I was happy to do a one-and-done column related to Tulane football, but then, less than an hour before I started writing this, Jay Nordlinger at National Review Online wrote a little reminiscence about growing up with famous quarterback and head coach Jim Harbaugh. It’s a fun little blog post, and it gives me leave to write something I couldn’t fit in my Tulane piece earlier this week.
In passing, my column mentioned my uncle, Victor Law, who grew up in Port Sulphur, La., rooting for the then-powerful Green Wave. What I didn’t say then was that Vic went on to attend Tulane as an undergraduate, then as a grad student, then took a job on its faculty and served as chairman of its Chemical Engineering Department. In all, he spent 60 straight years (aside from a working sabbatical) at Tulane, and cheered for its sports teams for nearly a decade before that. Even more than most of us from multi-generational Tulane families (I didn’t go there, but my parents and grandparents did), Vic Law absolutely bleeds olive-green and blue.
Anyway, Tulane made a number of bad coaching decisions through the years, which aren’t worth detailing here. But what is worth telling is what happened when the tenure of one Chris Scelfo ended in 2006. Vic was on the faculty committee advising the administration and athletic director on the search for a new coach. Well, one of the last interviewees was a former NFL quarterback named Harbaugh.
As Vic related the story then (even before Harbaugh went on to greater things) and ever since, Harbaugh clearly had the “it” factor. As the longest-suffering Wave fan around, Vic knew Harbaugh was what the program had been waiting for.
Right after the interviews ended, Vic called the school’s head honchos. “Don’t even let that guy get out of town,” Vic said. “Make him an offer now! He’s the real deal!”
The administration didn’t listen. They had their eyes on former UCLA head coach Bob Toledo. After all, Toledo had actually run a program that finished in the nation’s top ten. (Never mind that UCLA endured four straight mediocre seasons at the end of Toledo’s tenure.) Harbaugh, despite his NFL pedigree, had experience only at a small-college program.
Besides, what did a chemical engineering professor know about football?
Anyway, Tulane hired Toledo and let Stanford nab Harbaugh. Toledo’s Tulane teams went 15-46. Harbaugh’s Stanford Cardinal team, in its fourth year, won the Orange Bowl and finished second in the nation, after which he took over the 49ers and led them to a Super Bowl.
Such are the vagaries of college sports.
Hey, isn’t it always said that football teams need good “chemistry?” Maybe the Tulane administration back then (it has a new administration now) ought to have listened to their chemical engineer after all. It’s always a good idea to obey the Law.
