Gloom, doom and domination

Sporting News, The, Dec 3, 2001 by Dave Kindred

On November 20, 1903, the Nez Perce warrior Chief Joseph walked the sideline to watch a football game at the University of Washington. He smoked a cigar.

After Washington defeated Nevada, 2-0, Chief Joseph said, "I saw a lot of white men fight today. I do not think this is good. This may be all right, but I believe it is not. I feel pleased that Washington won the game. These men, I should think, would break their legs and arms, but they did not get mad. I had a grand time at the game with my white friends."

No reason, really, for bringing Chief Joseph in here, other than to show the magic that can happen when you start an archeological dig for the historical remains of a man you'd never heard of, in this case the football coach Gilmour Dobie.

Washington records are silent on any explanation of Chief Joseph's attendance at the white man's fight. But they shout Gilmour Dobie's name.

Well they should. The coach is a legend, albeit a legend now mostly lost to antiquity.

So, late in another college football season, let's call timeout. Let's give the Culligan Holiday Bowl and the Crucial.com Humanitarian Bowl the dignity they have earned, which means let's ignore them. Let's cover our ears against Bobby Bowden's mealy-mouthed mewlings in defense of his bad boys. Give the Heisman to Eric Crouch or Ken Dorsey--we can argue that.

Let's pause in our 21st century madness to consider Gilmour Dobie. Early in the 20th century, he did work never before done and never since matched--unless, that is, you know another coach who in his first 11 seasons did not lose a game and yet, perhaps by dint of genetics (a Minnesotan by way of Scotland), found so many reasons for pessimism that he was called Gloomy Gil.

Wait.

Did you catch that?

Gloomy Gil's teams didn't lose a game in his first eleven seasons.

In 1906 and '07, North Dakota State won seven games. The next nine years, his Washington teams went 58-0-3. They scored as many as 100 points in a game and threw 42 shutouts. Their average score: 32-2.

They were real men. They didn't throw, they ran off-tackle. They smashed mouths. They did it in a rock quarry, to quote quarterback Wee Coyle: "Did you ever seen a field grow rocks? They'd rake the surface to level the field, removing most of the rocks, and after the next rain, you'd see thousands of little rocks coming up out of the dirt."

Gloomy Gil added suffering. One historian called him "dour and drab" and "the most hated man in athletics," a coach who terrorized Washington players, once snarling, "You are the dumbest, clumsiest excuses for football players I've ever seen."

He declared a lineman a "yellow-haired bum" with "a yellow streak up your back as yellow as your dirty yellow hair." He said Coyle, a three-year letterman, played like a man "devoid of brains.... I wouldn't even let you play if I didn't have so many cripples."

No way could they win. "Before every game," Coyle said, "Dobie would tell me, `Kid, listen to me. We're going to get licked.' He'd say the opponents were `great, big monsters and we haven't got a prayer, but we'll do the best we can.'"

Gloomy Gil. The Apostle of Grief. The Prince of Pessimism. Told his runners were fast, Dobie said, "This means they just get to the tacklers all the sooner." A 49-0 victory prompted a fan to tell Dobie, "Now you must be happy," to which the glum winner said, "Happy? Why? What's going to happen to us next week?"

Occasionally, foreseen doom arrived. The only coach ever to start his career with 11 undefeated seasons, Gilmour Dobie is also the only coach fired after the 11th season.

It happened in 1916. A Washington player was charged with cheating in class and suspended from football. When teammates went on strike, university president Henry Suzzallo blamed Dobie for the insurrection and fired him for "failing to fully train character on the football field."

Thirty-three years later--three years after Dobie's death--a player absolved the coach by admitting he instigated the team's insurrection.

By then, Dobie long since had passed into legend. From Washington he'd gone to the Naval Academy for three seasons before moving to Cornell in 1920. Though his Cornell teams went undefeated in '21, '22 and '23, three straight Ivy League championships didn't wipe the scowl from Gloomy Gil's face.

"If this is a championship team," he said, "then the human race must be degenerating."

The victories earned him coaching's first 10-year contract. A good thing, too, because he collected $11,000 when he was fired after eight seasons. As Cornell raised its academic standards, Dobie's 1935 team fell to 0-6-1. His farewell address: "You can't win games with Phi Beta Kappas."

Dobie moved on to Boston College for three seasons before retiring in 1938. He died 10 years later at age 69. Investments made him a millionaire; coaching genius made him a Hall of Fame selection. He once had explained why he was always so glum, saying, "A football coach can only wind up two ways--dead or a failure."

DAVE KINDRED dkindred@sportingnews.com