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. I 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 with rare and extraordinary leadership skills. Hundreds of football players across the Southeast and beyond would quickly attest to that — the many who truly loved him and extended overachieving efforts to help him win games.
He had remarkable instincts, an ability to get his point across graphically, and made every player, regardless of ability, think he was the “little train that thought it could.” Erk invoked humor to relax and communicate. He gave of himself like no other. He cared for his players, and they knew it.
This set him apart.
Erk’s leadership acumen and 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 clinical lecturer. He began every clinic by writing K-I-S-S across the chalkboard: “Keep it Simple, Stupid.”
The signature ingredient to his success as a sage defensive swami was motivation, but he never let the course of action become complicated.
Although he might use an off-color joke, befitting locker room vocabulary, to make a point, he never used profanity to teach his players, despite evolving from an era when demeaning “cussing” reigned supreme.
Erk was the antithesis 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 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 “beloved” Coach Russell, a natural-born leader. He had a sixth sense for making everybody’s day. The defensive players were the envy of the offensive players, so head coach Vince Dooley always found time, especially on Friday and game days, to have Erk speak to the entire team. His humor and inspirational talks connected with 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,” said Frank Ros, 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's way of being a showman; it was his way of communicating that football is a hard-nosed game, and you have to 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 their coach was forever putting the team first and giving of himself.
However, Erk 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.
When Georgia upset Florida in 1964, there was Erk on a training table, shouting, “Damn Good Team, Damn Good Team,” as the players filed into the locker room. Then there was the game in Jacksonville a few years later when Florida won with a lucky break, and a fight broke out as the frustrated Bulldog team let emotions get the best of them.
The head coach chewed his team out for this unsportsmanlike conduct. Many players lost it, embarrassed and humiliated. They were crying, and Erk was crying with them in the locker room, with tears streaming down his cheeks, crying with them.
His players knew that he hurt when they hurt. He was frustrated when they were frustrated. He cried when they cried.
There was nothing like being one of Erk’s boys.
The Georgia Athletic Association and the Football Letterman’s Club are embarking on a fund-raising campaign to recognize Erk with a tribute to the lettermen’s club at Sanford Stadium.
That should be a piece of cake.
It’s not required to have played for Erk to participate in this campaign.
If you ever laughed at one of his clever jokes, you can help perpetuate his memory by writing a check to add your name to the donor plaque. It will be like going behind the Green Monster at Fenway Park and signing your name, just like Red Sox players and opponents have been doing for years.