Coaching Legend Remembers How It Was -- 87-Year-Old Weeb Ewbank Is Living Legend In Hometown Of Oxford, Ohio

OXFORD, Ohio - As if he were a curator conducting a tour of his own museum, Weeb Ewbank was pointing to his favorites among the hundreds of trophies, plaques, awards and photos. Perched on a top shelf were a plaster replica of his Pro Football Hall of Fame bust and a miniature Super Bowl trophy. But he had sounded just as proud of a faded team photo of the 1936 McGuffey High School Marvelous Green Devils that he coached.

"Undefeated and unscored upon," he said.

Now, as he talked about quarterbacks, he suddenly lifted his right arm in the classic passer's stance. In what resembled a little dance, he was lifting one foot, then the other.

"How can they teach this?" he said. "You might have to throw with one foot still in the air. You've got to move your feet like a boxer."

Once a coach, always a coach. With a cherubic face that glows when he laughs, 87-year-old Wilbur (Weeb) Ewbank is a legend in this leafy college town, the home of Miami University, from which he graduated in 1928 as a three-sport athlete. He still lives in Oxford with his wife of 68 years, Lucy, in a flower-rimmed redbrick home.

"Every time I go to a banquet," he was saying now with a smile, "Lucy tells me, `Don't bring anything home I've got to polish."'

Weeb Ewbank is a living link to the history of the National Football League, which is celebrating its 75th season. As a teen-ager whose father owned a grocery store in nearby Richmond, Ind., he rode in the family truck over dusty 1923 roads to a little wooden bleachers in Dayton, Ohio, to see Jim Thorpe and the Canton Bulldogs.

"Thorpe," he recalled, "just ran over people."

Now he watches Jerry Rice catch passes on the big TV screen in his family room.

"Great," he said of the San Francisco 49ers' wide receiver. "Fabulous."

He knows. After coaching the Baltimore Colts with Johnny Unitas to the 1958 and 1959 NFL championships, he coached the Super Bowl III New York Jets with Joe Namath. He also was an assistant coach on the 1950 champion Cleveland Browns with Otto Graham at quarterback.

"I coached at the best time," he said. "I don't believe the coaches now have the feeling our teams had. We got closer to our players. Now it's a `me' world for the players. Now it's money, money, money."

More and more, pro football, like most other sports, is also instant celebration. He frowns at dances in the end zone after a touchdown, dances after a quarterback sack, high fives for a tackle, high fives even for a batted-down pass.

"Instead of telling the players, `We don't do that up here,"' he said, "instead of leading 'em, we joined 'em."

Ewbank approved of the new $34.6 million salary cap for each team "because nobody's worth what they're getting," but he doesn't like artificial turf because it creates "injuries we never had before: skin burns, stubbed toes and dislocated fingers." And he doesn't like the increase in violent contact.

"The players aren't any bigger; there's just more of 'em," he said. "I've been in favor of all rules that take the violence out. It's a contact game. It's not supposed to be a killer game."

Strategically, he questioned the use of the man in motion by most of today's coaches.

"They're not getting an advantage with it," he said. "They take too much much time doing it. They'd be better off with the old Green Bay sweep, or the Jets' 18 or 19 straight with Emerson Boozer blocking for Matt Snell. We didn't realize how great a player Emerson was. And the way Matt picked up the blitz, we always wanted the other team to blitz."

Even so, Ewbank described today's pro football as "the best entertainment value" in sports.

"And if it's run right in high school and college," he said, "it's the best citizenship laboratory, too. It creates situations similar to life. But too many school boards think, `If we don't win, something's wrong.' The main thing is teaching the kids how to live, how to get along with people, how to be solid citizens. If I was the coach of some of these players arrested for rape and drugs and other crimes, I'd think I did something wrong."

With two artificial hips, he was walking somewhat stiffly through his basement museum as the diamonds in his Jets' Super Bowl ring glistened on his left hand.

"See those four loose-leaf binders over there," he was saying now, pointing to the bottom shelf of a bookcase. "Those are my playbooks from my four championship years: 1968 with the Jets, 1958 and 1959 with the Colts and 1950 with the Browns."

Near a pile of game-film cans and a film projector, he opened a cabinet stuffed with playbooks, charts and other papers.

"Here," he said, displaying a lineup for his first game as the Colts' head coach in 1954 against the Los Angeles Rams. "Look at this."

One of his defensive backs was Don Shula, who succeeded him as the Colts' coach in 1963 and was the losing coach when the Colts were stunned by Ewbank's Jets, 16-7, in Super Bowl III. Now, of course, Shula, the Miami Dolphins' coach since 1970, holds the NFL record for victories by a coach and, coincidentally, when the Jets played the Dolphins last Sunday, they wore 1968 uniforms as part of the NFL's anniversary celebration.

"The only record Don doesn't have listed," his onetime coach said with a chuckle, "is how he got the `sleeper' play outlawed."

