Preamble: You’ve got to read some of this stuff to believe it. It’s all true. And Ron McBride, while not a perfect human — who is? — is about as cool a person as you could ever meet.
OK, then, for all the right reasons, the mark McBride left on Utah football — for that matter, on the state and borders beyond — shouldn’t be forgotten and now it won’t be. The former Ute coach and ongoing philanthropist and all-around good guy, will have his name hoisted into Rice-Eccles Stadium’s Ring of Honor on Saturday at Utah’s home game with Cal Poly.
The honor fits the man and the man fits the honor.
If you and me and 10,000 maniacs were to live countless lives, we’d be hard-pressed to come across an individual more gregarious, more generous, more huggable, more caring and warm and likable than “Coach Mac.” On top of that, McBride did what was, at his time as head coach, unimaginable to a lot of people. He not only dragged Utah football out of a deep slump, he matched persistence and passion, in head-to-head competition, with a certain legendary coach down at BYU.
On the occasions when it happened, LaVell Edwards hated getting beat by McBride’s teams. He suffered six losses to Mac. He called those losses “painful.” But after he got a bit accustomed to it, Edwards came not only to respect McBride, he came to love the dude — “Yeah, Ron’s OK, I guess,” LaVell once muttered with his signature sarcastic drip — just like most everybody else.
Brigham Young coach LaVell Edwards, right, is congratulated by Utah coach Ron McBride, left, at the end of the game against Utah, Friday, Nov. 24, 2000, in Salt Lake City. BYU won the game 34-27. It was the final game of Edwards’ 29-season career as BYU coach. (AP Photo/Doug Pizac)
Long after McBride and Edwards were done coaching, they did a weekly radio show together, analyzing Utah and BYU football, but mostly swapping old stories and laughing at one another’s barbs and jokes. As Edwards aged before passing away, McBride kindly helped him along when he’d periodically lose his train of thought. It was nothing short of tender — and indicative of the humanity McBride exudes still.
Nobody’s adored McBride more than his players, most of whom competed hard for their coach. When Mac was fired in 2002, Morgan Scalley, now Utah’s defensive coordinator and then a safety on the team, organized a protest, demonstrating, along with others, great support, loyalty, admiration to and for their mentor. More on that in a few paragraphs.
In his 13 years at the helm of Utah football, McBride took his teams to six bowl games and rolled up a record of 88-63, numbers that might seem less than spectacular now, but that were notable for two major, related reasons: 1) on account of the habitual losing the Utes had done previously — Captain Mac was changing the attitudes and turning the course of an ill-fated aircraft carrier toward higher goals and smoother seas — and, 2) because McBride’s success set the tone for subsequent coaches Urban Meyer and Kyle Whittingham to find even greater success.
“Coach Mac was responsible for the resurgence of Utah football,” Whittingham said this week, while also giving thanks to McBride for giving him his first Division I coaching job.
McBride knew exactly what needed to be done at Utah when he was hired to lead the program after coaching as an assistant at places such as San Jose State, Piedmont Hills High School, Gavilan [Calif.] Junior College, UC Riverside, Cal State Long Beach, Utah, Wisconsin, Utah again, and Arizona.
Once handed the Ute reins before the 1990 season, he said his vision was clear.
“We made a master plan, a plan to build the defense first,” he once told me. “We wanted a defense filled with tough, hard-nosed guys who hated to lose. We recruited guys with personalities to play with an attitude, with a deeper commitment. It spread to the whole team.
“Some coaches have big philosophies. All that’s a bunch of bull. What it comes down to is first, you have to recruit the right kids, kids who want an education; second, they have to be committed; and third, they have to give their best and be accountable for that.”
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Former Utah football coach Ron McBride expects a much better game than last week as he watches the team warm up prior to their game against the Arizona State Sun Devils in Salt Lake City on Saturday, Nov. 4, 2023.
McBride knew as important as teaching proper football and insisting on hard work were, recruiting topped the list of requirements for winning. He described his recruiting method thusly: “You get good players because people believe you. Parents will send you their kid if they trust you. When I go into a home, I focus on the family. I say what I say and they like it or they don’t. I don’t know how people perceive me. I’m just me. I’m no genius, I know that.”
