Ron Bellamy the Sports columnist for the Eugene Register Guard has a great column today on the departure of Neil Zoumboukos from the football coaching staff of the University of Oregon Ducks. Click on the title above for a link. He says a lot of the things I have been thinking the last 24 hours. A few quotes from the column:
"What a strange, bittersweet day it was at the Casanova Center. Because you figured that ageless Neal Zoumboukos would somehow always be an Oregon football coach, and that hell would freeze before Tom Osborne coached at Oregon again, as in never. Yet there they were Tuesday, ships passing, Zoumboukos announcing that he's leaving coaching to become a special assistant to the Oregon athletics director, and Osborne being introduced as his replacement.
A simple notice in transactions won't begin to tell this story.
The Oregon football program lost an icon Tuesday - a coach and mentor and leader and conscience for 27 years - and regained one of the best special teams coordinators in the country, who presided over some of the best special teams ever seen here.
And none of this could have been easy, really.
Zoumboukos and Oregon coach Mike Bellotti, old friends, go back to UC Davis, where Zoumboukos, as the freshman coach, gave the recent UCD graduate his first job in coaching.
Bellotti and Osborne go back to Osborne's not-all-sweet departure from the Oregon coaching staff in 2000 for Arizona State.....
Suffice to say Zoumboukos was adamant Tuesday that he did "NOT" want to be responsible for special teams - and he pretty much said it in capital letters - and that "we needed a special teams coordinator."
That the Ducks have been without a coach in that role the last two seasons seems, in part, to be a reflection of how much Bellotti cares about his friend; Zoumboukos, as the tight ends coach, was the logical and traditional choice, but Zoumboukos didn't want the responsibility.
Of all the grenades Zoumer has launched himself upon at Oregon, of all the tasks performed by this ultimate company man, he wouldn't do that. He lacks, he explained, the suitable tolerance for kickers, and the confidence in his expertise for that particular job......
So, Zoumboukos, 60, is leaving coaching for now - I'm not convinced this is forever - to serve as a special assistant to new AD Pat Kilkenny, full-time through the end of June, and then on a part-time basis. He'll be an advocate for athletes, and for assistant coaches. He'll be the link to the days when the Ducks had the Pac-10's worst facilities, and some of its lowest expectations.
He'll be a conscience for Kilkenny, and a devil's advocate, and a friend, as he was for Bellotti and for Rich Brooks.
Because Zoumboukos was there when Oregon had no choice but to be humble, and the underdog; he was there, too, when UO reached the Rose Bowl, and won the Fiesta Bowl...
Tuesday, Zoumboukos became emotional, as he talked about his "best friends" on the Oregon coaching staff. He thanked Bellotti, and Brooks, who hired him at Oregon, and who gave him more and more duties, ultimately naming him associate head coach. He'd made his announcement to the Oregon players on Monday.
It's the end of an era, really. The stepping away of one of the last Old School guys...Zoumboukos, his bald head roughly at lower-chest level with an offensive lineman (the position he coached most in his Oregon years), giving the wayward kid what-for; and those same linemen, at their final banquet as Oregon seniors, hugging Zoumboukos and wondering where the time went....
"But by and large, you ask any player who has ever played under him, and they have tremendous respect for him. Because he truly does take young kids and turn them into men by the time they walk out of that program."
Gary Zimmerman, nominated several times for the Pro Football Hall of Fame, played four years for Zoumboukos at the beginning of the coach's tenure at Oregon and credits Zoumboukos for instilling the intensity, and teaching the techniques, that helped him achieve a 12-year career in the NFL.....
"There was no one more intense than Zoumer was, back in the old days," Zimmerman said. "He was really intense, and almost anal, I guess. The stuff he did was hilarious. He used to hide in the bushes to try to catch people after curfew. He used to take a hammer out to practice, and if you lifted your head up he'd hit you with a hammer. He shot people in the rear with a starter's gun because they were too slow.
"Just stuff like that, that coaches would get sued for today. ... "
....For Zoumboukos, some of those memories, and the long relationships at Oregon, came spilling back Tuesday; he stopped once, in his news conference, overcome with emotion. "I'm blessed to have been here as long as I have," he said. "I'm blessed to have been doing something that I love doing, and I'm going to love doing this administration thing, too."
Well, I'm not sure he sounded truly convincing about the last part, but he was about the rest of it. Blessed was Oregon, too, that he's worked here."
Sniff...Sniff... good by Mr Chips.
