Coach Smith rebuilt four programs over 25 years on the Division I-A level.

Larry Smith earned a reputation as a program builder throughout his illustrious 24-year coaching career in Division I-A. 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. On Saturday, July 23, Smith took the field in a different role, teaching youth and high school football coaches the finer points of coaching football during the Tucson NFL/NFF Coaching Academy.

“We’re looking to get more young people involved in the game, since football is losing youngsters to many other sports and activities,” Smith said. “Working with these youth football coaches and helping them build their knowledge to make the game more attractive to these young kids is one way to do this.”

Smith is not alone in his quest, as 62 NFL/NFF Coaching Academies have or will take place this year in 27 states and three countries. These academies, designed to elevate the quality of coaching at the youth and high school levels, will impact more than 362,000 kids through the more than 10,000 coaches that will attend the academies in 2005. But very few of these coaches will learn from a coach as seasoned and experienced as Larry Smith, who’s been involved in some form of sports instruction for more than 50 years.

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. “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,” he said. “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 said. “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 last December. Smith dealt with a serious lung infection on top of regular chemo treatments, losing about thirty pounds.

“I began to realize how fragile your health can be,” Smith said. “I saw how sick I could be if things didn’t work out right.”

For these reasons and others, Smith doesn’t talk about returning to the college gridiron for one more round of coaching.

“The profession has come to the point where it’s a 24/7 job, and I just don’t have the energy for that anymore,” he said. “I have six grandchildren. I’ll announce a few Pac-10 games a year on TV, and I live on a golf course, so that’ll keep me busy. But I know I can stay involved in the game by working with these high school and youth coaches to get to know the game better, teach it better, and get more people involved in the game.”

So Larry Smith tookthe field on July 23, teaching a hundred or so youth coaches about the finer points of the game while reflecting on the progress he’s made these last 50 years.

“I’m still hungry. These coaches are hungry. This academy is the beginning of a lot of things for youth football out here in Arizona,” he said. “I’m excited to see what we can build.”

Building players. Building coaches. Building programs. Nobody does it better than Larry Smith.