Father Figure

Editor's Note: This is the sixth in a series

featuring the top 10 Cal athletes and coaches of the century, in no particular order. Individuals are judged both for their accomplishments at Cal and for their impact on Bears athletics.

To the squirrels, it's just another campus landmark to sit on. To the students, it's a portly man kneeling with a football. To the alumni, it's a tribute to the history of Cal athletics.

But to a select group of Bears, it's just Pappy.

The statue of Lynn "Pappy" Waldorf sits in Faculty Glade as a mute witness to the ups and downs of Cal football. And even though the statue - a gift from the alumni group "Pappy's Boys" - was placed in its current location just five years ago, the last four decades of Bears football have had to live up to the legacy of Waldorf.

It has been quite a challenge for the men who have filled his shoes ever since. With three Rose Bowl appearances, a 7-1-2 Big Game record and a .617 winning percentage from 1947-56, Waldorf made Cal football something to admire.

From 1948-50, when the Bears made the New Year's trip south to Pasadena, Calif. three straight years, Waldorf's teams were a combined 29-0-1 during the regular season. The only blemishes on those near-perfect seasons were three Rose Bowl losses.

Nevertheless, Waldorf established a standard of excellence the Bears have been hard-pressed to replicate in the last 40 years. Cal last went to a Rose Bowl in ‘59, just three years after Waldorf left the team. Waldorf's legacy has been defined by the fact that he was the last coach to consume the spirit of the university.

In Waldorf's day, the campus revolved around football. The Bears figured high in the national rankings, and even earned a No. 1 ranking in 1951 after a 4-0 start.

"When you had the opportunity to play for Waldorf, you learn to be around greatness," former Cal quarterback Joe Kapp says. "The word is overused - greatness."

But behind all the success on the field was Waldorf's ability to win his players' hearts.

"He didn't demand anything," recalls former Cal quarterback Dick Erickson (1946-48). "When he spoke, you listened. He had a major impact on those of us who got pretty close to him."

It's easy to see why Waldorf was called "Pappy." Former Cal left tackle John Najarian described Waldorf as "everyone's friend and yet everyone's father rolled up in one."

It was Waldorf's attention to the players - learning the names of all 100 athletes hoping to make the squad - that gave him the respect he has today.

"He had a decisive impact on my life," says former Cal fullback John Ralston (1947-50). "I wanted to be a coach since I was 11. He was a real mentor."

Waldorf received his nickname while he was the head coach at Kansas State. During a staff meeting, one of his assistant coaches called him Pappy, and the name stuck.

"With his gray hair and rotund figure he looked like an old Pappy," Erickson recalls with a chuckle.

Waldorf can also be considered the father of the Big Game. No Cal coach has ever dominated Stanford like Waldorf did. He lost just once to the Indians, who have since switched their name to the Cardinal.

Other Cal coaches of note - including Andy Smith, whose teams boasted a .799 winning percentage during the early 1900's, and Leonard "Stub" Allison, coach of the last Cal team to win a Rose Bowl - didn't have Waldorf's Big Game record.

"He had a general respect for the Big Game and what it meant," Erickson says. "In (his) very first Big Game, Cal trailed, 18-14, with three minutes left. Jackie Jensen scored to give us the win. Waldorf was very aware of what could happen in the Big Game after that."

When Jensen connected with Paul Keckley for the 80-yard touchdown play, it gave Cal the Axe for the first year of what would develop into the longest period either team has had possession of the Big Game trophy - eight years. Waldorf's only Big Game mishap was a 19-0 loss to Stanford in 1955, but the Bears rebounded the next year to top the Indians, 20-18.

"Pappy's talks to the team were largely based on the tradition of football," former Cal quarterback Joe Kapp says. "The Big Game was a natural. I learned from that respect for tradition. Cal-Stanford - it's a bowl game. It's got everything a bowl game has got. Pappy gave a lot of respect."

When Waldorf arrived in Berkeley in the spring of ‘47, he found a struggling program. The year before, Cal had stumbled its way through a 2-9 season under Frank Wickhorst. The Bears hadn't won a Rose Bowl since 1938.

In Waldorf's first year, he turned the team around, improving its record to 9-1. He did it with essentially the same team that won just two games the year before.

"He knew what he wanted," Erickson says. "A lot of the guys who started in ‘47 didn't start in ‘46. He moved guys around."

Waldorf's first game at the helm was a 33-7 victory over Santa Clara. After that, the Bears defeated Navy, 14-7, in front of a crowd of 83,000 - the largest ever to see a game at Memorial Stadium.

"When you come right out and start winning, it does a tremendous lift to morale," Erickson remembers. "After the first game we were quite amazed we could score that much."

But Waldorf didn't turn water into wine. As America's soldiers returned home in the 1940's, the ranks of Cal's student body swelled to over 30,000. Many war veterans had played football as a recreational activity, and over 255 players competed for spots on the team.

Waldorf was in charge of a group of athletes unlike any since the postwar era. Twenty-six of 27 varsity players were married, most had served in the armed services, and their ages averaged in the mid-20s.

But Waldorf knew how to deal with his already able players.

"Part of the problem with Wickhorst was that he was by the numbers," Erickson says of his first coach at Cal. "Pappy knew that people were tired of taking orders."

Named Coach of the Year in 1935 when he was at Northwestern, Waldorf had everything a person could want in a football coach - complete knowledge of the game and that quality that inspired his players to travel to the ends of the earth for him.

"He was brilliant," Erickson says. "He listened to everyone's opinion. We referred to Waldorf as the ‘Chairman of the Board.'"

Waldorf's players say he didn't demand much from his players, and after Cal lost the three Rose Bowls during the late ‘40s, Waldorf never blamed anyone. He was a coach who got the best from his players not because he forced the best out of them, but because his players wanted to give Waldorf their best.

"He was meticulous in his organization," Ralston says. "You just had to admire the organization. He also had a great speaking voice."

Waldorf has also been a mentor to his players after they stopped playing on the field. Ralston, who went on to coach at Utah State, Stanford and the NFL's Denver Broncos, modeled his coaching philosophy after Waldorf. Forty-six men who played under Waldorf went on to coach at either the high school, collegiate or professional level.

Waldorf - the son of a minister - was born in 1902 in Clifton Springs, New York. He played football at Syracuse before he took his first coaching job at Oklahoma City University in 1925. Waldorf then went on to coach at Oklahoma A&M (now Oklahoma State) and Kansas State before a lengthy tenure at Northwestern. In 1947, Waldorf moved west to coach at Cal.

Waldorf's retirement from college football wasn't announced until the week before his final Big Game in 1956. Kapp remembers the mixture of feelings during that final game. The team was going to miss its Pappy, but it was going to give him a final game to remember.

The Bears topped the favored Cardinal, 20-18.

"There's no question we played for that moment," Kapp says. "He outcoached Stanford that day. It was a sad game, but it was nice to get the win."

In an interview with Rocky Carzo three days before his death in 1981, Waldorf reminisced about how much he had enjoyed the West Coast, saying "I always had it in the back of my mind that if ever I had the chance to come to the coast and coach I would take it."

The rest, as they say, is history.

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