The man behind the turnaround

By Jeff Welsch

You'd think the man behind one of the most remarkable turnarounds in college football history, a man who ranks among the winningest coaches of all time, a man who has won two national championships, would be shrouded in a mystique thicker than coastal fog.

You'd think that TV cameras would lock onto his every movement, that analysts would fawn over his every word, that fans would bow in his presence.

You'd think he'd at least have a nickname like "The Wizard of Corvallis" or "Magic Erickson" or "The General."

But no.

Except for one extraordinary gift - an innate ability to coax young men to commit their unwavering support, then follow him into passionate battle on the football field - the most striking aspect about Dennis Erickson is that he's a strikingly regular guy.

Always has been.

And, in all probability, always will be.

The 53-year-old football coach, the architect of Oregon State's stunning march to an unprecedented 11-1 record and 41-9 Fiesta Bowl rout of Notre Dame, has been mellowed by age, hardened by stinging criticism, bolstered by success and humbled by his own mistakes.

Yet he remains largely the same boy-next-door sports junkie who left Everett (Wash.) High School with a solid 'B' average, a sizable heart, a dry sense of humor and a powerful gravitational pull with people that mystifies his admirers to this day.

"He's just a square guy, not a big-shot," says Norm Lowrey, Erickson's basketball coach at Everett High from 1962 to 1965. "He's an honest guy, but he's not squeaky clean; he's had his problems like everybody else.

"He's just an ordinary guy, but he's so damned loyal and he's a hell of a coach."

A hell of a coach indeed.

His 131-45-1 record ranks among the top five active coaches in winning percentage. He has been Coach of the Year in three different collegiate conferences. He has had only one losing season in 15 as a head coach, even though four of his five stops - including Oregon State - were considered coaching graveyards until his arrival.

He won two national championships at Miami. He rebuilt a horrendous program at Idaho into a winner two decades ago, and the Vandals are still riding his coattails to success. He needed only two years to lead downtrodden Washington State, where he had his one losing season in 1988, to a bowl game.

And now he is at Oregon State, where he accomplished what many thought impossible: a No. 4 national ranking only two seasons after the program completed its NCAA-record 28th consecutive losing season.

"The perfect place for me," Erickson calls it.

To this day, Erickson's remarkable success story is something of a marvel in Everett, a blue-collar logging town that produced fiercely loyal, disciplined and proud sons and daughters in the days before Boeing changed its landscape forever.

Erickson's story isn't remarkable because the three-sport athlete wasn't liked or respected - because he was. It isn't because he frequently found himself in trouble - because he never did.

It's just that, except for that gravitational-pull thing with people, he was, well, so typical - even on the playing field, where he was a good high school quarterback but not flashy enough to be courted by any NCAA Division I-A program.

"I wish I could say, 'Yeah, I did,'" Lowrey says of seeing a star quality in Erickson. "But I didn't know that then."

Even Erickson's father, Robert "Pink" Erickson, who coached against his only son (Pink and Mary Erickson also have three daughters) in high school, admits he never envisioned Dennis advancing beyond a solid high school coaching career in Montana.

"I'm completely surprised," Pink Erickson said of the success story. "I just hoped that when he went to college and entered athletics that some day he might get himself a good high school job. Anything beyond that was beyond any dreams I might have had."

Today, with enough trophies and plaques and rings to fill a spare bedroom in his spacious home in the northwest Corvallis foothills, Erickson still doesn't have a mystique that reaches out and grabs the sporting world by the lapels. He hasn't carved a niche as a great innovator or a phenomenal recruiter or an X's and O's man nonpareil.

Consider that Everett High School gives a Man of the Year award to a distinguished alumnus every year at a charity banquet in Snohomish County.

Former Washington football coach Jim Lambright won it once. So did current Washington State coach Mike Price, whose offense was taught to him by Erickson. Even Pink Erickson has won it.

Dennis Erickson never has, though Lowrey suspects this might finally be the year.

Always, there was somebody more flashy, more flamboyant, more charismatic.

Erickson is just a regular guy who drives a pickup, listens to country and '70s music, plays a round of golf with the boys and enjoys time with his wife, Marilyn. He also has a disarming wit and occasionally will yank out his fake front tooth to get a laugh or two from children.

