FRANK BROYLES 1924-2017

King of the hill: UA coach, icon, man with plan, dies at 92

Frank Broyles is shown in this file photo
Frank Broyles is shown in this file photo

FAYETTEVILLE -- Frank Broyles never lost his smooth-as-butter Georgia accent, but Arkansas was the state he became synonymous with in more than 50 years at the University of Arkansas as the Razorbacks' head football coach, athletic director and fundraiser.

The man chosen by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette as the state's most influential sports figure of the 20th century came to Fayetteville in December 1957 to coach the Razorbacks and never left.

Broyles, 92, died at his home Monday morning of complications from Alzheimer's disease.

"No one will ever cast the shadow that Frank Broyles has cast over Arkansas, the entire state," said Barry Switzer, commenting in 2007 about the man he played for and coached under at Arkansas. "No one."

Switzer, originally from Crossett, went on to win three national titles at Oklahoma and a Super Bowl with the Dallas Cowboys.

"Frank Broyles has accomplished more in his life as a coach and as an athletic director than any man who's ever been in both positions," Switzer said. "What he contributed to that university and that state is unparalleled."

Broyles led the Razorbacks to a 144-58-5 record in 19 seasons as their coach from 1958-1976 -- including a share of the 1964 national championship. As the athletic director from 1973-2007, he built an all-sports program and first-class facilities while steering Arkansas from the dying Southwest Conference to the prosperous SEC in 1991.

"He did some things at Arkansas when he took over the program that more people than not probably believed couldn't be done," Terry Don Phillips, the former Clemson athletic director who played for Broyles and worked with him as an assistant athletic director, said in 2007. "He made you feel that Arkansas could be as good as anybody in America in whatever we did, and then he made it happen."

Broyles worked as a fundraiser with the Razorback Foundation through spring 2014 and continued to represent Arkansas at numerous events after retiring as athletic director.

"Coach Broyles is 'Frank of the Ozarks,' you might say," Arkansas' 1966 Outland Trophy winner Lloyd Phillips said in 2014. "He's a tremendous man, and he's done so much for the state of Arkansas. As a player, I never heard him say one curse word. That's pretty great for a coach."

Broyles reflected on his Arkansas tenure in December 2004, shortly before his 80th birthday.

"If you ask any person that's been in this profession if they can match the charmed life I've had here at Arkansas, they would say it's the rarest, rarest, rarest thing there is, to be on the job at one school for this long," Broyles said. "I've always been so pleased and happy. It's a privilege to have this job, and I've never tried to take another job."

Broyles said he worked hard to build relationships throughout the state with fans from every walk of life as well as business leaders and boosters needed to help fund the program.

"I've done everything I can to build the image that Arkansas can compete with anybody, and I think our fans appreciate that," Broyles said in 1994.

Broyles said in 2004 that he never considered himself an absolute ruler of the Razorbacks, even if many others may have viewed him that way.

"I still have to please, and I still have to do the job and people have to want me," he said. "I never felt I was in total control, nor did I want that.

"This is a university program, not mine."

BROYLES THE BUILDER

The University of Arkansas, Fayetteville spent more than $230 million on facilities while Broyles was athletic director, including the construction of Walton Arena, Baum Stadium, McDonnell Field and the Randal Tyson Indoor Track Center, along with two major renovations and expansions of Reynolds Razorback Stadium.

Former Tennessee athletic director Doug Dickey had nothing but praise for Broyles in 2007.

"Frank has been as dynamic a person for Arkansas as has existed in the history of college athletics at any institution by anyone," said Dickey, a former assistant for Broyles. "He brought a level of dynamics that was national in scope to a place that had not been national in scope, and it has transcended into numerous sports.

"His vision of how to do it at Arkansas was right on target. Raise the money, build the facilities and you can get the people to come."

The athletic department's annual budget grew from $900,000 to $44.8 million during Broyles' time as athletic director.