I got a phone call once from McBride as he sat in his car — no lie — outside a California prison, waiting, as he said it, “for a 6-8, 290-pound guy with like 20 tattoos who runs a 4.5 40 to come out the door.”
The coach believed folks, talented ones, deserved a second chance.
McBride was famous — infamous — for some of his idiosyncrasies, especially his deference to superstition and dependence on lucky charms to appeal to the football fates and sway the outcomes of games. He relied on darn near everything from magic sand shipped in from Hawaii that his coaches and players were supposed to run through to ancient coins kept in his pocket to a shillelagh stick that when pointed at opposing ballcarriers was supposed to make them fumble.
“A guy gave me that shillelagh, guaranteed it would work. It was a dog,” he said. “It didn’t work. Not only didn’t it work, I looked ridiculous using it. Some things do work, though.”
He added: “When I coached at UC Riverside, we used a voodoo girl who would stab a doll dressed like the opponent’s mascot. She was a cocktail waitress at a place where we used to drink beer. She was a little trippy, really a little scary. But, hey, we had a helluva streak of wins with her … something like 19-3. She was good.”
When the Utes played Fresno State one year, McBride came loaded not just with charms of good fortune, he also was armed with doodads meant to lead to the demise of the Bulldogs. Problem was, his son-in-law, John Baxter, was an assistant coach with Fresno, and he came prepared to fight off the unlucky charms.
McBride zapped the FSU sideline with hexes firing out of his fingertips. Baxter countered those with rubber balls strung around his neck, bouncing the hexes back at the Utes. Mac fought off that with a ceramic necklace, which was countered by a Bulldog Beanie Baby stuffed into Baxter’s pants pocket, which was reflected back by an ancient Chinese charm given to McBride by an acquaintance and hooked onto his key chain.
After the game, a tight Utes victory, Mac said: “We used everything we had on them today, and we needed it.”
(Trent Nelson | Tribune file photo) Ron McBride celebrates a 13-6 win over BYU in his last game as Utah’s coach Saturday, Nov. 23, 2002 at Rice-Eccles Stadium.
McBride once allowed me to follow him around for a day at Utah’s fall practices, back when the Utes held them at Camp Carbon in Price. He was all over the place during that span, a coaching whirlwind, greeting players, asking them about their families and/or their girlfriends, supervising certain sessions, studying film, chasing down his lunch with a bottle of Kombucha, which he had no clue what the ingredients were, but he thought they helped energize him. “My wife, Vicky, won’t let me keep this stuff in the house because she thinks it smells funny, so I keep it in the garage, but it makes me feel good,” he said. After taking a short nap, he charged back onto the field with his hair looking like a flock of magpies had built a nest atop his head.
During a drill featuring the offensive linemen, McBride, dissatisfied with the effort and focus he was witnessing, jumped into the drill himself, flopping belly-first onto the turf and demonstrating the proper way to block, yelling as he jumped up and down. The players, a group of extraordinarily large, serious men, might have busted up laughing had they not faced dire consequences were they caught doing so. After that, McBride walked around the practice field, schmoozing with fans.
Near day’s end, late into the night, McBride meandered through the dorms where his players were being housed. Having pushed them hard earlier, he now earnestly talked with them, showing deep sincerity one minute, then chided them and chuckled with them the next. In the final hour before the lights went out, the coach was seen surrounded on a couch with a mass of his players, all of them smiling and singing Polynesian folk songs together.
Henry Lusk, who played for the Utes at that time, in the early-to-mid ‘90s, surveyed the scene, glanced over at his coach, then turned back and said, “He’s a blessed individual. I love him. We all love him.”
Nothing’s changed in the 30 years since, not in that regard. Mac’s older now, growing a little sleepier, but no less compassionate. Everybody — the players he coached at many different institutions, including colleges and high schools, the adults and children he’s helped in charitable causes by way of his foundation, the fans he’s embraced, the strangers he’s turned into friends — loves Ron McBride, and his longtime soulmate, Vicky.
Put his name in the Ring of Honor, then, put it up on the stadium. It’s a name and a man worth honoring, worth celebrating, worth remembering.