Albany head coach in for the long run

Up and down the East Coast, one finds an astonishing number of football coaches with roots in an unlikely program: the University of Albany.

Head coaches at Elon University, the University of Pennsylvania, Hofstra, Yale and Johns Hopkins – and the list goes on – all spent time early in their careers with the Great Danes. So did New York Jets offensive line coach Tony Wise and former Dallas Cowboys head coach Dave Campo, now an assistant head coach with the Jacksonville Jaguars.

But while young coaches have taken the lessons they learned at Albany elsewhere, their mentor never left. Bob Ford has been at the helm for the Great Danes since 1970, when he helped reinstate the football program after a 46-year hiatus.

“When I first came here I thought I was going to stay three years, use it for a professional stepping-stone and move on,” Ford said.

Montana coach Bobby Hauck, whose second-ranked Grizzlies host the Great Danes Saturday, compared Ford to local coaching legend Hal Sherbeck. Sherbeck was a four-sport star at UM before coaching at Fullerton College in California for 31 years.

“Bob Ford is similar to that,” Hauck said. “He’s won a whole bunch of games, he’s had people go on ... But it’s pretty obvious (Ford) has really enjoyed being at Albany. It must be a good place to live, a good place to work.”

Like many of his protégés, Ford, who turned 70 this month, had opportunities to take higher profile jobs, but said he never wanted to leave Albany.

“I started the program from scratch,” Ford said. “As other opportunities came up to go other places that paid more money, it was sort of my baby, I guess, and I just didn’t want to walk.”

Former Montana quarterbacks coach and current Idaho offensive coordinator Steve Axman is one of the only Albany products to make a name for himself in the West, Ford said. Axman coached Northern Arizona during the 1990s, before stints as an assistant coach at Washington and UCLA, and most recently Montana in 2006.
“Basically he’s developed a tremendous program that has really put an awful lot of people into coaching,” Axman said.

Part of the reason Ford never felt compelled to take over another program, he said, was that Albany offered a community where he felt at home.

After a nomadic childhood, in which he lived in all six New England states and in 14 different towns in Maine alone, the now silver-haired Ford had little interest in moving around.

“Dad moved virtually every spring trying to find the job, and god bless him he never found it,” Ford said in his thicker-than-New England-clam-chowder accent. “And I found the job right out of college, coaching college football.”

A former starting quarterback at Smithfield College in Massachusetts, Ford was an assistant at St. Lawrence University, Albright College and his alma mater, before settling down in Albany.

Ford guided the Great Danes’ program from a club sport in 1970, to Division III, then Division II and finally Division I-AA (now the Football Championship Subdivision) in 1999. Over the years, he compiled the second-highest number of wins among active FCS coaches with a 202-134 record.

Axman spent only one year in the mid-1970s under Ford, but said he understands how Ford inspired so many people to become coaches.
“He had a tremendous ability to deal with young people and correct them, and help them to understand what they needed to correct as coaches,” Axman said. “But he always made them feel positive that they were going in the right direction.”

The direction in which Ford’s 2007 Great Danes are headed is up for debate. The team is 1-2 after last week’s loss to Hofstra, yet Ford maintains that the team may be among the best he’s coached at Albany.

It’s something that Hauck will be wary of entering Saturday’s tilt at Washington-Grizzly Stadium, because he knows Albany’s biggest not-so-secret weapon will be patrolling its sideline.

“I think our team’s at a distinct disadvantage,” Hauck said, “because Bob Ford’s forgotten more football than I know.”