ESPN’s top 150 greatest college football coaches includes two local products
The image of the college football coach from the 1960s through 1980s was that of a snarling and sneering sort.
Or of a man doing push-ups off some poor linebacker’s face mask, soaking him with spittle and profanity sweat.
And then there were the cerebral sorts who graced the sideline such as Jim Sochor and Chris Petersen, deep thinkers with deep Sacramento-area roots. They were every bit as competitive as the raging Woody Hayes, Bo Schembechler and Frank Kush, only Sochor and Petersen used positive reinforcement to inspire over fear tactics.
ESPN’s list of the 150 greatest coaches in college football history commemorates the sport’s 150 years includes both types of leaders.
Paul (Bear) Bryant topped the list compiled by a panel of 150 media members, administrators and former players and coaches, spanning all four NCAA divisions and small-college NAIA. The Bear was a good choice. Hayes, largely of Ohio State, was No. 9, Schembechler, largely of Michigan, was No. 20, and Kush of Arizona State is 43rd. Good choices there, too.
Sochor of UC Davis fame is 117th on the list and Petersen 58th. It’s not where these two made the list that counts. It’s that they made the list.
Petersen was a Sochor disciple. The Yuba City native played quarterback for Sochor in the mid 1980s, got his coaching start under him at UCD and then became like him in approach while being his own man.
Petersen took over a booming Boise State program from another UCD alum, Dan Hawkins, who is now UCD’s coach. Petersen elevated the program using two-star recruits. He once told me, “I’ll never beg a five-start recruit to come play for us and let him pick his jersey number. I just won’t. You can win with hungry and humble guys.”
Petersen just capped a program-changing six-year stint at Washington before stepping down to recharge — proof that one doesn’t have to be a screamer to run out of things to say. Petersen went 146-38 at Boise State and Washington, never once hiring a fear-based, fuming assistant.
“You don’t have to coach by yelling all the time, not that I don’t get mad at a player sometimes,” Petersen once told me. “If you yell all the time, guys will tune you out, and then you’ve lost them.”
Sochor who died in 2015, grew up in San Francisco, became a star quarterback for the San Francisco State Gators and became head coach at UCD in 1970. He stressed core values and principals of trust, team, unity and togetherness, calling it, “The Aggie Way.”
Under Sochor’s watch, UCD peeled off a 156-41-5 record from 1970-88 in towering over the Division II landscape. Sochor won 18 consecutive conference championships, lost one league game in his final 15 seasons and kicked off a streak of 36 consecutive winning seasons, en route to the College Football Hall of Fame. He would often say that his was, “a good life.”
Sochor was an unassuming, slender gentleman at 5-foot-8 and 150 pounds, and soft-spoken. He wore glasses and a gold-and-blue scarf on game day, which identified him much like Bear Bryant’s red-and-white checkered hat at Alabama, or Hayes’ team cap with the block O and black-rimmed glasses. He turned down offers from the Oakland Raiders for the simple life in Yolo County.
“You have to be comfortable with who and what you are, and I am,” Sochor once told me. “Don’t be someone else. Don’t try to fit someone else’s image. Be you, and be the best you can be.”
Sochor insisted that a player’s helmet was to never hit the ground. It was to be worn, carried under an arm or stored in a locker with pride. Said he years ago, “Your helmet is the most critical piece of equipment. It can protect you, save your life, so you must treat it with dignity and respect.”
Sochor coached the UCD golf team in the early 1990s, leading with the same approach as football – heavy on philosophical musing
“Football is the Greeks and the Romans, the Athenian approach to competition, dog eat dog,” Sochor told The Bee. “This is just a softer approach to competition. Golf is an intellectual game, not a physical game. I try to talk to my players about getting into harmony with the course.”
Imagine Woody, Bo or Kush talking football harmony.
Others of note
▪ Eddie Robinson of Grambling made the ESPN list at No. 5, his 408 victories including a 34-7 effort over Sacramento State in the 1967 Pasadena Bowl.
▪ John Gagliardi, largely of St. John’s in Minnesota is 16th on the list. He is college football’s all-levels winningest coach with 489, ending in 2012, including the 1963 NAIA championship at Sacramento City College’s Hughes Stadium in the Camellia Bowl. Gagliardi’s teams did not tackle in practice, once explaining, “You stay fresh this way, and we’ll hit plenty in games.”
▪ LaVelle Edwards of BYU is 22nd on the ESPN list, winning 257 games, none bigger than the 1984 national championship that included two Sacramento-area stars in quarterback Robbie Bosco and lineman Trevor Matich.
▪ Don Coryell is No. 63, mostly for his 104-19-2 stint at San Diego State, a run that included Cameila Bowl wins in 1966 and ‘67.
▪ At No. 99, Chris Ault of Nevada won 233 games over three stints from 1976-2012, including scores of Sacramento-area players: quarterbacks Jeff Tisdel and Chris Vargas, defensive end Charles Mann and receiver Alex Van Dyke. Mann was a classic late bloomer. Ault created the Pistol offense that is big in college football now.
This story was originally published December 12, 2019 at 11:21 AM.