"There's nobody that has any better facilities than the Razorbacks," Eddie Sutton said in 2007. "That's really Frank's greatest legacy as far as I'm concerned."

Sutton (806-326 in 37 seasons) coached NCAA Tournament basketball teams at Creighton, Arkansas, Kentucky and Oklahoma State.

"The people of Arkansas should thank him with a lot of enthusiasm, because he has really been the architect that put it all together," Sutton said.

Longtime Razorback Foundation executive Harold Horton, who played and coached for Broyles, credited him with being a visionary and projecting the future.

"He remembers the past, but he doesn't dwell on it," Horton said in 2004. "He's thinking ahead. He's always had a big imagination."

FRANK AND KEITH

Broyles earned acclaim after his retirement from coaching as ABC's top college football analyst from 1977-1985, when he was teamed with play-by-play man Keith Jackson.

"He kept everyone glued to the TV because they wanted to hear what he said next," former Arkansas coach Houston Nutt said in 2007, the final season of his 10-year run. "He had the passion for the game and the great voice with his Southern accent."

Broyles didn't do his first ABC telecast with Jackson, working the Texas-Texas A&M game with Chris Schenkel in 1974 after the Razorbacks' season had ended.

ABC producer Don Ohlmeyer liked Broyles' work and asked him back for the Auburn-Texas Gator Bowl, when he again was teamed with Schenkel.

Broyles began doing ABC games with Jackson, another with Georgia roots, on a regular basis after retiring from coaching in 1976.

Broyles was eager to take advice from Jackson about how to work on the telecast.

"I think the best thing Keith ever told me was, 'Frank, whatever you say, be sure that a housewife in Eugene, Oregon, can understand what you're saying,' " Broyles said.

The ABC broadcast with Jackson and Broyles dominated the airwaves at a time when few college games were televised.

"When Frank Broyles and Keith Jackson showed up, that was like College GameDay now," former Broyles assistant and Oklahoma State coach Pat Jones said in 2014.

ROAD TO ARKANSAS

Broyles first took notice of Arkansas as a Georgia Tech assistant when he saw the devotion of Razorbacks fans before the Yellow Jackets beat Arkansas 14-6 in the 1955 Cotton Bowl.

The possibility of leading a program in a state where the fans were united behind one team intrigued Broyles, but Arkansas had a policy of hiring only experienced head coaches. Broyles got that experience when he was hired at Missouri in 1957 and led the Tigers to a 5-4-1 record.

Broyles was a Georgia Tech assistant when he interviewed for the Missouri job, which came open after Don Faurot stepped down as the Tigers' coach but stayed on as athletic director.

Broyles said he forever was grateful to Faurot for giving him a chance to be the Missouri coach.

"I had been an assistant coach for 10 years and thought maybe I'd never get a chance to be a head coach," Broyles said in 2003 before the Razorbacks beat the Tigers in the Independence Bowl. "I went after the Missouri job as hard as I could."

Broyles left Missouri after one season when Razorbacks athletic director John Barnhill called after Jack Mitchell left Arkansas for Kansas.

"Barney, what took you so long?" Broyles is reported to have said.

HIRES AND FIRES

Among the notable head coaches Broyles hired at Arkansas were Lou Holtz, Ken Hatfield, Danny Ford and Nutt in football; Sutton and Nolan Richardson in basketball; Norm DeBriyn and Dave Van Horn in baseball; and John McDonnell in cross country and track and field.

Holtz -- Broyles' hand-picked successor -- led the Razorbacks to a 60-21-2 record in seven seasons, but he was fired after the 1983 season when the Razorbacks finished 6-5.

The Razorbacks were 30-5-1 in Holtz's first three seasons and 30-16-1 in his last four.

Sutton led Arkansas to the 1978 Final Four, but he left after the 1984-1985 season because he was feuding with Broyles. At the time, it wasn't known Sutton was battling alcoholism.