What separates him from the masses is what happens between the lines on Saturdays.

He wins wherever he goes.

And yet because he's so much of a Mr. Everyman, even those who know him best still are trying to analyze what makes this average guy such a phenomenon when he steps onto the sideline and dons headphones.

A decade ago, Lowrey and former Central Washington coach Tom Perry were standing on the artificial surface in Pullman, Wash., watching Erickson orchestrate a warm-up about an hour before a game at Washington State, when Lowrey posed the question. "Tom, what does he do differently than you?"

Lowrey asked of Perry, a successful coach in his own right. "What the hell is it that makes Dennis such a good coach?"

Perry paused thoughtfully before responding.

"I think he's the best game-day coach I've ever been around," Perry finally said. "He seems to be able to sum up a situation and respond. If you check games he's been in, they come from behind to beat clubs, and when it looks like they might be outmanned, he comes up with something. He doesn't just throw up his hands."

And, of course, he has The Gift.

From the time Erickson was very young and carried in a blanket to his father's games at Ferndale High School near Bellingham, people gravitated toward him.

He was always the leader of the neighborhood sports events, which included baseball, football, track, basketball and a game called "rat-flogging" in which he and friends would wander to the city dump and chase the rodents with baseball bats and 9-irons. There wasn't much time for girls, except over a burger and fries at the A&W.

Lowrey first noticed The Gift at Everett, where young Dennis, the second oldest of the four Erickson children, would mind his own business and find the sons and daughters of the school's loggers and longshoremen following him as if he were the Pied Piper. When he wasn't playing sports, he worked in the canneries and hay fields.

Erickson's three sisters looked after him and cleaned his room without expecting anything in return. Dennis was so quiet, so studious and of such high character that an English teacher broke her hard-and-fast rule about not attending football games just to watch the Seagulls' Boys Club president perform.

Erickson's innate leadership qualities and feistiness made him a natural at quarterback, where he was two-time all-league, and at point guard, where he was a three-year starter.

"My time at Everett High and growing up in Everett was the best time of my life," Erickson recalls. "I wouldn't trade it for anything."

An ecstatic Erickson joins his players in celebrating victory over USC.

Erickson won two of three games from his father's team, Cascade High, and ran the option with proficiency, but he wasn't heavily recruited in any sport. Among NCAA Division I-AA schools, only Montana State coach Jim Sweeney, who had befriended Pink Erickson at high school clinics years earlier, took an interest and asked for some film.

"I don't know," a skeptical Pink told him. "He's not very big, but I think he's tough. I think he's going to make a good defensive back for you."

Three years and dozens of accolades later, Erickson had graduated from Montana State with school records for career total offense, career passing yards, single-season passing yards, passing yards in a single game and the longest pass. But more than that, he was remembered for his toughness, devotion to watching film and an ability to rally the team around him.

"Dennis had some players on the team who absolutely worshipped him," Sweeney said.

Along the way, the sports junkie who rarely had time in high school for so much as a date went on an outing from Bozeman to Great Falls one weekend with a college friend. It was there that he met a charming University of Montana student named Marilyn.

They eventually would be married.

Without a car of his own, Erickson had to be creative to make this long-distance relationship - Bozeman and Missoula are about four hours apart on Interstate 90 - work. Often as not, he would hitchhike, and occasionally he'd thumb rides all the way back to Everett.

Though he had abandoned his lifelong crewcut for a more contemporary '60s haircut that shocked his father, with the help of The Gift he never had trouble coaxing a ride home even in rural Montana.

His hair, like his personality and slate-blue eyes, hasn't changed much in the ensuing 30 years, except for the tufts of gray.

Erickson started coaching instantly upon graduation, first as a graduate assistant at Montana State under Tom Parac and then as a graduate assistant under Sweeney at Washington State. He took his first head coaching position at Billings (Mont.) Central High School in 1970 and led his team to the state championship game before making the leap back to MSU in 1971.

