As another football season is about to get underway, I thought about all the lustful and enduring praise for offensive football, which has always been the talk of the town, and recalled how the late Erk Russell joined in, too, but underneath he was plotting and scheming for an equalizer.
Erk was a fine teacher and coach, but also had rare and extraordinary leadership skills. Across the Southeast and beyond, there are hundreds of football players who would quickly attest to that—the many who truly loved him and extended overachieving effort to help him win games.
He had remarkable instincts with an ability to get his point across graphically and made every player, regardless of his ability, think he was the “little train that thought it could.” Erk invoked humor to relax and to communicate. He gave of himself like no other. He cared for his players, and they knew it. This set him apart.
His leadership acumen, coupled with his mastery of the Split 60 defense, enabled him to gain an exalted reputation as an accomplished defensive coordinator at Georgia and head coach at Georgia Southern. He was in demand as a clinic lecturer. He began every clinic by writing K-I-S-S across the chalk board. “Keep it Simple Stupid.”
The signature ingredient to his success as a sage defensive swami was motivation, but never let the course of action become complicated. Although he might use an off-color joke, befitting locker room vernacular, to make a point, he never used profanity to teach his players although he evolved from an era when demeaning “cussing” reigned supreme.
Erk was the anthesis of that style. He whispered encouragement in their ears on the practice field. “I know you can make the play,” he would coax an eager young player whose physical stature might suggest that he was at a disadvantage.
While I never dressed out for him, I did so vicariously. I spent time with him on golf courses, at coaching clinics, Bulldog Club meetings and especially at the Rockwood Inn on the Lexington Highway outside Athens where the blue collar clientele gathered around Erk to swoon to his pontifications just as his players did. We are speaking of the working folk, rural and everyday types, who admired him as much as Georgia football players did—because he made them feel he was one of them.
He called the railbirds who congregated on the trestle at the east end of Sanford Stadium and hooted and hollered upon the arrival of the Georgia team, “my people.”
If any man could walk with kings without losing the common touch, it was the “beloved” Coach Russell who was a natural born leader. He had a sixth sense for making everybody’s day. The defensive players were the envy of the offensive players, which is why the head coach, Vince Dooley always found time, especially on Fridays and game day to have Erk speak to the entire team. His humor and inspirational talks inspired those on the offensive side of the ball, too.
Erk believed in slogans, truisms, and humorous vignettes to connect with his players. Early in his career with the Bulldogs, he started headbutting his players in warmups, causing his bald head to bleed and glimmer in the sunshine of an early fall afternoon.
“That was the greatest inspiration to us,” says Frank Ros, the captain of the 1980 National Championship team. It was a classic example of Erk giving of himself to the team. That tradition began long before Ros got to campus. The coach didn’t head butt his charges every Saturday afternoon, but for a big game, he often let them know, he would shed his blood for his men with whom he went to battle.
Head butting wasn’t Erk being a showman, it was his way of communicating that football is a hard-nosed game and you gotta play tough. Take the fight to your opponent. Employ extra effort and put the team first. That resonated with players across the board. Without thinking about it consciously, they realized that their coach was forever putting the team first. He forever gave of himself.
However, he worried about his image. Not that he aspired to be suave and handsome—he just didn’t want his gladiator look to turn off a college president in search of a football head coach. While he might have looked the part of the enforcer, he was the opposite.
I’ll never forget taking a flight to Ft. Lauderdale in January 1972, for the annual convention of the American Football Coaches Association. Bud Carson, who had just been fired as head coach at Georgia Tech, was on the flight. He was disconsolate, lamenting as to how he had been misunderstood by Tech alumni because he wasn’t considered a “Georgia Tech man.” The flight was far from capacity, and I took a seat beside Bud.
We talked about a lot of things related to his situation. At one point, he abruptly said, “What I needed at Georgia Tech was what Vince Dooley has in Erk Russell—somebody who can forearm them into place when they get out of line.”
I was startled. My disbelief was obvious as I told Bud that Georgia players played their hearts out for Erk because they loved him. He was such an unparalleled leader that the kids played their backsides off for him because they did not want to let Erk down.
Bud did not see the underlining modus operandi that made Erk so special. He didn’t know Erk as he thought he did. Bud saw stunning results with the Georgia defense and visualized Erk as a Marine D.I. who motivated with fear and threat, not the kindhearted man that the Bulldog defensive…
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