Broyles and Sutton later reconciled. They sat together for the Razorbacks' final game in Barnhill Arena in 1993.

When Sutton left Arkansas for Kentucky, Broyles hired Nolan Richardson from Tulsa and made him the first black coach of a football or basketball program at a major university in the South.

Richardson led Arkansas to the 1994 national championship along with Final Four appearances in 1990 and 1995 and 13 NCAA Tournament trips in 17 seasons.

Richardson won a school-record 369 games, but he was fired late in the 2001-2002 season and later sued the UA and several administrators -- including Broyles -- in U.S. District Court in Little Rock for racial discrimination.

The lawsuit was dismissed in 2004.

Among Broyles' most famous firings was dismissing Jack Crowe as football coach after the 1992 season opener when The Citadel beat the Razorbacks 10-3.

"That was just business the way Frank saw it," Crowe said a few years later. "It wasn't personal."

OLD HOGS NEVER FORGET

Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, a senior offensive lineman on Arkansas' 1964 team, has been among Broyles' staunchest supporters.

Jones said in 2014 that Broyles inspired him to want to be involved in sports at a high level such as being the owner of an NFL team.

"He also very candidly gave me a feeling that I could do it," Jones said. "That I could get it done."

Jones said Broyles became his role model for how to run the Cowboys.

"I look at the things he's done, the salesman he is, the organizer, the way he put things together up here, the building programs, all of that," Jones said. "There are a lot of parallel decisions I make every day."

Jones said he's always tried to emulate Broyles' vision of the future and admired the way he built a total athletic program at Arkansas to help pull fans together behind the Razorbacks.

"His influence with what we're doing here at the university is unmatched in the rest of the country," Jones said. "Because it was a combination of what he did in the traditional view as a coach, but also his vision.

"He was ahead of his time. He was a forward-thinker in his vision for Arkansas as an athletic program just as he did as coach putting together a game plan."

Pat Jones, who grew up in the shadows of War Memorial Stadium, said the days of empty seats ended as soon as Broyles got the Razorbacks rolling.

"He changed the way the state was viewed," Jones said. "He changed the way the University of Arkansas was viewed. He changed a lot of things.

"I mean, epic stuff."

'CHARMED LIFE'

Broyles started 0-6 as the Razorbacks' football coach in 1958 -- leading to jokes later that as athletic director he might have fired himself -- before Arkansas won its final four games, all in November.

"They remember what you do in November," Broyles liked to say.

Arkansas went 9-2 in 1959, won a share of the SWC title and beat Georgia Tech 14-7 in the Gator Bowl.

The 1964 Razorbacks finished 11-0 -- highlighted by a 14-13 victory at No. 1 Texas and a 10-7 victory over Nebraska in the Cotton Bowl -- and won a share of the national title along with Alabama.

Broyles suffered one of his most disappointing losses the next season in the Cotton Bowl when LSU upset No. 2 Arkansas 14-7 to end the Razorbacks' 22-game winning streak and cost them a shot to win a second consecutive national title.

Arkansas was in the running for another national championship in 1969 before No. 1 Texas beat the No. 2 Razorbacks 15-14 in Fayetteville in a game moved to the end of the season at ABC's request and dubbed "The Big Shootout" by Longhorns coach Darrell Royal.

Broyles and Royal became close friends and often spent time together in the offseason playing golf. Broyles said they never talked about football.

The 1976 Arkansas-Texas game in Austin became the final game for both Broyles and Royal as coaches, with the Longhorns winning 29-12.

Broyles, 52, stepped away from coaching to focus on his duties as athletic director.

In 1994 when the Democrat-Gazette did an article on Broyles still being athletic director as he was turning 70, there was an accompanying story speculating on his successor.

Sutton said at the time he expected Broyles to remain athletic director into his 80s, and he was on target.

Broyles was 83 when he turned the job over to Jeff Long on Jan. 1, 2008.

