first season. Now, DeMeo is known as the man facing the challenge of building Washburn into a winner.

"There is no status quo, you either get better or worse."

That quote, along with nearly 500 more that DeMeo has either coined or collected during his 17-year coaching career are contained in the pocket-sized book The Grass Isn't Greener; It's Only Astro-turf, which he wrote and published in 1993. Explosive Football with the Multi-Bone Attack and 101 Ways to Run the Option are testaments to DeMeo's offensive mind, The Grass Isn't Greener - "good bathroom reading material," in the words of DeMeo - is a testament to his mind, in general.

It's a good thing that DeMeo's sense of humor is matched only by his optimism. He needed both when he took the reins at Washburn.

"I think I'm pretty positive," he says. "I think I'm an optimist by nature. I would say if I was hunting for Jaws, I'd be carrying tartar sauce on the boat."

On this day, the optimism is particularly useful. A trip to nationally ranked Pittsburg State looms five days away, and the Ichabods are reeling a bit after losing starting quarterback Tyler Schuerman to a strained knee ligament in their opener at Division III Wisconsin-La Crosse, a 37-18 loss, then struggling past NAIA Lincoln University, 31-20, the next week.

"Optimists always achieve more," says DeMeo, who has lost to Pitt State in each of his eight seasons at Washburn. "If you don't believe that you can do something, you might as well not try. But I'm not Pollyanna, either. I try to find reasons and ways that we can create an upset or for something good to happen."

An upset versus the Gorillas did not happen this season. History, however, would suggest that it won't be long before it does. At Mercyhurst, DeMeo developed a reputation as a giant-killer on the Division III level by leading the Lakers to road upsets at Widener and Dayton during his seven-year stay.

"The road to greatness passes through the town of adversity."

Ironically, DeMeo says the challenge of starting a completely new program at Mercyhurst was nothing compared to sifting through the rubble he found at Washburn. That required not just building a program up, but reinventing one in the eyes of high school coaches and the community.

"The program was in a state of disarray," says Dean Ferrell, who chaired the Kansas Board of Regents when DeMeo was hired. He also played football at Washburn during the 1960s. "The year before Tony was hired, we finished with 35 players total. Things had just fallen apart."

DeMeo's early recruiting classes at Washburn - and current ones, to a large degree - have a distinct flavor of Texas to them. The reputation of the program that preceded DeMeo forced it to be that way.

"One of the biggest things I had to overcome was the lack of credibility in the Washburn football program," he says. "That's why I went out of state and out of town to people who knew me. Most of my early recruits were not because of Washburn, but almost despite Washburn's reputation, and because people know what I do.

"Washburn had a horrible, horrible local reputation."

Recruiting is important everywhere, but it was particularly crucial if things were to turn around at Washburn. The players DeMeo inherited included an offensive line without a single member who could bench over 300 pounds - only nine players on the entire team could do it. There were only eight players in the program who could squat over 400 pounds.

"I had to win in order to get players to win. That was the real challenge," says DeMeo. "So, my first recruiting year I had a ton of walk-ons, a ton of players who maybe turned out to be good players but now I probably wouldn't be recruiting. But at that time, I needed bodies. I mean, I was recruiting in the hallway. I rounded up 10 kids my first spring practice just so we could scrimmage."

The next challenge for DeMeo was even more daunting: finding a way to win with those players.

DeMeo is a firm believer in redshirting. At first, a scarce number of quality athletes made it tough for him to sit out anyone, but as the years have passed, DeMeo has begun to red shirt all of his recruits.

"My first year here, I remember a kid walking on at Pitt State and I offered him a scholarship," DeMeo says. "But he chose to walk on at Pitt State instead. I thought, if I'm not going to get the best athletes, you can do one of two things - you can curse the darkness or light a match.

"I said if that's the way it's going to be, then I'm going to take five years to develop these kids, and it would help them academically and athletically."

On the field, the wins have started to come. In the classroom, the victories are already there. Of the 72 scholarship players who have completed their eligibility at Washburn under DeMeo, 70 have earned degrees.

"You could tell he knew what he was talking about," says Ferrell. "One of things that impressed me was his wanting to make sure that the student-athletes earned their degrees."

"Don't expect what you can't measure."

During the off-season, after recruiting, DeMeo spends much of his time traveling the country as a motivational speaker. His affinity for literalisms has led him to speak before more than 400 events and groups nationwide. DeMeo has a system for motivating and measuring, and even the business world has taken notice.

"I truly believe that the best motivation is self-motivation," he says. "My secret of motivation is to recruit motivated kids - kids that have ambitions, that have achieved, that have desires, that have those kinds of goals themselves.

"Number two is I try to quantify what we want to accomplish. I use the four ACES - Awareness, Concentration, Effort and Synergy."

