Terry Donahue: UCLA Alumnus of the Year

Last week, the UCLA Alumni Assn. named Terry Donahue as its 2008 Edward A. Dickson Alumnus of the Year. Donahue was head coach of the school's football team for 20 years and holds his alma mater's record for most wins. You can find the official announcement here.

I got to hear Donahue speak at the American Football Coaches Assn. meeting in January. He was on a panel with John Robinson and told some stories about his career (great coaching and great storytelling are often related).

Donahue recalled being a heavy underdog against Illinois in the 1984 Rose Bowl. Then several players got food poisoning. On New Year's Day, Donahue realized that Rick Neuheisel was so sick that his presence on the bus might psych out the rest of the team. Donahue shoved his young quarterback in a private car, and a few hours later Neuheisel led the Bruins to a huge upset.

I went poking around the archives and found a few clips for UCLA fans to enjoy. Above, Donahue explains his offensive and defensive philosophies and gives some interesting history of Bruin football. After the jump, more clips and stories.

In this clip, Donahue talks about dealing with coaching staffs and the importance of doing what the boss wants:

And, finally, a little more on the general philosophy of being a head coach:

Unfortunately, we were having some problems with the audio feed (apologies for the buzz on these clips), and one of his best stories had too much static to post here. Fortunately I was able to pull out a transcription (it's a lot easier on the ears) ...

I had a player come in one time, and he had screwed up as bad as you can screw up. He wouldn't go to class; he destroyed our relationships with our professors on the hill; he wouldn't work out hard; he did all kinds of things wrong.

I called him into the office to kick him off the team. Before I kicked him off, I thought I would read him the riot act one last time. I gave him my best shot, and my closing line to him was, "You've never done one thing here at UCLA to help us."

I really was upset with this athlete!

The kid leaned forward to me and he said, "Coach, I agree with everything you've just said, except that last statement."

And I said, "Well, you tell me what you've ever done to help us win here."

He said, "Coach, I'm one of the best recruiters on this team. I've hosted week in and week out, and I've hardly ever lost a guy. So I've recruited a lot of good football players here for you."

And I started laughing. I didn't know what to do. He'd totally disarmed me, because he had done something. I was looking at his negatives, and in my mind his negatives had outweighed his positives. But to make a long story short, I kept him on the team and he ended up being a good football player for us!