100-Yard Journey: A Life in Coaching and Battling for the Win

Contents

Foreword by Nick Saban

Introduction

1. Akron: My Ohio Roots

2. Kent State: My Alma Mater

3. Seattle: Winning & Learning in Washington

4. Toledo: Head Coach, Day One

5. Mizzou: Building a Winning Culture

6. Mizzou: Competing for Championships

7. Mizzou: Reload & Redeem

8. Mizzou: Welcome to the SEC

9. 2015: Season of Change

10. Retirement: A New Direction

Appendix

Acknowledgments

Photo Gallery

Foreword by Nick Saban

My friendship with Gary Pinkel began when we were teammates on the Kent State University Golden Flashes football team in the early 1970s. Gary was a great friend in college, and we have remained steadfast and loyal friends throughout our coaching careers. The first thing that stood out when I met Gary was the class and presence he exuded, albeit in a very unassuming way. He was actually a year behind me; however, from the get-go, he demonstrated a leadership quality that set him apart from all of the other guys on the team. Gary was a very talented tight end, yet he worked harder than any player on the roster and, without meaning to, set a standard for our team that we all tried to emulate. Even though I was older, I regarded Gary as someone I could look up to. He was what I wanted to be. Though composed off the field, Gary was a tough, competitive, fearless player on the field and made our team better every time he stepped foot on the turf. Gary was part of the 1972 Mid-American Conference championship team, the one and only for Kent State University, an accomplishment we are both very proud to have achieved under the direction of another one and only, Coach Don James.

It would take volumes to recap the highs (championship season), the lows (Kent State shooting), and everything in between that we shared, however, some of my favorite Pinkel Stories stem from our days as graduate assistants. After the conclusion of my playing days in 1972, Coach James asked me to stay on as a graduate assistant. Gary, Jack Lambert, and our team went on to lead the Golden Flashes to a 9–2 record, and, following the 1973 season, Gary was offered a graduate assistant position by Coach James. The GA’s role in today’s world of football is a walk in the park compared to the time, work, and effort we invested in breaking down film for coaches to evaluate. Nowadays, GAs simply press a button on their computer, a software program breaks down the film, and voila—the cut-ups are on the screen. Gary and I used to have to take turns driving to Pittsburgh every Saturday night after our games just to get the film developed! One of us would make the drive while the other slept. The sleeper would then pull an all-nighter breaking down the film into offense, defense, and special teams so each specific set of film was ready for the coaches to view upon arrival to the office early the next morning. We had to do the same thing in the offseason, too—cutting up the plays; placing (and a lot of splicing!); recording each play, down, and distance; and then putting it all on a reel. We’re talking celluloid tape here, folks. Brittle, delicate, forever-jamming celluloid tape! Trust me—Gary and I performed many 11th-hour miracles that I’m certain no one in coaching today would even dream of doing! The hours logged and the output of work was incredible; when I think about it today, I’m not sure how we packed it all in! Gary always had a tremendous work ethic, which served him well and, I believe, was paramount to his success at Toledo and Missouri.

Obviously Coach James was a tremendous influence in terms of his organization and philosophy. He cared about us as players and maximized our potential on the field. However, he put a greater emphasis on our personal development, the importance of getting a degree, and our evolution post-KSU. Gary followed that protocol as a player; however, it was during our time as graduate assistants that his real prowess and skill to develop a program and be a good coach became quite evident. He continued to perfect his craft as an assistant coach and coordinator at several stops until 1991, when he took over for me as head coach at the University of Toledo, and was presented yet another challenge in 2001 when he landed the head coaching gig at the University of Missouri. Gary had a brilliant career with the UT Rockets and an equally successful tenure with the Missouri Tigers. In fact, he still owns the record at both schools for all-time wins. There are a lot of similarities between the programs we’ve built over the years. However, I have no doubt that the successes we have achieved stem from our days under the tutelage and mentorship of Coach Don James.

Gary’s story is one everyone should know and illustrates how perseverance, hard work, and dedication can lead to tremendous success while impacting so many student-athletes both on and off the football field. The real takeaway from this book is that Gary accomplished all of these milestones with the utmost class, character, and integrity. As you read this book, I know you will appreciate the message Gary has to deliver while he recounts the trials and tribulations of a truly outstanding college coaching career.

—Nick Saban

Introduction

I never thought this day would come. Coaches don’t retire. They get fired. For the first time, the end of my coaching career was in sight. I was leaving on my terms.

It was Monday, November 16, 2015. Our Missouri football team was coming off an emotional win over BYU with two games left in what would be my final season.

