Why isn’t Erk Russell in the Hall of Fame, too?

I know the real story of Erk not getting the job I was on the team at Southern and in the room as soon as he arrived back from Athens. He was offered the position privately by the AD but then Coach Russell wanted the contract length different than what UGA offered. When they couldnt agree to there was no contract but what hurt him was the AD then publicly said there was no offer.

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The first collage football game I watched in person was Erk’s first GSU game. What a man and coach. Donnan & Vince couldn’t hold his jock.

Coach Erk Russell sits down for an interview with Joe Kovac Jr.

I was taught better at home than to be disrespectful to anybody.
I was a pretty good kid, I really didn’t get into too much trouble. On one occasion, just after school, a group of boys met in the boys bathroom and somebody was rolling dice. … I remember I stepped in and said, “My turn,” and I put a dime down there and my point was 10. … I was saying, “Come on 10, come on 10,” and I looked around all of a sudden and there was nobody there. And I turned all the way around and our shop teacher, Mr. Sparks, said, “Come on, Russell.” … I learned a good lesson: Don’t try to make 10.
My dad always had a job that he really didn’t relish getting up and going to every day. He said, “Boy” – that’s all he ever called me – he said, “Boy, you do something that you enjoy doing.”
I had an opportunity (to play) at Alabama. I told them that that was what I always wanted to do and that I was coming, and when I got back home an Auburn coach was sitting on my front porch, and he said, “Come on, we’re going to Auburn.” And I said, “I just got back from Alabama, I told them I was gonna go to school there and that’s what I want to do.” And he said, “Well you’ve got to take a look at Auburn.” So I said, “OK.” We drove to Auburn, he put on a change of clothes, picked up his bag and we went to Gulf Shores, Alabama, and fished for two days. When we got back, I said, “I’ve always wanted to go to Auburn.”
I started out in the school of business. The first or second quarter that I was there I took accounting and I said, “I don’t believe this is for me.”
Attitude might be worth 80 percent of any athlete’s makeup.
We had a group of about eight boys in the Navy, all from the South – South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi. In the barracks we took the corner, drew a line, said, “No Yankees” across this. We didn’t really mean it, but they thought we did.
I believe political correctness is one of the most dangerous movements facing America.
You know what a consultant is, don’t you? A consultant is a guy that knows 100 different sex positions but doesn’t know a woman.
The South, to me, is fried chicken and catfish caviar – that’s grits – and good-looking women.
Communication is the most important technique in teaching and in coaching, eyeball to eyeball, one on one: “This is what we want to accomplish, and this is the way we’re going to accomplish it.” Not memos, not bulletin boards or announcements, one on one.
The brotherhood of football … is the strongest brotherhood known to man as far as I’m concerned.
I had a handmade card hanging in my locker at Georgia that said, “If I do, they will. If I don’t, they won’t.”
We lost a 3-year-old at one time, a child, and that is real pain. But time, blessed time, is the greatest healer. … It ain’t gonna quit hurting until enough time passes.
I was inducted into the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame – 500 people in a big room – and a man with a roving microphone stuck it in front of my wife and said, “How did a nice-looking lady like you live with this old bald-headed so and so for so many years?” And without blinking she said, “He was never at home.”
I have very little use for cell phones … but they seem to be free on the weekends.
Our recruiting budget at Georgia Southern was $200 our first year. I had just left Georgia, whose recruiting budget was a quarter of a million dollars. And as I drove down the Woodpecker Trail, trying to touch base with people in Claxton and Alma and Jesup and Ludowici, sometimes I wondered, “What have you done?”
In the interest of economy, we had plain white pants, we had plain navy-blue shirts, a number on the front and a number on the back. We couldn’t even put a stripe down the middle of our helmets. We used a strip of tape. … Those kind of things screamed, “Team.”
I wouldn’t allow them to put names on the back of our jerseys. We had to sell programs.
Probably the most historical figure in Alabama history is Bear Bryant. I wish I had his coaching ability and his record and his financial statement.
The 1980 season at Georgia, I came out of the dormitory where we ate our pregame meal. I looked down and there was a dime on the ground. I picked it up, put it in my left shoe. I was wearing saddle Oxfords, which I did all the time anyway, and we beat Clemson that day, maybe it was the second or third game of the season. I taped the dime in my shoe so I wouldn’t lose it, and made sure that I wore it throughout the season. We were 12-0 and won the national championship, and I’m sure the dime did it.
A good story just makes you feel better.
If you don’t have the best of everything, make the best of everything you have.
We had a president that came to Georgia Southern and during one of our booster luncheons to kick off the football season – he’s the new president, his name was Nick Henry. … He got up before the group and said, “It’s so nice to be at a college that’s not on probation.” He said, “I taught at Georgia, they were on probation. I went to Arizona State, they were on probation.” … I followed him with my remarks and I said, “Dr. Henry, you don’t have to worry about Georgia Southern cheating. Because it takes money to cheat, and we don’t have any money.”
The best way to win a game is not to lose it.
I haven’t been very smart, but what I have been is lucky. Somebody asked me about the last year that I coached at Southern, “What would I like for people to say about me after I’m gone?” And I told them, “I would like for them to say, ‘He was the luckiest S.O.B. that I’ve ever seen.’ ” And I have been that. Smart? No. No way.
As a young coach, I ran with the players. As a 55-year-old coach, I jogged with the players. As an old coach of 60, 64, 65, I had to start woggin’. A wog is a little bit faster than a walk, but slower than a jog.
I’ve had both hips replaced. I’ve had surgery on every joint except one knee and one elbow. I’ve had my left knee replaced. Compared to a knee, a hip replacement is a piece of cake.

