For Erk, 'I'd walk to Statesboro if I had to'

<p>Erk Russell loved to jot down his thoughts in a letter. Bob Kelly still remembers the one that arrived in his parents' mailbox before his senior season at Georgia.</p><p>Russell praised Kelly for the way he conducted himself on the field and in the classroom. He thanked the parents for letting their son play for the Bulldogs. He predicted that Kelly's final year would be a great one.</p><p>"My dad was teary eyed after he read it," said Kelly, who still gets a little choked up himself when he thinks about the letter more than a quarter-century later. "He told me, 'I'm proud you're playing for a guy like him.'"</p><p>That's exactly how a countless number of Russell's former players and assistants were feeling Saturday, one day after the irascible coach who directed Georgia's "Junkyard Dawgs" and built a small-college power at Georgia Southern died at age 80.</p><p>They were all proud to have played and worked for someone like Russell, who inspired the sort of fierce loyalty normally reserved for icons such as Bear Bryant and Vince Lombardi.</p><p>Tim Stowers, who succeeded Russell as Georgia Southern's coach in 1990, called on the school to rename its stadium after him.</p><p>Tracy Ham, who was probably Russell's greatest player at the I-AA school, praised Russell for the fairness he showed with all his players.</p><p>And Kelly, who played for Russell in his final years at Georgia, still chuckled at the thought of the baldheaded coach who exuded toughness but always found a way to make people laugh.</p><p>"There were coaches," Kelly said, "and then there was Erk. He was just the greatest."</p><p>Georgia Southern ran a video tribute to Russell's career during halftime of its season-opening loss to Central Connecticut State on Saturday night. Funeral services will be held Sunday on the same field where he guided the Eagles to NCAA Division I-AA championships in 1985, '86 and '89 after reviving a program that had been shut down since the 1940s.</p><p>Kelly, who now lives in Atlanta, planned to be there for his old coach. He'll be joined by plenty of his former Georgia teammates, who planned to meet up beforehand at Snooky's, a diner across the street from the Georgia Southern practice fields and one of Russell's favorite hangouts.</p><p>"I would walk there if I had to," Kelly said.</p><p>Russell was known for sending out calendars to his players over the summer, reminding them to be in shape for the start of practice and suggesting a humorous workout regimen that would include entries such as: "Run three miles, hate Georgia Tech four times."</p><p>He also came up with all sorts of folksy sayings that somehow seemed to work on the younger generation. Russell was the one who coined the phrase "Junkyard Dawgs" for Georgia's undersized defense. He came up with T-shirts that had "TEAM" printed in large letters and "me" in small letters. And he always told his players, "If we score, we may win. If they never score, we'll never lose."</p><p>"To say that Erk was a great coach doesn't do him justice," said former Georgia coach Vince Dooley, who had Russell on his staff for 17 years. "He had a unique ability to relate to players in a very special way and was the epitome of a players' coach."</p><p>Perhaps the most lasting impression was Russell ramming his bald dome into a helmeted player to celebrate a turnover or key play, leaving his forehead drenched in blood. But Kelly, who played on the Bulldogs' national championship team in 1980, said the cornball antics obscured a keen football mind.</p><p>"He would tell us, 'Look at the guard. He's got his heel up when he's going to run block and he's got his heel down when he's going to pass block,'" Kelly said. "He had these little tips, and they were all true. I remember games where we were calling pass or run before the play because of something he picked up."</p><p>Pat McShea, a defensive end on the national championship team and a member of Russell's first coaching staff at Georgia Southern, still uses a version of the split-60 defense that his mentor developed _ for the little league team that McShea now coaches.</p><p>"When I start talking to my kids," he said, "I find myself sounding just like him."</p><p>Ham, who was the quarterback on Georgia Southern's first two championship teams and holds all of the school's passing records, had one question for Russell when the coach came to recruit him: "Are you going to let me play quarterback?"</p><p>Ham said he was more concerned about his small size _ 5-foot-9, 165 points _ than he was the racial elements of being a black quarterback in the South, even though that was certainly more of an issue in the 1980s than it is today.</p><p>"My being black and playing quarterback just never came up," Ham said. "He was a football coach coaching football players. He never saw color."</p><p>Stowers called on Georgia Southern to honor the coach who established the school's championship legacy. The Eagles were opening the season Saturday night against Central Connecticut.</p><p>"Erk Russell's name should be on some major structure, preferably the football stadium," Stowers said. "If they don't to it, that means they don't get it and they never will get it."</p><p>Looking ahead to Sunday's funeral, Stowers expected it to be quite a send-off.</p><p>"I remember Coach Bryant's funeral, and I would think Coach Russell's will be similar," Stowers said. "He had reached a stature where he could motivate people by his mere presence. He had an uncanny ability to get players to perform better than they were capable of."</p>

http://accesswdun.com/article/2006/9/117509