I remember walking through the back service entrance of Mizzou Arena as if I were sneaking into a men’s basketball game. But this day was different. I’ve experienced many press conferences that were difficult, emotional, celebratory, and even frustrating. This one seemed like all of the above. Three days earlier, I had announced during an emotional team meeting my plans to retire at the end of the season and revealed that I had been diagnosed with lymphoma in the spring, just days after my 63rd birthday. This was my first chance to speak at length about my decision. Gathered in a small room off the court were my family members, my wife, daughter, son-in-law, and grandkids. I felt a mixture of relief and loss and hope, but fortunately I was surrounded by their support and love.

The commotion from the Mizzou Arena floor was getting louder and soon it would be time to take our place for the press conference. Like little soldiers, my team of family members took the field wearing their best game faces for what would be the hardest, most emotional play of my career. Our season wasn’t over, but that day felt like my chance to close a chapter on a 15-year run that delivered more triumphant wins than crushing losses and more historical milestone moments than I ever could have imagined when I came to Mizzou after the 2000 season and inherited a program with two winning seasons in 17 years.

I saw it all in those 15 years at Mizzou. We took the program to heights unseen in decades: 10 bowl games over 12 seasons, five division championships, and four conference championship games in eight years. We maneuvered through conference realignment. We encountered challenges that aren’t included in any coach’s manual. What happens when one of your players dies during a workout? What happens when one of your players says he’s gay? What happens when your players stage a boycott in the middle of the season to save a person’s life? Through it all, we turned the University of Missouri into a nationally respected football program that won games, graduated players, and produced young men who became successful professionals in all walks of life and, most importantly, good husbands and fathers.

When I decided to retire, I didn’t have a plan for how I’d approach the rest of my life. I certainly didn’t think about publishing a book. This project started to take shape in the fall of 2016, then rapidly developed into the story of my life and career in football.

These pages start in Akron, Ohio, where my life began, and tell the story of my family, my parents, and my siblings, who inspired me as I discovered football, first as a game and then a profession. My story takes you through coaching stops at Kent State, Bowling Green, and Washington, where I’d earn my doctorate in coaching from my mentor Don James, whose philosophies would shape the program I’d later bring to Toledo and, eventually, Mizzou.

Coach James’ program became my program when I became a head coach. One of Coach James’ traditions that I adopted was his Thursday speeches. Every week during the season, Coach James would pick a theme and deliver a speech to the team on Thursday before practice, just as we entered the last 48-hour stretch to game day. I did the same each week at Toledo and Mizzou, and I saved every speech from my 25 years as a head coach. Between chapters in this book, you will find excerpts of my speeches from some of our signature games.

We didn’t capture a national championship at Missouri, but we took hold of a down-and-out program and accomplished what few people thought was possible, building Mizzou into a sustained winner on a national scale. You can’t win at Missouri, I was told when I took the job in 2000. Well, we did—and so much more.

1. Akron: My Ohio Roots

My career in football has taken me all over the country, but I’ve been lucky to have only called a few places home. The first was Akron, Ohio.

In the early 20th century, Akron became known as the Rubber Capital of the World, as the tire industry’s four major manufacturers set up their headquarters in the northeast Ohio city along the Little Cuyahoga River. Rubber brought my parents there in 1952.

The Pinkel side of the family came to America from Usingen, Germany, and my father, George Pinkel, grew up during the Great Depression in Buffalo, New York. I never met his father—he left my grandmother, Margaret, before I was born—but my dad would later say the best thing his father ever did was sign for him to join the Navy when he dropped out of high school. My dad was stationed in Guam for the final stages of World War II, and when his tour ended, he moved back home where he married my mother, Gay Robbins, an acquaintance and Buffalo native. (Among the countless things my mom gave me was my middle name, Robin, from her maiden name. She thought it would toughen me up, I like to joke. A boy named Sue? No, a boy named Robin.)

The war was over, but my dad wanted to continue his service, so he joined the Marine reserves when the Korean War broke out. He had just started a family, so he was able to serve stateside at Parris Island. Their first child, my sister Kathy, was born in 1949.

By then, my dad started looking for a new career path. George Pinkel had so many skills. He learned drafting in high school. He had the hands of an artist and could write in calligraphy. He also had an incredible curiosity when it came to technology. He built TVs and radios from scratch. He could take anything apart and put it back together. In other words, he was everything I am not. There are days I struggle to manage the remote control or the apps on my iPhone.

