The NFF Southern Arizona Chapter has established an endowment memory of Coach Larry Smith. Contributions should be sent to:
Larry Smith National Football Foundation & College Hall of Fame Endowment
1790 E. River Rd. Suite 300
Tucson, Arizona 85718
Adapted from a story written in 2005 by NFF Correspondent Chris Caputo.
Coach Larry Smith, a member of the Southern Arizona (Tucson) Chapter and long-time National Football Foundation supporter, died Monday, January 28, at the age of 68.
Smith earned a reputation as a program builder throughout his illustrious 24-year coaching career in the Football Bowl Subdivision. During stops at Tulane, Arizona, Southern California and Missouri, Smith garnered conference coach of the year honors several times, guiding young men and their college programs to new heights with an overall record of 143-126-7.
Over the years, Smith also took on a leadership role with the NFF in holding coaching clinics for youth and high school coaches. With more than 50 years of coaching experience under his belt, he was one of the best and most season coaches in the business.
Smith enjoyed his first taste of coaching at age 10, working with seven- and eight-year-olds on a local youth basketball team. He found time between football practices in high school to continue to coach youth basketball, and he coached Little League baseball in college while starring on the Bowling Green football team. With aspirations to become a football coach on either the high school or collegiate level, Smith couldn’t have asked to learn from a better group of coaches and mentors.
During his years at Bowling Green, Smith captained the 1961 squad under 1998 College Hall of Fame inductee coach Doyt Perry. When Smith started his professional coaching career as an assistant at Lima Shawnee High School in Ohio, he worked under another future College Hall of Fame Coach, Jim Young. Smith became head coach at the high school two years later, and following a three-year tenure, took an assistant coaching position at Miami (Ohio) under 1993 College Hall of Fame inductee Bo Schembechler. Smith followed Schembechler to Michigan two seasons later and assisted on the Wolverines staff for four years. Young, who also shared the hometown of Van Wert, Ohio, with Smith, then called and enticed Smith to come work under him on the University of Arizona staff. All told, before he accepted the Tulane head coaching position in January of 1976, Smith had played or coached under three future College Football Hall of Fame inductees for a total of 14 years.
“I learned a lot from all those guys I played for and coached with,” Smith said during an interview with NFF Correspondent Chris Caputo in 1995. “My high school coach and math teacher Gil Smith, Doyt Perry, Jim Young, Bo, I had a great opportunity to work with all of them.”
Smith made good use of his football knowledge throughout his four different tenures in Division I-A. At Tulane, Smith finished 2-9 in his first year, but he led the Green Wave to a 9-3 record and a Liberty Bowl berth by year four, the school’s best record in 20 years. Following that 1979 season, Smith, at 40 years old, left Tulane to return to Arizona and take over a Wildcats program that had two years earlier transitioned to the Pac-10 Conference. Smith remembered the excitement as the administration charged him with building Arizona into a consistent Pac-10 contender.
“Arizona was a dream job, a school that I fell in love with while I was an assistant there,” Smith told Caputo. “I was really looking forward to building Arizona into a factor.”
He wasted little time getting noticed in the new conference, as the Wildcats upset #2-ranked UCLA his first year in Tucson. From there, Smith led Arizona to six consecutive winning seasons, the last of which culminated with an Aloha Bowl victory and another nine-win season.
Smith loved Arizona, but when USC called to offer their head-coaching job in 1987, he couldn’t resist.
“USC is the ultimate in college football,” Smith told Caputo. “Every Saturday was something important. You’re at USC, you’re ready to go. You have a target on your back at all times, and I had a lot of fun there.”
The USC faithful had fun, too, as Smith guided the Trojans to three consecutive Rose Bowl appearances during his six-year tenure. Included in that stretch was a 10-2 campaign in 1988 and a Rose Bowl victory over Michigan following the 1989 season.
Smith left USC following the 1992 season, spending a year away from the sidelines and attending football camps, practices and games around the country. But the lure of coaching burned too strong, and he returned the following season as head coach of the Missouri Tigers. Again, Smith rebuilt another program that had just suffered 13 consecutive losing seasons, leading Missouri to a 7-5 record and the Holiday Bowl in 1997. The Tigers’ appearance the next season in the Insight.com Bowl marked the first time the school had appeared in bowl games in consecutive seasons since 1980-81.
Smith left the Tigers, and the coaching ranks, after the 2000 season. During his final year at Missouri, Smith learned he had contracted Chronic Lymphatic Leukemia. The disease didn’t affect him for four-and-a-half years, but it began to take its toll in December 2004, and Smith transition to being a grandfather and broadcasting Pac-10 games on TV. He stayed involved with the game through coaching clinics and mentoring the next generation of Hall of Fame coaches.
The NFF Southern Arizona Chapter has established an endowment memory of Coach Larry Smith. Contributions should be sent to:
Larry Smith National Football Foundation & College Hall of Fame Endowment
1790 E. River Rd. Suite 300
Tucson, Arizona 85718
NFF
