The 'E' Is For Excellence

I used to pay a lot more attention to Tribe football. I used to pay a lot more attention to a lot of things, now that I mention it. Whitney and I spent a great deal of time around former Tribe grid greats (and not so greats) in the years just after college. The Lammies and the Sigs in the DC area ran in the same very different-sized circles. (I did go as Halloween one year as one half of the Devito/Schwarzenegger Twins duo, with former Tribe lineman Tom Walters as the other half. I'll let you guess which was which.)

I don't come here to sugarcoat things - those guys had plenty of gripes with Jimmye Laycock. But they also had a great deal of respect for W&M's all-time winningest coach, who's playing out the string on his legendary career. 

FOGTB Dave Fairbank covered Laycock for the bulk of his sportswriting career. In fact, Fairbank may not remember this, but he and I met for the first time at a Tribe football game. I worked for the W&M Athletic Department in the press box at home games. Huffed a lot of mimeograph fluid on those Saturdays. I went to Paul's Deli with Fairbank and some other scribes after the final home game my senior year. Don't recall much more about that evening.

So when Dave told me he had 1,200 words on Laycock teed up, who was I to tell him we didn't have space?

There's a thousand things that can be said about the monumental career of William and Mary football coach Jimmye Laycock, nearly all of them inadequate, as he steps down after nearly four decades at his alma mater. The best I can do is: he succeeded without ever making it about himself, and he made football matter at a place where it had no reason to do so.

When Laycock took over in 1980 at age 31, the third choice by all accounts, William and Mary's
program was betwixt and between. It had left its longtime home in the Southern Conference several years earlier, so the program operated as an independent. Its game-time home, Cary Field, was a relic built during the FDR administration. Facilities were embarrassing to non-existent. College football was undergoing a divisional split into the haves and have-nots, what was then called Division I-A and I-AA, and William and Mary had neither the will nor resources to pursue a major college path. The school's famously rigorous academic standards limited the recruiting pool, and they certainly haven't eased through the years.

Yet somehow, Laycock and his staffs and players overcame those obstacles and built a program. They began to gain traction after several difficult seasons. They strung together winning records and amassed playoff appearances, first with entertaining, quarterback-centric offenses and later with stout defenses that produced NFL-caliber players. Laycock is the reason that Zable Stadium underwent a multi-million-dollar renovation, that the stadium has lights, and that the program operates out of a quality support building that bears his name. He's also the reason that the football program is as well-integrated into the campus community as any you're likely to find at that level and has operated without so much as a hint of scandal.

(I freely allow that some of you, who were in close proximity to the principals at the time, may have seen examples of criminal conduct or outrage or meatheadery that never went public. Editor's note: not that we're going to talk about here, at the risk of self-incrimination and/or mutually assured embarrassment.)

In 30 years as a newspaper keyboard jockey in Newport News, Va., I observed Laycock and his teams. What he and they accomplished in the 1980s, '90s and early aughts was nothing short of miraculous. I've heard him joke that had he known facilities and resources were as lacking as they were, for as long as they were, he might not have stayed. But I suspect that the challenge motivated him. And because he was never driven solely by money or status, once resources began to trickle his way, he was finally able to enjoy the fruits of his labor and to see where they might take him.

Here are a few numbers that speak to both his success and longevity: His 248 (and counting) career wins are second nationally among active Division I coaches and 25th all time - one shy of his former college coach, Lou Holtz, for 24th; they also represent 43 percent of the program's entire win total in 125 years; his 111 conference wins rank second all-time; his 443 games as coach are 37 percent of all games in the program's history. Factor in his four years as a player, and he has been a part of almost 41 percent of every football game the school has ever played.

Laycock and I get along fairly well, which wasn't always the case. In the mid and late 1980s, I was a dumb guy trailing him around and asking questions about why they did what they did and about who was injured. When his teams began winning and he attracted the attention of other schools, I wrote what I could find out about his job interviews. An intensely private fellow, he was particularly frosted about that.

At some point in the early to mid-1990s, things thawed between us and we began having conversations, rather than formal Q&A sessions. Maybe we both realized that neither one of us was going anywhere, so we might as well make the best of it. I recall one of our earliest casual discussions came right after the 1995 NCAA basketball championship, when UCLA defeated defending champ Arkansas (brief aside: Laycock was always more genial out-of-season than during football season - to me, anyway). That UCLA team had brothers Ed and Charles O'Bannon and Tyus Edney, but freshman wing Toby Bailey went off in the championship game for 26 points and nine rebounds. Laycock marveled at Bailey's performance. Couldn't say enough about him. I learned through the years that Laycock is a hoops hound who was a pretty fair player in high school and probably would have pursued basketball in college, but football provided more opportunities.

Like I'm gonna miss a chance to use this Fairbank/Teel beaut.

I don't know that Laycock mellowed as he aged, but he certainly got more comfortable. As the newspaper business began to hemorrhage money and bodies in the 1990s and into the 2000s, our shop was no exception. He was genuinely interested in what was going on, how me and my colleagues were holding up, management and coverage decisions, etc. Plenty of times he wanted to talk more about newspapers and the news business than football, with me or comrade David Teel. My last decade or more at the paper, he'd often end our conversations by saying, Let me know if you need anything else.

All that said, I cannot say that I know Laycock, only that I know some things about him. He possesses a keen tactical mind and is an exceptional teacher. I've been told that he coaches coaches, as well as players. Assistants had better be able to justify or explain their ideas, lest they get carved up in meeting rooms. His quarterbacks told me that games were a breeze, compared to practices and meetings, where he pointedly judged every action and decision. He is uncomfortable in the spotlight, preferring to share credit with those around him. He is ultra-competitive, but not to the exclusion of other aspects of life. He will do whatever possible to help young men achieve their athletic goals, but he demands that they conduct themselves well under his watch, personally and academically, since that's their ultimate legacy.

As the years passed, Laycock was always vague on his exit timetable. But he said that when he turned 70 earlier this year, he thought it was time. His health is good. He didn't want to expire in the job or be dragged out of the building. He wants to do things in late summer and fall that he's never been able to do in almost 50 years as a coach - go to the beach, golf, tailgate. He wants to give the new school prez and athletic director the chance to forge their own direction. The program hasn't performed to his standards of late. They've had losing seasons each of the past two years, and much work is required in the final month not to make it three in a row. Frustrating as that is for all involved, it's a blip in the big picture. Laycock leaves a program in far better shape than he found it, and along the way he impacted hundreds, if not thousands, of lives. William and Mary, and perhaps all of college football, won't see his kind again.