Oct. 6, 2017
Each Friday during the 2017 football season, AuburnTigers.com will feature a column from Auburn historian and Athletic Director Emeritus David Housel to commemorate the 125 year history of Auburn football. We hope you enjoy!
By David Housel
Let's get the sad stuff, the unfortunate stuff, out of the way first. For a person of my generation, a child of the sixties, it is hard to say this, but it is nonetheless true. Truth telling is often hard.
Coach Ralph "Shug" Jordan, forever my Auburn coach, and the man who defines Auburn Football for my generation, could not survive today. That is not so much a comment on him as it is about the times in which we live.
Coach Jordan was head coach at Auburn for 25 years and won 176 games over those 25 years, an average of seven games a year. Not enough by today's standards.
Of course they only played 10 games a year in those days. Extrapolating his winning percentage to today's 12-game schedule, he would win about eight games a year. Not enough to survive in these times.
But those were different times, and Shug Jordan was a different kind of man, a different kind of coach.
At that time many, if not most, successful coaches met with their stock brokers at lunch during the season. Not Coach Jordan. He went home, at that time 185 Woodfield Drive, and had a sandwich with his wife.
It was never about money with Coach Jordan. The most he ever made from Auburn was $32,500 a year. In his last year of coaching, 1975, his television show and endorsement rights earned another $10,000. That was a goal for him, to him a measure of success. He wouldn't have gotten that if it were not for the dogged determination and loving efforts of Phil Snow, Carl Stephens and Buddy Davidson.
The winningest coach in Auburn history earning $42,500 a year. My, how times have changed.
He was of the old school. That's why Auburn people were patient and tolerant when his teams didn't compete for the championship every year. He was one of them, Class of '32, and they loved it. Every Thursday night before a big game he and his wife Evelyn ate supper at The Grille, adjacent to Toomer's Corner. A tradition was born.
He never met a stranger, and he took time to talk with everyone, no matter how big, how small, whatever their station in life may be. It was not uncommon to see him walking in downtown Auburn or walking the dogs on Woodfield Drive. He was a man, a coach, of the people.
Sportswriters used to say interviewing Coach Jordan was like sitting down and visiting with your grandfather. In earlier years the comparison had been visiting with your favorite uncle. He always made sure each reporter had a different angle, something all his own, something that made the reporter feel that he had a scoop.
He had what the Auburn Creed calls "the human touch," a touch of humanity "which cultivates sympathy with my fellow men and mutual helpfulness and brings happiness to all."
Winning was important, very important, to Coach Jordan, but it was not the only or most important thing. He kept football in perspective. How could he not keep it in perspective after having been in the lead Allied invasions of North Africa, Sicily, and France in World War II? He was wounded on Omaha Beach in the early hours of D-Day and was awarded the Purple Heart. When the war ended, his unit was preparing for the invasion of Japan.
How could he not keep football in perspective?
He was known for his gentlemanly demeanor, but Alf Van Hoose, sports editor of The Birmingham News, unmasked him: "Coach Jordan comes across as a southern gentleman with his smile and ready handshake, but underneath there is an iron will, and a fist of steel, especially when it comes to football."
He was left-handed. Those who played or worked for him knew when that left arm started moving up and down with that left index finger pointed, something was about to happen. "The Man," as he was called, was making a point, and you had best listen. Listen and heed.
He believed in the value of work, hard work, as described in the Auburn Creed. That work ethic enabled him to turn the morass Auburn Football had become into a championship contender in three years and win the national championship in six years.
When he came to Auburn, the stadium that was to later bear his name had a seating capacity of 21,500. When he retired it had a capacity of 64,000. More than half of the seats in today's Jordan-Hare Stadium were added during his era.
He had his "Seven D's of Success: Discipline, Desire to Excel, Determination, Dedication, Dependability, and Desperation and Damn it anyway, do something." They served him well in his day as they serve us well today, in any day, in any form of human endeavor, especially in football.
He had a warm, self-deprecating humor. When he was introduced as the winningest football coach in Auburn history, he would sometimes chuckle and add, "but I'm the losingest, too!"
Longevity has its rewards. Its risks, too. Twenty-five years covers a lot of football games. He won 176, lost 83 and tied 6.
His record speaks for itself. It will be remembered for as long as football is played on the Plains. That is the nature of numbers.
But let's not forget the man.
Therein lay his greatness, his goodness, and his greatest contribution to Auburn.
Shug Jordan '32
Auburn Man