IN THE DAYS BEFORE NINTENDO OR X-BOX, young boys spent hours hovered over electric football sets, the kitschy �60s board game that used a vibrating metal field to send miniature plastic players crisscrossing to pay dirt.
Tyrone Willingham never turned his on. 揑 would just sit there going through formations and manipulating things on the field,� he recalls. 揝ometimes you don抰 know your destiny, but then you start looking at things and say, 慚aybe this is what I抦 supposed to do.� �
Willingham抯 destiny has taken him from his North Carolina roots to the playing fields of Lansing, Palo Alto and South Bend. Along the way he became a pioneer for African Americans hoping to coach college football, as he headed teams at Stanford and Notre Dame. Now Willingham is the 天美影视传媒抯 new football coach, where he will have to lead nearly 100 student-athletes in a program that just finished the worst season in its 115-year history.
The turnaround is just one more challenge for Willingham, who抯 faced a life of overcoming the impossible. During the Civil Rights era, he was among the first African Americans to integrate his hometown school. He was the first black quarterback to start for his high school football team. Later he had to prove himself as a walk-on at Big 10 power Michigan State. During 15 years as an assistant coach, he wondered if he would ever achieve the goal of coaching his own team.
But there has been plenty of glory, too. His peers twice honored Willingham as the Pac-10 Coach of the Year (1995 and 1999). He was named Sporting News Sportsman of the Year in 2002, and when Sports Illustrated listed its most influential people of color in sports, Willingham抯 name was in the top 10. After he was fired by Notre Dame, Newsweek抯 popular 揅onventional Wisdom� column gave the school a 揹own arrow.� Others may focus on awards and accolades as levels of achievement, but Willingham draws on his inner strengths, not his r閟um�, to motivate his teams. 揥hat everyone needs is a better mousetrap,� he says, carrying the taut body of a man two decades younger and seated drill-sergeant-straight behind his desk in a still-barren office in the Graves Building. 揑f you give me a better mousetrap, I抣l buy it. If you teach me how to do what I need to do better, I抣l listen. I抣l invest in you just as you are investing in me.� And that is what Willingham, 51, overachieving since his days as a 5�7� and 140-pound high school quarterback, told his new players after being named to replace former UW Coach Keith Gilbertson. 揕et抯 be champions. Let抯 have great students. Let抯 be great people. And let抯 have a lot of fun in the process.�
揥hen you identify those four things,� he says, 揑 think that抯 what every kid wants. I can provide the right example for them and help them create that model.� So when UW President Mark Emmert assembled the profile of what his next football coach should have梚ntegrity, character, discipline, excellence and loyalty梠ne of the top candidates wasn抰 available. Tyrone Willingham was wrapping up his third season as head coach at the University of Notre Dame, finishing the 2004 season 6-5 and preparing for a second bowl game in three years. Then, on Nov. 30, Willingham was fired. 揥hen we began our search, if you had told me Tyrone would be available, I never would have believed you,� says UW Athletics Director Todd Turner.
Rev. Edward Malloy, Notre Dame抯 outgoing president, took the unusual step of publicly criticizing his school抯 firing of Willingham. He thinks Washington made a good hire, recalling Willingham as a man of few words who tends to speak from the heart.
揟yrone is a straightforward and self-possessed man who sees himself as a teacher and a character-builder,� Malloy says. 揥orking in a college environment is perfect for him. He抯 the kind of person that people in the academy can relate to and be inspired by.� Those inspirations are already working. The day after learning Willingham would be his new coach, UW quarterback Isaiah Stanback had already bought into the Willingham plan. 揟here are things he can teach me about football,� said the sophomore, who will battle for a wide-open quarterback position when spring practice opens next month. 揃ut there are also things he can teach me about life.�
Willingham had the best teachers possible for life抯 lessons: his parents, Nathaniel and Lillian Willingham, who raised four children during the sixties in a racially charged South. She earned a master抯 degree in education from Columbia University and he left school after the fifth grade, but despite their differing backgrounds 搕hey really were married until, truly, death took them apart,� recalls Willingham.
Lillian was an elementary school teacher for more than 30 years, while Nathaniel was a property owner and landlord who, even into his eighties, never shied away from a hard day of work.
揥hat my parents taught me,� Willingham says, 搑equires just one word to explain. Everything. They were the best coaches I抳e ever been around. They were the best people that I抳e ever been around. They were very different, but they had core values that were very much alike.
揟hey taught me to respect myself, to respect others, that hard work and being a team player were important. They believed in education and having a spiritual component to your life. They understood others, but they also knew how to balance the ups and downs of life.�
The Willinghams were prominent members of the African American community in Jacksonville, N.C., a small community adjacent to the Camp Lejeune Marine Corps Base. Tyrone attended the segregated Georgetown High School, which covered all classes from first grade to senior year of high school. With no community center in the neighborhood, Nathaniel and Lillian offered the basement of their home as a gathering place for children.
揗y parents sacrificed not just for their kids, but also for the betterment of our community,� Willingham recalls. 揟hey truly believed in the greater good. This was not about self, but about the community, our country and this world.� Nathaniel gave away vegetables from his garden, trained himself to be a contractor and built the local Masonic lodge. Lillian was such a local fixture that she has been memorialized with a park, as well as the L.P. Willingham Parkway, which was developed as part of a neighborhood renaissance.
Together they infused in their children an unconditional belief in God and in the notion that people should not be judged by the color of their skin. But Jim Crow tried to trump that belief. Even though a white school was within walking distance of the Willingham home, Tyrone and his siblings were bused to the all-black school. It was at that school in May 1966梐t the end of fifth grade梩hat Tyrone Willingham抯 world changed dramatically. On the morning of Georgetown抯 graduation ceremony an explosion destroyed the gymnasium that would have housed the festivities. Some speculated it was a bomb. Others said it might have been an accident caused by the school抯 boiler system.
揟he powers that be never really told us what happened,� says Willingham. 揂ll we knew was that there was no more Georgetown High School, and the next school year we had full-scale integration.�
Later that fall Willingham watched a football player on television that would be the catalyst for his own career, a black athlete from Fayetteville, N.C., named Jimmy Raye. The game was a match-up of the nation抯 top two teams桵ichigan State against Notre Dame梐nd to this day it is regarded as one of the greatest college games of the 20th century. Raye started at quarterback for Michigan State and forged to a 10-0 lead, but the teams were so evenly matched, the game ended in a 10-10 tie.
揑t was a significant moment in my life,� Willingham says, 揳lthough I didn抰 know it at the time.�
Go To: Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3