Perhaps his most significant stint came as offensive coordinator at San Jose State from 1979 to 1981 under head coach Jack Elway, who had just adopted a unique one-back/no-back offense created by Granada Hills High School coach Jack Neumeier in the 1970s. It was there that Erickson had the good fortune of watching a rifle-armed quarterback who happened to be his boss' son, one John Elway, overwhelm hapless defenses with a wide-open passing attack at Granada Hills.

"Dennis took a look at his attack spreading the field out and went right for it," Pink Erickson recalls. "He put it in for Jack at San Jose State, then spread it out a little more when he left for Idaho."

Erickson took his first head coaching job at Idaho at 1982. He coaxed NFL-caliber quarterbacks and small, darting receivers - including current OSU assistant Eric Yarber - to the Palouse with the promise of wide-open offenses unlike any they'd ever known.

Within four seasons, the Vandals had their first Big Sky Conference title in 14 years. In 1986, his Wyoming team was second nationally in passing.

In 1988, he took WSU to the Aloha Bowl.

In 1990 and 1991, he won national championships at Miami.

But after leaving Idaho, Erickson was never fully able to savor his accomplishments.

He was branded a traitor and a liar in Laramie, Wyo., and Pullman, Wash., for abruptly leaving what he had termed "dream jobs" that he had no desire to leave. In Miami, the Hurricanes' penchant for overly passionate play, silly penalties and an NCAA investigation that eventually exonerated him took a toll on Erickson personally and his reputation.

Turmoil dogged him from 1994 through 1998 when he left the collegiate ranks for an NFL coaching job close to home, with the Seattle Seahawks.

He recalls his four years there as a mostly miserable experience, topped off by a DUII charge in 1995 that's a taboo topic for any reporter.

"People have perceptions of me that aren't true," Erickson says. "You just have to live with it."

The experiences have hardened him some, and he has a reputation for being gruff with overly probing media, but only for so long.

The insulated heart that has drawn people to him for five decades eventually returns to his sleeve.

"He may talk a tough game, but he's got a soft heart, like his mother," Pink Erickson said. "I would say he's a very big-hearted man."

Which would explain why players originally attracted to his offense are so eager to leave their blood, sweat and tears on the field for him. Or that he has such an affection for a lunch-pail walk-on like quarterback Jonathan Smith.

Behind the stern taskmaster exterior and a reputation for refusing to play baby sitter is an ordinary guy who connects with his players in a way most coaches can't. His devotion to his assistants also has created a loyalty matched only by such legends as Penn State's Joe Paterno.

None want to let down, or disappoint, someone so much like them who is so devoted.
That quality has extraordinary staying power.

People in Everett who watched Erickson as a high school player still travel the nation to his games. Often as many as several hundred - most in a group of Everett alumni called The Poker Club - would make the cross-country trek to Miami or Laramie to support their favorite son.

"He's a kid who commands a lot of loyalty, and I don't know what it is," says Lowrey, his old basketball coach. "It's an intangible quality. He commands a lot of respect for his loyalty because he's so loyal to every guy who ever worked or played for him."

Erickson will never have the flash, the charisma and the charm of many of his brethren. In fact, many people believe the lack of an aura contributed to his inability to have a winning season in four tries with the Seattle Seahawks from 1995 to 1998.

Which is why he's so enamored with Corvallis. It's a place where he can blend in, just be a regular guy with a gift.

"He just couldn't be happier than where he is," Pink Erickson said.

Erickson has signed a seven-year contract and gives no hint of a desire to leave. He has a strong nucleus returning from the Fiesta Bowl team and a touted recruiting class coming aboard.

Though fans at Wyoming and Washington State would roll their eyes at such words, Erickson insists he wants to stay long enough to build a powerful program.

"Two years doesn't make a great program," he said, "so you've got to establish continuity, which doesn't mean you go to the Rose Bowl every year, but it's a program where you're pretty solid and pretty competitive.

"My dream is to make this program competitive and some day go to the Rose Bowl."
It seems a bright future awaits.

So bright, in fact, that one day, if he stays long enough at a school renowned for such greats as Slats Gill, Dee "The Great Pumpkin" Andros and Ralph "Old Whiskey Sour" Miller, he might even have his own nickname.