BY GEOFF HOBSON
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Weeb Ewbank, who left the Cradle of Coaches to help give birth to the pro game, never stopped loving Miami University or football until he died Tuesday in his Oxford home at 91.
"Just two weeks ago at the OU game, our secretary sat with him and said she never enjoyed a game more or learned more about football in those three hours," Miami coach Randy Walker said of his RedHawks' 35-21 victory over Ohio University.
Ewbank may be the only man who ever coached teams to a National Football League title (with the 1958 Sudden Death Colts) and an American Football League title (with Joe Namath's Super Bowl champs of 1968), but he was a Miami guy all the way.
Oxford, Ohio, is where he graduated from college in 1928, where he was a schoolmate of Paul Brown, the man who brought him to the pros with the Cleveland Browns of the 1940s, and where he lived out his retirement going to practices and games.
Walker would shake his head when he would pass on a "Weeb gem" to his coaches. Just last year after a game, Ewbank told Walker the right side of the Miami offensive line was lined up too deep.
"They're tipping off the pull," Ewbank said.
"I looked at him as a great source," Walker said. "Every time I talked with him, there was always something I hadn't learned or thought of before."
Ewbank's death hit the Cincinnati Bengals particularly hard. He always made it to the club's annual Kickoff Luncheon even though, Bengals President Mike Brown said, the Jets "were his star in the constellation."
Mike Brown, son of the late Paul Brown, recalled when Ewbank was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1978, he asked Paul Brown to present him.
Paul Brown couldn't because of the death of his oldest son Robin. But the bond forged at Miami, at Great Lakes Naval Training Station during World War II, and in Cleveland when Ewbank was Paul's line coach, was never broken.
"My dad's best friends were his coaches and Weeb was a dear friend," Mike Brown said.
Bengals head coach Bruce Coslet interrupted a staff meeting Tuesday night to reminisce about his fellow ex-Jet coach. When Coslet coached the Jets from 1990-93, Ewbank was a familiar face. "Great guy. He was always very supportive of me. It's a big loss," Coslet said.
Tuesday was the 30th anniversary of the infamous "Heidi Game," when NBC cut to the children's movie and away from the Jets-Raiders game with 65 seconds left and New York leading 32-29.
Somehow the Raiders scored two touchdowns in the last minute, and Coslet laughed recalling Ewbank's story. When Ewbank called home an hour later, his wife congratulated him on winning.
Just last Sunday, Ewbank was a guest of the Jets in Indianapolis against the Colts in a game between his two old teams. Frank Ramos, the Jets' public relations director, had dinner with him Saturday night and observed Ewbank in fine spirits.
Apparently, he wasn't supposed to go to games because of his heart. Walt Michaels, one of his Jets assistants, asked him about it during this summer's reunion at an exhibition game.
"I told him, 'I thought you were under orders (by a doctor) not to watch the game live,' " Michaels said. "He said, 'Yeah, but I can't miss this.' "
Ramos noted that Ewbank won two of the most important games in pro football history. There was the game credited with making pro football a major sport, the Baltimore Colts' victory in sudden death over the New York Giants in the 1958 NFL title game. And there was the game that legitimized the old AFL, the Jets' victory over his old Colts in Super Bowl III on Jan. 12, 1969.
"Plus, he coached in the first Monday night game," Ramos said. But he always came back to Miami. Walker remembered when he was a Miami assistant in 1977 and Ewbank pulled up in his car to watch practice. The problem had been getting the running backs to be physical. So the next day, Ewbank showed up with a 1958 film of Green Bay's Jim Taylor bludgeoning the Colts.
"I know Canton must be nice," said Walker of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, "but it couldn't have anything on Weeb's basement for memorabilia. And in the room next to it, he must have had film of every game he ever coached. And he'd help you with it."
Ewbank is survived by wife Lucy, three daughters, eight grandchildren and 17 great-grandchildren. Funeral arrangements were incomplete.