As a Colt cornerback in 1954, Shula didn't notice that the Rams were hiding wide receiver Skeet Quinlan along the sideline until Norm Van Brocklin hit him with a touchdown pass in a 48-0 rout, the start of a 3-9 season.

But in 1956, the Colts signed a quarterback named Johnny Unitas off the Pittsburgh sandlots after he had been cut by the Steelers.

"We brought John in for a tryout," Ewbank recalled. "We didn't even have a movie camera to take films of him. We took stills. When we looked at the pictures, we liked his follow through."

If the Colts were to challenge for the NFL title, Ewbank knew he needed a quarterback as dominant as Otto Graham had been with the Browns when Ewbank was on their staff as a line coach.

"I brought Otto in to work with John," Ewbank recalled. "I told him, `Every time John throws a pass in practice, say something about it. When it's third and eight, we've got to be able to throw that 8-yard out like you did with Mac Speedie."

Each time John threw a pass, Otto would say, `Good,' or `You shouldn't have thrown that,' or `You should've thrown that away."'

Unitas would pass the Colts to the 1958 and 1959 titles in championship games against the New York Giants.

"Those Giant teams were great," Ewbank said. "Better than some teams that have won the Super Bowl."

During the Colts' 23-17 overtime victory for the 1958 title at Yankee Stadium, later branded "the greatest game ever played," Sam Huff, the Giants' middle linebacker, chased wide receiver Raymond Berry across the sideline near the Colts' bench. Suddenly, the Colts' chunky little coach, in his overcoat and porkpie hat, was scuffling with Huff.

"Huff hit Raymond late," Ewbank recalled. "Our equipment man went after him, then I did. I can't fight, but I was pushing and shoving. After the game I saw Bert Bell, the commissioner then, and I apologized for doing that, but Bert said, `The officials were lousy."'

When the Colts skidded to a 7-7 record in 1962, their owner, Carroll Rosenbloom, changed coaches. Ewbank was out, Shula was in. Ewbank soon was hired by the Jets' impressario, David (Sonny) Werblin, and in 1965 the Jets signed Joe Namath to what was then an extravagant contract - $427,000 over four years, including bonuses and a green Lincoln Continental. Ewbank had another gifted quarterback to tutor.

"I was pretty tough on Joe for two or three years," the coach recalled. "One day in practice Joe completed a pass into a crowd. I yelled, `You shouldn't have thrown that.' He waved his hand in front of my eyes and said, `Weeb, he caught the ball.' I said, `I don't care, you shouldn't have thrown it.' But now Joe tells people, `Whenever I got around another coach, I realized how much smarter Weeb was."'

When the NFL recently selected a 48-man all-time team, its four quarterbacks were Sammy Baugh, Otto Graham, Johnny Unitas and Joe Montana.

"Even at the end of his career, Baugh was something," Ewbank said. "When I was with the Browns, I told our defensive linemen, `We've got to make Baugh throw out of a well. Get your hands up. Don't let him see his receivers.' They went in there with their arms up, but Baugh threw under their arms. One play he flipped his wrist underhand for an 18-yard completion."

For all of Montana's accomplishments, Ewbank didn't sound too enthusiastic about him as a pure passer.

"When he was with the 49ers," the coach said, "they had one of the best teams. That helps everybody. And all the rules changes in the last 15 years have helped the quarterback. Imagine if the earlier quarterbacks and receivers were operating under today's rules. As far as I'm concerned, if you're rating quarterbacks, you can't rate anybody without saying they're as good as Otto Graham or Johnny Unitas or Joe Namath."

On a wall was a black-and-white photo of Ewbank perched atop three of his Jets players (Steve Thompson, Mike D'Amato and John Dockery) after the 27-23 victory over the Oakland Raiders in the 1968 AFL championship game at Shea Stadium, but the coach was grimacing.

"That's when I dislocated my right hip," he explained. "Some kid came out of the stands and yanked my leg the wrong way. And a few years ago, here I was in the seat on my lawn mower when I didn't hear a truck backing up out of my driveway. I broke my right leg. Here," he said, rolling up his blue cords, "you can see the knot."

The joke among his friends is that Weeb Ewbank soon recovered, but the truck was never the same.

"As long as I take my medication for the myasthnia in my right eye, I'm fine," he said. "Lucy and I have been very lucky. Neither of us takes a serious pill."

Upstairs in the family room now, the old coach pointed to framed LeRoy Neiman sketches of the Jets.

"We had two men from New York visiting us who wanted to buy those sketches for $12,000," he said. "Lucy told them, `If you want to pay $12,000, you'll sell them for $25,000. I think we'll keep them right here, thank you."'

Throughout the three-hour tour of his museum, Weeb Ewbank sounded more attached to the Jets than to the Colts, even though that franchise is now in Indianapolis, only two hours away on Interstate 70.

"When I went to our Super Bowl reunion last year, I told all my Jets players, `I'll never see some of you again,"' the old coach said, his eyes suddenly filling with tears and his voice breaking. "I did a foolish thing. I left that room before I should've."