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Rocky Mountain High

Colorado’s Chatfield High School coach, Dave Logan, is making the best of two-worlds... winning at both.
by: Jamie DeMoney
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Dave Logan sits comfortably in his hotel room at Kansas City’s posh Crown Center talking football with me while stealing looks at the Oakland Raiders-San Diego Chargers game on the TV. As we talk, his cell phone rings. It’s his teenage daughter, Cassidy, back home in Colorado checking in for the evening. Near the end of the interview, the room phone rings. This time it’s Logan’s broadcast partner, Scott Hastings, wondering when the two will be departing for their customary night-before-the-game dinner and movie. Later in the evening, Logan will put together his play-by-play boards and final notes before calling tomorrow’s Broncos-Chiefs game on Denver’s KOA-AM radio.

It’s all a typical late December Saturday afternoon in the life of a high school football coach. Maybe not any other high school coach, but there’s nothing extraordinary about it for Chatfield (Littleton, Colo.) High School’s Dave Logan.

Just three weeks earlier, Logan, American Football Monthly’s High School Coach of the Year, was spending his Saturday afternoon on the sidelines. A few ticks into the fourth quarter, his undefeated and nationally ranked Chargers were on the wrong end of a 23-point deficit in a state semifinal playoff battle at Overland (Aurora). In what was described by the Rocky Mountain News as a “miracle,” Chatfield scored 29 unanswered points in less than eight minutes to win the game, 43-37, and advance to the state championship. There, his team finished off a 14-0 season with a 9-3 victory over the state’s No. 2 team, Fairview (Boulder), giving Logan his second 5A championship since becoming a high school coach in 1993.

Logan’s first state title came while coaching Arvada West in 1997, a team that passed more than it ran and featured an all-state quarterback in Steve Cutlip. His 2001 Chatfield team showcased running back Lendale White, a 215-pounder who transferred in a year after leading the state in rushing as a sophomore at Denver South.

Under center, Logan decided to employ a rotating-quarterback system to utilize both the experience of returning starter Ryan Bucher and the athleticism of Allen Webb, a University of Colorado recruit who also transferred from Denver South. The product was a balanced attack with nearly 2,500 yards rushing and 2,400 yards passing.

“It was pretty clear that both (Bucher and Webb), although really different in style, had the ability to play,” says Logan of the rotation. “So, my idea was to start the season rotating them every two series, and it just worked out where we did it the whole year. No matter if your series was three-plays-and-out, or if it was 16 plays, as our opening drive was in the state championship game.”

The Logan File
1972-75 University of Colorado Player/WR
1976-83 Cleveland Browns Player/WR
1984 Denver Broncos Player/WR
1986 Pomona High School Assistant coach
1993-99 Arvada West High School Head coach
2000-present Chatfield High School Head coach

On defense, the Chargers were just as good, if not better, allowing just 11.5 points per game. Take away Overland’s 37-point outburst, and the Chargers’ 4-3 alignment allowed just 9.5 points per game in their other 13 games.

“It was as good defense as I’ve ever had. No great, great size, but exceptional speed and quickness,” Logan says. “We had guys that were sure tacklers and that had toughness to them.”

But the coaching wins and championships are only add-ons to the legendary status that Logan has cultivated in his native state. The 46-year-old is a 2000 inductee into the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame and was listed by Sports Illustrated as the state’s 11th greatest sports figure of the 20th century. A star athlete at Wheat Ridge High School, Logan was drafted by the Cincinnati Reds out of high school and then by the Kansas City Kings of the National Basketball Association and the Cleveland Browns of the National Football League after an All-Big 8 career in both sports at the University of Colorado. Logan and Dave Winfield are the only two athletes ever drafted by all three major sports.

After a nine-year playing career as a wide receiver in the NFL (eight with the Browns and one with the Broncos), Logan retired to broadcasting, doing television in Denver and eventually the drive-time sports talk show on KOA he still hosts with Hastings. He first dipped his toe into the coaching waters as a volunteer assistant at Pomona (Arvada) in 1986.

“I had a chance when I retired (from playing) to get into the NFL as a position coach and I’ve had a couple opportunities since then,” says Logan. “The reason I got into high school coaching is my father was a little league coach, and he talked over the years about how important it was to give back to your community, to work with kids, and do stuff that was not governed by the dollar. He passed away in January of 1993, and I applied for the Arvada West job and got that in July. Other than I like working with kids and I love the game, that was the driving force behind me getting involved in coaching.”

Logan has never had a losing season in his nine years of coaching, beginning with his first Arvada West team that went 7-5 and made it to the second round of the playoffs. Only one of Logan’s teams has failed to qualify for the postseason and three have made the state final four along with the two that won championships. His career record is 84-28.