My dad used all those skills on his base in Guam, but once the war ended, he was ready for a job in the civilian world. At the time, my mom’s mother, Alice, whom we called Nana, wrote letters to some companies on my dad’s behalf. The tire and automobile industries were booming in the post-war economy. One of those companies she contacted was General Tire, one of the four tire titans in Akron. Nana came through, and my dad landed a job in the sales division. We were off to Akron. I say we because the Buffalo family of three was about to become the Akron party of four. My mom was pregnant during the move to Ohio. I’d join the Pinkels on April 27, 1952.

• • •

We settled into a neighborhood called Firestone Park—it’s all about tires in Akron—where we lived for four years until we moved to a nearby part of town, Castle Homes, a new neighborhood in the southern part of Summit County. We moved into a new home at 1102 Winston Street, a one-story, three-bedroom house that sat on the corner of a tree-lined suburb, just a few blocks from the Ohio and Eerie Canal. I would call that house home until I moved to college. In 1958, our family got bigger when my brother Greg came along.

Most people in the neighborhood worked for one of the tire companies. We lived a typical middle-class American experience. Our neighborhood was friendly and safe. We played in our yards and parks with our friends and rarely thought about locking the doors at night. I’d often say we lived in la la land and had a far more idyllic childhood than many of my players experienced before they had the chance to play college football.

Years later, when I would have players over to my house for what we called crossover dinners, I’d tell them, I’m going to be honest, guys. I came from a much better situation than a lot of you. My mom and dad loved me. I knew they loved me. They cared for me and my sister and brother. It was a really, really good home environment.

It was important for me to recognize how blessed we were as kids—and just as important to realize not everyone came from such a fortunate background.

One summer my parents splurged and bought a $50 family membership to the local neighborhood beach club where we could entertain ourselves all day. We’d swim in the lake, play volleyball, play bocce, throw horseshoes, and deal hands of euchre for hours. Some days our parents would drop us off at the club. Other days, Greg would hop in a wagon and Kathy and I would take turns pulling him down the street, the three of us off to spend a summer day without a care in the world.

By the time Kathy was in high school and I was in junior high, our mom went back to school and enrolled in a yearlong program to become a licensed practical nurse. My mom always wanted to become a nurse, and once we were old enough to take care of ourselves she had the chance to pursue her dream. With my dad at work and mom at school—she’d later work at a local hospital, then a doctor’s office close to home—we were left to fend for ourselves during those days of summer.

But it was good for our family. My mom was able to add some income to the household—before that, my dad had a second job in the evenings, working a few nights a week at a local hardware store —but it also gave Kathy, Greg, and me some sense of independence. We grew close as kids. I looked up to my big sister—and so much more years later when our family changed forever.

• • •

It was my parents who first taught me the value of hard work. When I was about eight years old I wanted to buy a boat. The canal was about 50 yards from my house, just down the street. My buddy had a seven-foot long flat boat that he’d play with in the canal. I wanted that boat. I wanted it bad. He said he’d sell it to me for $10. I was $10 short.

Mom, can I have 10 bucks for a boat?

You want a boat, she said, then go get a job.

A job? I was eight!

But here’s one of the great and many lessons my mom taught me. While I pouted about not having the 10 bucks to buy the boat, she worked out an arrangement with the neighbors across the street. They agreed to pay me to do their yard work. I had to clean out their shrubs and perform other jobs around the yard. The neighbors paid me $10 for the work. That boat was mine.

I have no idea whatever happened to that boat, but those are the stories you remember that shape your childhood. My other friends’ parents probably would have just handed them the cash. That’s not how the Pinkels operated. We had to work to earn.

Around eighth grade, my parents gave me an allowance every two weeks. It wasn’t much, but it was all about developing a work ethic. In high school, I started working at Young’s Hotel and Restaurant, an Akron landmark out on Manchester Road. It was a local treasure that first opened as a tavern in the 1850s. It had a big blue sign out front: Delicious Chicken, Tasty Tender Steaks. For years, I bussed tables, washed dishes, and handled any handyman task they asked me to do. I’d work three nights a week, every week, December through July, from the end of football season in the winter to the start of preseason camp in late summer.

I also worked during summers in college, unlike today’s players, who stay on campus and spend the summer preparing for the season and taking classes to advance their degrees. Not for me in the 1970s. I came home from Kent State each summer and managed a variety of jobs. One summer, I ran a jackhammer for a bridge crew. I installed cable TV to houses around Akron—until I drilled a hole where there wasn’t supposed to be a hole and was kindly reassigned by the cable company. One year I drove a Coca-Cola truck and made deliveries to businesses all over Akron. I knew my route forward and backward, but one day I had a stop at a local bank. It was the end of the day, so I was hauling less cargo than I had in the morning. I came across an overhang at the bank that I figured I would have no trouble clearing. Oops. The truck was sitting higher with its lighter load and, sure enough, I scraped the roof of the truck pretty good against the bank. When I got back to the office, my secret was out. Gary, I heard you ran into a bank? That was my last summer delivering soda.

