Hugh Durham: The Path Almost Taken

THE PATH ALMOST TAKEN
By Hugh Durham

It’s Super Bowl week. On Sunday millions will gather around the country to watch the big game. People that don’t know much at all about football become experts on Super Sunday. It’s more than a game. It’s an event.

Oddly enough, over the years I have not always had the opportunity to sit down and watch the Super Bowl. Super Sunday falls right in the middle of the college basketball season and I was always concerned about our next opponent. When I was coaching it was very difficult to take even a moment to kick back and watch a different sport.

These days I can relax and simply enjoy the game. A game that almost became my profession. Almost.

When I graduated from Eastern High (Louisville, Kentucky), in 1955, I had a football scholarship to play at the University of Kentucky and at that time, Kentucky was an outstanding football program.

The legendary Paul “Bear” Bryant had led them to three straight bowl games, including an Orange Bowl win over Bud Wilkinson’s Oklahoma Sooners.

The quarterback for that team was Babe Parilli who went on to play for the Boston Patriots, Green Bay Packers and was Joe Namath’s backup with the New York Jets in Super Bowl III.

Despite his tremendous success, coach Bryant left the Blue Grass State for greener pastures. He joked that while Adolph Rupp was given a Cadillac, he received a cigarette lighter for his successes on the football field.

Much like it is today, in the 1950’s Kentucky was a basketball school.

Blanton Collier succeeded Bryant and recruited me as a halfback. In high school I played both halfback and quarterback. I actually signed on the dotted line to play college football for the Wildcats.

But I had a stronger interest in pursuing basketball so I opted out of Lexington, Kentucky and headed down to Tallahassee, Florida to enroll at Florida State.

Needless to say, the rest is history.

I have a lot of terrific memories from my days on the gridiron, but one moment that stands out is a chance meeting I had with a future hall-of-famer who many consider to be the best to ever quarterback in the NFL.

When I was still in high school, I went over to the University of Louisville to receive a little treatment for an injury. Back in those days, it was common for high school athletes to get treatment for injuries from the local college or university, which had much better facilities.

So there I was in the training room at the University of Louisville. Sitting across the room was Louisville’s QB Johnny Unitas.

Unitas was a big time college signal caller, but little did I know at the time that the future would hold so many great things for him.

It’s hard to believe that the Pittsburgh Steelers actually cut him.

Of course I had no illusions that such accolades on the gridiron awaited me so making the choice to go Tallahassee was a good decision for me.

As it turned out, it was a better decision than the one the Steelers made.

When he retired in 2005, Hugh Durham ranked 8th among active Division I coaches with 633 career wins and was Durham was the 25th winningest DI coach in history. He is the only coach in NCAA history to be the all-time winningest coach at three different Division I schools and is one of just eleven coaches to have led two different teams to the NCAA Final Four (Florida State, 1972 & Georgia, 1983). The Hugh Durham National Coach of the Year Award was established in 2005.