Testing the Velvet Hammer

Bud Wilkinson returns to football--and trouble

Senior Editor James D. Atwater first met Bud Wilkinson when he was still coaching at Oklahoma, completing his legendary record of 145 victories against just 29 defeats and four ties. The two men wrote a book on physical fitness, and later Wilkinson, then a prominent Republican, made Democrat Atwater his deputy on the staff of the Nixon White House. Like most people who know Wilkinson well, Atwater was not surprised when his friend decided, after 15 years, to return to coaching with the St. Louis Cardinals. Last week Atwater took a close look at the onetime college wonder to see how he was standing up to the harshest kind of introduction to the pros: a losing streak that began on opening day.

In a way, the scene in the locker room before the Dallas game summed up Wilkinson's approach to football. He did not raise his voice--he seldom does, or needs to--but he held the attention of the Cardinals. Wilkinson was not talking about pass patterns or defensive alignments; he was describing, with unabashed and unaffected emotion, a time 25 years in the future when the players would be remembering this game. You are going to wish you were back here, he told them, and you had a chance to put it all on the line in an afternoon--to test yourself against the best. "That's the kind of emotional impact football will have on your life," said Wilkinson.

The Cards played as well as they could against the Super Bowl champions, and they had an afternoon they should remember with pride a quarter of a century from now. They outgained and outmuscled Dallas, but they were hounded by the kinds of mistakes and bad luck that have plagued them all season. Eventually the Cards lost in overtime 24-21 and stretched their losing streak to seven.

During the game, Wilkinson looked far younger than his 62 years, erect and athletic. As he took off his coat and coached in his shirtsleeves (collar but toned, tie neatly in place), the decades slipped away, and I suddenly remembered sports-page pictures of a generation ago, when he was cheering on Oklahoma to that remarkable record.

But Wilkinson looked his age when he let in the press after praising his men for the game they had played. His face was drawn, his eyes were red, and his voice was very soft and tightly controlled -- always a danger sign with him. Then Dallas Defensive Line Coach Ernie Stautner dropped by. "You guys deserve a lot more than you've been getting," he said, and Wilkinson's face brightened briefly.

He had had no idea, of course, that it would be as bad as this, but Wilkinson knew he would have his troubles when he took the job. He inherited a team that had won 42 and lost 27 in the previous five years, a winner but a peculiarly brittle one with a tendency to snap around play-off time. Many of the regulars were also feuding with Owner Bill Bidwill, whom they accused of penny pinching. Terry Metcalf, the team's star running back and its sole threat to the outside, had played out his option and gone off to the Toronto Argonauts.

The Cardinals were also hard hit by injuries, but Wilkinson's main problem was to prove himself to players who knew of him only as a legend and who wondered if he had been left behind by the game. Wilkinson quickly banished fears that he was obsolete, as I knew he would. College coaches around the country -- Bear Bryant of Alabama, Duffy Daugherty of Michigan State, Darrell Royal of Texas -- used to call him on Monday morning to talk over the glory and the agony of the previous Saturday afternoon. Wilkinson had also conducted coaching clinics with Daugherty, and he had been ABC'S expert TV commentator on college football from 1965 to 1976. He had kept in close touch with the game. One of his first moves in St. Louis was to install the basic 3-4 defense used by many pro teams. He knew it well, and for good reason: he had invented its prototype at Oklahoma.

Wilkinson also had to prove that he could communicate with a breed of player far different from the arrow-straight, eager-to-please and crewcut young man he had marshaled at Oklahoma. In years, at least, the generation gap was very wide indeed. End Dave Stief, who was born eleven years after the end of World War II, was startled whenever Wilkinson began reminiscing about his days on a carrier in the South Pacific: it all seemed so long ago. Yet Wilkinson had no trouble joining in the team's revelry. He adroitly managed to get through the initiation ordeal known as the "Cardinal puff," in which the newcomer, well-stoked on beer, has to perform an elaborate ritual of hand movements.

All this helped, but far more important was the fact that the players came to respect Wilkinson as a man. His coaching technique, deceptively simple to describe, is based on convincing each player that he can perform better than he ever has--that he can "maximize" his talents, in Wilkinson's favorite phrase. At the same tune, Wilkinson worked to maintain a spirit of unity and optimism on a losing team. He is succeeding. The Cardinals have come to admire Wilkinson's brand of quiet intensity. Says Offensive Tackle Dan Dierdorf, the team's leader: "He's like a hammer covered with velvet--he leaves no abrasions, but he gets the job done."

So far, despite the Cardinals' record, Wilkinson has also retained the backing of Owner Bidwill and the team's fans. Indeed, in a strange inversion of custom, the fans have taken to booing the owner and wearing TRADE BIDWILL buttons. But if St. Louis continues to lose, Wilkinson knows the fans will eventually turn on him, as they do on all losing coaches.

It is a risk he is gladly taking. Wilkinson could have made a lot more money as a businessman (his four-year contract reportedly carries an annual salary of $100,000), and he could still be a formidable political candidate: in 1964 he was nearly elected to the U.S. Senate from Oklahoma, a heavily Democratic state. But he is a restless and supercharged man, although he usually fools people by keeping his emotions tightly reined, and he could find no more heady challenge than football. He accepts the frustrations and the sleepless Sunday nights, when he replays a loss so vividly in his mind that he can see every detail: Punter Steve Little fumbling the ball against Dallas, for instance.

"It's still fun," he insists. "There's nothing so immediate or intense in business." He still feels the need to push himself: "You have to live as vibrantly as you can." And all the old magic of the game is still there. He was delighted by watching the Dallas defensive backs perform in game films. "Honestly, it was like seeing a ballet. It was just beautiful."

While we talked, a quarterback named Jeb Blount was brought in to meet Wilkinson. A free agent, Blount was being given a tryout (which he flunked) to become Steve Pisarkiewicz's backup. The 24-year-old Blount was obviously impressed by meeting Wilkinson. When Blount left, Bud recalled that he had once coached Oklahoma against a Texas team that had Peppy Blount, Jeb's father, on its roster. That was 31 years ago, and Wilkinson laughed at the coincidence, and the passage of time, and the bonds of the game that had drawn him back to football.

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