The reason for the success is fairly simple, according to Logan.

“I think it’s really important that you’re able to relate to the kids,” he says. “These days, kids are pretty smart. If you’re phony, if they think you’re in it for reasons other than them, I think they are able to tell. We work hard, we practice hard, we condition extremely hard, but we also have a lot of fun and I’ve tried to hire [assistants] who subscribe to that theory.”

“Dave does it purely for the love of the game,” says Overland’s Tony Manfredi, a 20-year coaching veteran in Colorado. “He’s kind of like a pied piper for kids. They love to play for him and they get from him a perspective for the game that most coaches cannot offer.”

The man who hired him to Chatfield, principal Jim Ellis, knew he was getting a great football man in Logan. But he’s particularly pleased with the way his coach has handled the job away from the X’s and O’s.

“He’s the complete package,” Ellis says. “Anytime you can have someone of his caliber working with kids, you’re very lucky. Even though he’s not a [teacher] by training, he’s an educator by extension. He’s really the type of coach that any parent would want their kid to play for.” “The reason I got into high school coaching is my father was a little league coach, and he talked over the years about how important it was to give back to your community, to work with kids, and do stuff that was not governed by the dollar.”

As you might expect, leading a dual life as perhaps the most recognizable radio voice in all of Colorado and a high school football coach is not without its pitfalls and challenges. But, surprisingly, finding enough hours in the day is not one of them. With no teaching duties, Logan is able to arrive at school later in the morning than most and still put in several hours of film study and practice preparation when others are teaching classes or tending to athletic director duties. The main problem for Logan comes with trying to work a daily 3-7 p.m. radio talk show around a daily practice schedule.

“The station drives a van out to the parking lot of the school,” says Logan. “By the time we’re out of practice around 5:30, I’ll go hop in the van, put a headset on, do the remaining portion of the show and then go home.”

But don’t get the wrong idea. The day’s practice is seldom a topic of conversation with his listeners.

“I’m a little bit leery to even talk about high school football [on air], because I came into this thing with way too much publicity,” Logan says. “What I’m trying to do is fit in as a high school coach.

“My theory is, as soon as another high school coach has his own radio show, then I’ll talk about high school stuff on the air.”

Manfredi admits that it took a little awhile for other members of Colorado’s coaching fraternity to fully embrace Logan as one of their own.

“I think at first he felt he was an outcast in a lot of ways,” Manfredi says. “But Dave was never going to let himself be bigger than the high school game, although his stature might predispose you to think that. He’s one of those high school coaches that all he ever wanted to do is coach and be ‘one of the guys.’ He’s never going to ‘big-time’ you.”

“Every year we have a parents meeting,” Logan says, “and I tell them, ‘I’m a high school football coach.’ Too often guys that have played at various levels want to talk about themselves all the time to their players. I can probably count on one hand the number of times that I’ve actually brought up my past game situations. I don’t think the players want to hear about that. This is about them. I had my time.”

Tales of the glory days? No. Lessons learned that Logan has applied to his coaching career? Yes.

Logan credits a lot to two of his position coaches in the NFL, Raymond Berry and Mike Shanahan, both of whom went to lead teams to the Super Bowl as head coaches. But former Browns coach Sam Rutigliano probably had the greatest impact on Logan.
“He was an offensive guy, he was a players’ coach,” says Logan. “As a wide receiver, when I came off the field he would ask me, ‘What do you see? What can you run?, and I would tell him. What I learned is I better be right. And that’s what I tell my players. The ones that I put that kind of trust in: ‘You tell me what you see, tell me what you need, and I’ll get that called. But when we watch the film, you have to be right’.”

Logan says he’s probably picked up something from everyone he has ever coached with or for whom he has played. His close contact with the team also allows him to pick the brains of Broncos coaches from time to time.

“You want to make certain that you don’t become a pain in the ass to tell you the truth,” Logan laughs. “But I remember sitting down on one road trip with [then-Broncos DC] Greg Robinson and talking to him about a particular offense and what he might do to stop that, and he was great. “

Away from the broadcast booth and behind the persona of a former NFL player, Logan really only wants to be known as a high school football coach. One who cares about and can relate to his players, a guy who would rather break down film than do just about anything else, and a coach who truly believes it’s his duty to give something back to the game.

“I am really content doing exactly what I’m doing,” he says. “I’m a single dad and I want to make sure I spend as much time with Cassidy (a sophomore at Chatfield) as I can during her high school career, and after that, we’ll see.”

Jamie DeMoney is former managing editor of American Football Monthly






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