When DeMeo and his staff break down film, they grade each individual player on every play for the four ACES. If a player misses an assignment, he gets a minus for awareness. If they see somebody dogging it, a "minus E" is given for lack of effort. Conversely, if a player gets a club on the football or makes a double block or gives extra effort in another way, he gets a plus. The points are tallied week after week and posted in the locker room.

"Everyone can see who's giving effort. So then you don't have a kid saying, 'Why aren't I playing more?'"

"It's better to run a lousy play great than a great play lousy."

Anyone who has watched one of DeMeo's teams practice would likely use words such as "up-tempo", "crisp" and "reps" somewhere in their description of the proceedings. On this Monday, the team manages to squeeze in more than 60 plays in less than 90 minutes while still making time for special teams, stretching and an ACES award recognition at the end.

The next observation a bystander would make is the unique brand of triple-option offense DeMeo has formulated.

The Multi-Bone is one of the great moochers the game has known. DeMeo has borrowed running game ideas from Darrell Royal's wishbone, passing secrets from Bill Walsh's West Coast, and option-game blocking schemes from his former boss Harold "Tubby" Raymond at the University of Delaware.

"I wanted an offense that was completely flexible and one that I could go any direction that I want." says DeMeo. "It takes the diversity of the pro-style passing game with the wishbone - the opposite ends of the spectrum being melded together."

What has resulted is an attack that features the quarterback running and passing the ball for nearly equal yardage and players spread across the field to take advantage of one-on-one matchups.

"If you look at the career leaders in receptions and passing yards in this school, they're all guys I've coached," DeMeo says. "If I get a great skill guy and I spread him out and run the option, I force you to single cover him, and now it's a horse race. All those great defensive linemen don't matter, because I don't have to run there. I can throw it out to him."

How well does it work? Well, 12 different DeMeo-coached quarterbacks have broken school records for total offense and at all three of the schools where he has been head coach, one of his teams owns the school record for total offense and scoring.

"Tony's a very creative guy and he's a go-getter," says Raymond, who hired DeMeo as an assistant coach in 1989 and still serves as one of his mentors. "His enthusiasm carries over in the way he teaches."

The current quarterback holding the keys to DeMeo's Multi-Bone machine, Schuerman, may end up being the best he's ever worked with. Last season the Riverview, Fla. (Eastbay H.S.) product was named the Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association Freshman of the Year after passing for 1,936 yards and rushing for another 708 - good enough to place in the league's statistical top 10 in both categories. Schuerman also accounted for 26 touchdowns and posted the school's second best-ever season total for points with 96.

"I think we've just been a little ahead of what they're doing with athletic quarterbacks," DeMeo says. "[When recruiting a quarterback] I go for a runner first who wins. A guy that wins and runs."

"Leave a place a little better than you found it, whether it's a picnic area or an athletic program."

Things are definitely changing for the better for the Washburn football program. Under DeMeo, not only are the wins becoming much more plentiful, school administrators, the business community and people of Topeka are showing renewed interest in the program.

The school is planning a massive - and much needed - upgrade for Washburn's football stadium, Moore Bowl, of approximately $4 million. It's a move that will help the Ichabods' football facilities catch up with not only the rest of the conference, but the rest of the other programs on campus.

"When I came, they had hit rock bottom here and didn't have the money at the time to put into the program to turn it around," says DeMeo during his walk back to the office past old, dilapidated Moore Bowl. "All you have to do is look at our facilities next to Pitt State's, and you know that there hasn't been the commitment that's been at other schools in our conference. Now we have a new president, Dr. (Jerry) Farley, who's been very supportive and really he's been a big plus."

The road to complete success at Washburn is still under construction, but the signs are there. The Ichabods entered 2001 with a respectable 11-11 record over the past two seasons playing in arguably the toughest Division II conference (MIAA) in the nation. In 1999, when Washburn posted its first winning record in 10 years at 6-5, DeMeo's peers were so impressed they named him co-coach of the year in the league.

"I think they understand," he says, "what I've had to go through."

Jamie DeMoney is a member of the Football Writers Association of America and is former managing editor of American Football Monthly.


The DeMeo File
1968-71Iona CollegePlayer/RB
1973-74Pace UniversityAssistant coach
1975-78Iona CollegeHead coach
1979-80University of PennsylvaniaAssistant coach
1981-87Mercyhurst CollegeHead coach
1988Temple UniversityOffensive coordinator
1989 University of DelawareAssistant coach
1990James Madison UniversityOffensive coordinator
1991University of MassachusettAssistant coach
1992Murray State UniversityOffensive coordinator
1993-currentWashburn UniversityHead coach
Notes:
* Has compiled a 91-77-4 record in 17 seasons as a head coach
* Has been named coach of the year in three conferences

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