Another summer I worked for an electric company and put together motors on an assembly line. All day long, whizzing and whirring one piece of machinery into another. Hour after hour, day after day. I had great admiration for the people doing those jobs, but I thought I’d go crazy.

My summer jobs taught me plenty about the value of hard work, responsibility, self-sufficiency, and teamwork. But they also motivated me to chase my dreams. I saw adults working those hard jobs on the bridge crew, on the assembly line, on the delivery routes. The one conclusion I had coming out of high school was I would find a career that made me happy.

• • •

In our home, church was important for our family. My dad was raised Catholic and my mom was Presbyterian, but my dad agreed that we’d worship at a Presbyterian church, Firestone Park Presbyterian. (Years later, my parents would divorce and remarry, my mom to a Catholic and my dad to a Presbyterian.) We went to church all the time, whether I wanted to or not. God was important in our lives and so was prayer. As I grew up, I usually kept my faith private. It wasn’t something I displayed outwardly. I’m not one of the Righteous Brothers, but certainly faith and prayer were important to me, because of my parents. Without my commitment to the Good Lord I think my life would have been significantly different, in a negative way. I have been blessed.

Politics weren’t a big deal in our home, though my mom favored Republicans yet my dad was a Democrat. She and some friends in the neighborhood campaigned for Richard Nixon when he ran for president, but I don’t remember there being much discussion around the dinner table. There wasn’t much discussion about the Vietnam War around the house either—or it just wasn’t on my radar yet. My dad was a law-and-order guy because of his military background. He respected the rule of law as the backbone of our society.

But my parents always talked about virtues. The golden rule, Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, was a big thing with my mom. It wasn’t once a month or once every couple months you heard this from her. It was all the time, especially if one of us got into trouble for something. I don’t know how many times I heard, Gary, if you don’t have anything nice to say, keep your mouth shut. I heard that one a thousand times. When she got mad at me, that was her adjusted golden rule.

Respect all people all the time, she would tell us. No matter what color they are. White, black, rich, poor, fat, skinny, whatever. You respect all people.

When I was about eight years old, I was over at a friend’s house. Some of the neighbor kids had been using the N-word. Well, that was not something you said or heard in my house. This was 1960. Society was going through all kinds of changes at the time and for decades to come. One of my neighbors heard me use the N-word and it got back to my parents.

I got home that day and my mom asked me if what she heard was true. At that point, I knew I was in trouble. I told her, Yes, I did. Some of my friends were saying it, so I said it, too.

I didn’t get any sympathy points for being honest. She took me right into the bathroom and got a washcloth and a bar of soap. She lathered that thing up until the suds were bubbling off the fabric. She stuck it into my mouth and turned it and turned it and turned it—almost until I threw up. She got right up in my face. You don’t ever, ever say that word again. Words like that will never come out of your mouth again. We respect everyone and you will, too, for the rest of your life.

I didn’t get in a lot of trouble growing up, but that was a moment that stuck with me forever. That’s how my parents brought us up. You never followed the crowd. You never let people talk you into doing something you know is wrong. My mom would always say, You bring your friends up to your level. You don’t go down to theirs. When I got older and went away to college, I probably wasn’t very fun because I never forgot what my mom taught me.

This one stuck with me, too, from my mom: If you’re around a bunch of friends and they’re talking about someone who isn’t there, guess who they’re talking about when you’re not around? You. For me, that was profound. There’s a lot of gossip in college coaching, but my mom knew better long before I started my career.

My dad’s influence was also profound, and I’d share this with my players: You’re going to have many, many friends, but you’re going to be fortunate if you can count your really, really good friends on one hand. I always come back to that message. For me, trust is so important, in life and coaching. Knowing who you can trust and who you can’t trust is a message that rang true several times during my coaching career.

• • •

From what I remember growing up, my mom never participated in sports. My dad ran track in high school, but otherwise he wasn’t a star athlete. But as long as I can remember I was interested in sports—and my parents always encouraged me to pursue what interested me. I played little league baseball at a young age as a pitcher and center fielder. When I was eight, I joined my first pee-wee football team. We played at Hamlin Field in Akron, where my dad helped build the broadcast booth and set up all the speakers at the field. My thigh pads drooped down to my knees and my knee pads hit around my shins. My mom played the role of equipment manager as efficiently as she ran our house. She would buy us jeans and tell us to roll them up so in two years they’d fit. Same thing with football pants. She’d buy them large enough to account for my growth.