"I'll assert that no collegiate athletic figure has controlled a campus and a state the way Frank Broyles has controlled Arkansas," Pat Forde wrote for ESPN.com in February 2007 when Broyles announced his plans to retire. "And no college athletic figure ever will again."

Forde referred to Broyles as "the last emperor" in college athletics.

A native of Decatur, Ga., Broyles played football, basketball and baseball in high school and at Georgia Tech, where he was a star quarterback.

Broyles was the SEC player of the year in 1944 -- Georgia Tech was a conference member from 1933-1963 -- when he set a then Orange Bowl record with 309 passing yards in the Yellow Jackets' 26-12 loss to Tulsa.

He bypassed professional football to go into coaching and got an assistant's job at Baylor in 1947. Eleven years later after additional stops at Florida, Georgia Tech and Missouri, Broyles came to Arkansas to stay.

photo

Democrat-Gazette file photo

Texas Coach Darrell Royal (right) and Arkansas Coach Frank Broyles meet after the Dec. 6, 1969, game in Fayetteville, a game that became known as “The Big Shootout,” 15-14 Texas victory.

photo

Photo courtesy ABC Sports

Frank Broyles (right) and broadcaster Keith Jackson began working as a team on ABC college football telecasts after Broyles retired as the Razorbacks coach in 1976.

photo

AP file photo

Frank Broyles is carried off the fi eld by jubilant players after the No. 18 Razorbacks upset No. 2 Texas A&M 30-6 on Dec. 6, 1975, at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock.

Broyles’ record at UA, Missouri

Year-by-year

YR. REC. BOWL

1957* 5-4-1 None

1958 4-6 None

1959 9-2 Gator

1960 8-3 Cotton

1961 8-3 Sugar

1962 9-2 Sugar

1963 5-5 None

1964 11-0 Cotton

1965 10-1 Cotton

1966 8-2 NONE

1967 4-5-1 NONE

1968 10-1 Sugar

1969 9-2 Sugar

1970 9-2 NONE

1971 8-3-1 Liberty

1972 6-5 NONE

1973 5-5-1 NONE

1974 6-4-1 NONE

1975 10-2 Cotton

1976 5-5-1 NONE

20 YRS 149-62-6

  • Coached 1 season at Missouri

By the numbers

1 National championship

2 Former players and assistant coaches who won college and Super Bowl titles

5 Victories over Texas

7 SWC titles

10 Bowl games

19 Years coaching at Arkansas

$230 million Spending on facilities during tenure

.700 Winning percentage

Tweets & Quotes

JIMMY JOHNSON

1964Razorback

"Frank Broyles, great coach..we were undefeated and National Champions not because of players but because of coaching."

BARRY SWITZER

Ex-Hogs player

"The thing I think about Coach Broyles ... there are only one or two people in your life you can say 'Coach' to. He was my Coach."

PAUL FINEBAUM

SEC Network

"One of the most important and influential figures in the history of the game."

DARREN MCFADDEN

UA'sall-time rusher

"Very sad day for razorback nation we lost a great one. Frank Broyles will forever be missed."

JIMBO FISHER

Florida State coach

"He was the first guy who really promoted the assistant coaches. He was one of the true visionaries in college football."

GUS MALZAHN

Auburn coach

"College athletics and the state of Arkansas lost a true legend. Thank you Coach Broyles for your vision, leadership and passion for CFB."

MACK BROWN

Former Texas coach

"He and Coach Royal were best friends. The CFB Coaching Community lost another great one. May Coach RIP!

ED ORGERON

LSU coach

"I had the privilege of working for Coach Broyles as a young coach. ... One of the legends."

TOM HERMAN

Texas coach

We lost a College FB icon & great man. Spending time with him at Broyles Award is an experience I'll never forget


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http://www.arkansas…">DECADE-BY-DECADE

"It's been a charmed life," Broyles said in 2007. "Nothing but charmed."

Sports on 08/15/2017

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