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Thank you everyone for the compliments. I appreciate them. ‘Prec, as the kids say.

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Jim Donnan in the hall of fame? For what? who votes for this? sportswriters? probably….and Quincy Carter.

I used to like JD until QC and his mysterious thumb injury, 5 interception game vs. USC and running on the field in street clothes and getting a penalty vs. kentucky. The only time I have seen a player who didn’t play get a penalty called on him. He bet the farm on that boy….and lost….and left behind a program with a bunch of undiciplined drug addicts. And you in the media painted him a victim.
Give me a break.

He shouldn’t even be mentioned in the same story as Erk.

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If you don’t have Erk Russell in the College Football Hall of Fame, the Fame isn’t very credible.
In Jax, we have the Ga-Fla Footabll Hall of Fame. It took the local Sports and Entertainment department (they are called something like that) what ever you call them about 15 years to place Erk Russell in that Hall of Fame here in Jacksonville…some people just don’t have a clue as to WHO made WHAT happen. (of course, they could have gotten direction from the UGA Admin)
If it weren’t for Erk Russell, we would have lost a lot of Ga-Fla games in the 60’s and especially the 70’s.

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Sent to Michael Wilbon of The Washington Post and ESPN’s Pardon the Interuption.

Michael,

We met a few years ago at Super Bowl media day. I was there from Savannah, Georgia to cover one Chicago Bear, Adrian Peterson, who played for our local Georgia Southern Eagles. I took your suggestion of shaving my head and viewers and bosses have been completely positive.

The reason I’m emailing is related to Georgia Southern and the original Bald Eagle, Coach Erk Russell.

So far he’s been left out of the College HOF. The rules say coaches must have at least 10 years as a HC. Erk had 17 years as Def. Coordinator at Georgia, with a National Championship. Then he performed college football’s biggest miracle. He restarted a football program that hadn’t played in 40 years – not since WWII. He played club ball with surplus equipment from UGA, Ga Tech, Goodwill and who knows where. He took guys that wouldn’t have made anyone else’s team and won a Division I-AA within 4 years and won 3 titles in his 8 years as a head coach. He retired in 1989 after a 15-0 season.

Only a few of his players from GS went to the pros. Fred Stokes to the Skins, Rams, et al. and QB Tracy Ham took over for Warren Moon in Edmonton. The fact so few went to the next level illustrates Erk’s ability to instruct and motivate beyond their talent.

The Erk stories are endless. Following the death of Len Bias at Maryland, he started a team meeting talking about the dangers of drugs. When he got the eye-rolling “yeah, yeah coach” looks from players, he had two local hunters pull the sheet off a cage of rattlesnakes on top of a table. When the players peeled themselves off the walls, he told them drugs were more dangerous than those snakes and he expected them to run the same way if they were offered.

Search the web and you’ll find a host of quotes about him from many of the coaching greats, even the ones in the HOF.

It would take an exception or rule change to admit Coach Russell to the Hall of Fame. But can you think of a more qualified candidate?

Any momentum you can throw to the cause would be appreciated.

Dal Cannady
WTOC-TV
Savannah, Ga
Georgia Southern graduate 1990.

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Coach deserves to be in any HOF..The Bald Eagle, Father of Georgia Southern Football, The first 15-0 perfect season in the 20th Centruy, 3 True National Championship Titles. Hail Southern and Hail Erk!!!

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Loved waking up way to early for a college student just to get a seat next to Erk’s table at Snooky’s….The man never ordered as soon as he sat down his food was brought to him…Erk was a lot of fun

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I got a chance to meet Coach Russell when he spoke at the Jacksonville Bulldog Club’s Ga/Fl meeting a few years back in what turned out to be one of his last speaking engagements. Meeting him and getting to speak with him is one of the best experiences I’ve ever had. I was able to get a pic with him and my sons who were 3 and 5 at the time. He was so gentle and kind when speaking to my sons that it was hard to believe he was the same hard-nosed, no-nonsense coach I grew up watching screaming at his defense to GATA! It was quite a treat to get to see that side of him personally, and a memory I will always cherish. Coach Russell was a great man who touched a lot of lives on and off the field.
Hall of Fame or not he will always be a Damn Good Dawg!
Go Dawgs!

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[...] note, I think Kyle, myself, and most of you reading this would agree that it’s a travesty that Erk Russell isn’t eligible for the College Football Hall of Fame due to the requirement “that one be a head coach for at [...]

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[...] WHY NOT ERK?  The AJC’s Tim Tucker asks this very question in this morning’s [...]

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We miss you coach.

“And I’m gonna say it one more time. We’re Georgia Southern. Our colors are blue and white. We call ourselves the bald Eagles. We call our offense the Georgia Power Company and that is a terrific name for an offense, and our snapcount is “rate-hike”. We practice on the banks of Beautiful Eagle Creek and that’s in Statesboro, Georgia, the gnat capital of America. Our weekends begin on Thursday, the co-eds outnumber the men 3-2. They’re all good-lookin’, and they’re all rich. And folks, you just can’t beat that. And you just can’t beat Georgia Southern, and you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Thank you.” — Coach Erk Russell

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Erk wouldn’t come to the pool parties. That’s why he left.

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