Erk Russell died yesterday morning. Here is what my father had to say in an email yesterday about the legend:
My old football
coach, Erk Russell, died today in Statesboro and will be greatly missed.
As the defensive coordinator and special teams coach for Georgia in the 60’s, he groomed me with a
lot of special attention for my initial playing duty at Georgia, which
was to be a suicide spear on the special teams. He always had lots of
funny nicknames and called the kick-off team the “KKK” –
Krazy Kickoff Koverers. Several times I lucky enough to be awarded Erk’s
“KKK Award” for the game week, which in those days entitled you to
a gift certificate at Dick Ferguson’s Mens Store downtown (and which
would certainly violate NCAA rules today).
Erk was a man’s
man who loved to smoke a cigar and drink beer. He was a classical
larger-than-life guy who nobody ever thought would die. Tough as hell, he
used to butt his head with our helmets when we first ran on the field at
Sanford Stadium before a game, and he would end up at kick-off with blood
streaming down his face, standing on the sidelines and glaring across the field
at the enemy. He was a master joke-teller and although he liked to laugh,
he would only occasionally laugh at his own jokes. Quick-witted and
sharp, he was never a bully and was truly loved by his players. Many, many
Erk memories will remain with our teammates for the rest of their lives, as he
made a lasting impression on anyone who knew him. For example, in our
training room in the Coliseum was a steam bath that was popular with all the
players and coaches. After practices Coach Russell used to regularly strut
across the training room butt naked into the steam bath, with a cigar and holding
only a towel and razor. He would then enjoy the steam bath, while shaving
his bald head and talking to players with his cigar hanging out of his mouth. What
a man!
Coach Erk
Russell was a master when it came to teamwork. He told us lots of great
jokes and football stories, but always emphasized the teamwork theme. Coach
Russell liked to emphasize the “team” over the “individual”
concept. The team relies on everyone's working together; that's what
leads to national championships. You not only have to have good players,
you have to have players that "play good" together. Coach Russell
said that he could not overemphasize the value of working together, nor the
value of having a sense of humor and being lucky. He often said that he
would rather be lucky than good. He believed that luck plays a
role, but that the harder you work, the luckier you were.
Coach Russell's
training rules were simple and uncomplicated: work hard on the field and keep
up good communications off the field. For a team to perform well, every
member has to work hard and rely on every other member of the team. He
also respected that fact that the help and support of others not on the team is
very important to success.
Still sounds
like a good template for the success of any endeavor, particularly business.
God Bless Erk
and his family.
Daddy also sent me a bunch of great Erk quotes - here are my favorites:
I
wouldn't allow them to put names on the back of our jerseys. We had to sell
programs.
Our
recruiting budget at Georgia
Southern was $200 our first year. I had just left Georgia, whose recruiting budget
was a quarter of a million dollars. And as I drove down the Woodpecker Trail,
trying to touch base with people in Claxton and Alma and Jesup and Ludowici,
sometimes I wondered, "What have you done?"
The
brotherhood of football ... is the strongest brotherhood known to man as far as
I'm concerned.
The
South, to me, is fried chicken and catfish caviar --- that's grits --- and
good-looking women.
We had a
group of about eight boys in the Navy, all from the South --- South
Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi. In the
barracks we took the corner, drew a line, said, "No Yankees" across
this. We didn't really mean it, but they thought we did.
You know
what a consultant is, don't you? A consultant is a guy that knows 100 different
sex positions but doesn't know a woman.
My dad
always had a job that he really didn't relish getting up and going to every
day. He said, "Boy" --- that's all he ever called me --- he said,
"Boy, you do something that you enjoy doing."
I was
taught better at home than to be disrespectful to anybody.
The Bulldawg nation and the football world at large mourns the loss of this amazing coach and man. Here is the AJC article. A lot of people in the blog world have their own memories and thoughts. Thoughts, and more thoughts on ole Erk. It breaks my heart.
Update: My family went to the funeral in Statesboro last Sunday. It was amazing. I've never seen so many grown men in tears in my life. The attendance was impressive. Tons of his old players, Mark Richt, Damien Evans, Vince Dooley, Sonny Perdue, Billy Payne, the list went on and on. It was a true testament to an amazing person.
