Chuck Fairbanks obit

Chuck Fairbanks, a Fitful Football Coach, Dies at 79

 

He was not on the list.

Chuck Fairbanks, who built successful football teams in college at the University of Oklahoma and in the National Football League with the New England Patriots but left each job under a cloud of disfavor, died on Tuesday in Scottsdale, Ariz. He was 79.

The cause was brain cancer, said Pete Moris, a spokesman for the University of Oklahoma athletic department.

Known as a savvy player evaluator, a shrewd recruiter and a practice-field taskmaster, Fairbanks went to Oklahoma as an assistant in 1966 and took over when his predecessor, Jim Mackenzie, died of a heart attack in April 1967 at 37.

In his first year, Fairbanks led the Sooners to a 10-1 record and the championship of the conference then known as the Big Eight. Though the team lost four games the next three seasons, it won the conference title again in 1968. In 1970 Fairbanks’s assistant, Barry Switzer, who would become his successor, prevailed on him to install the innovative wishbone offense.

The wishbone, also called the triple option, is a run-heavy offense that relies on a crafty quarterback who as a play unfolds must decide whether to give the ball to a fullback plunging up the middle, keep the ball or pitch it wide to a running back. It took a season for the Sooners to perfect it, but in 1971, with quarterback Jack Mildren running the offense and the speedy running back Greg Pruitt slicing through defenses, they led the nation in scoring and yards gained, whipped Auburn in the Sugar Bowl and finished second in the polls. A national title eluded them when, in the 10th game of the season, they lost to league rival Nebraska, 35-31, in a wildly exciting contest often called “the game of the century.” Nebraska went undefeated and won the national championship.

After the 1972 season, during which Oklahoma was again 11-1 and again finished second in the polls (to Southern California), Fairbanks accepted a job as the coach and general manager of the Patriots. He left Sooners fans feeling betrayed, especially after the N.C.A.A. unearthed 14 rules violations at Oklahoma during Fairbanks’s tenure, including tampering with an academic transcript, and punished the university by ordering forfeits of games and rendering powerful Sooners teams ineligible for bowl games for two years.

With the Patriots, Fairbanks took a mess of a franchise, whose cumulative record from 1970 to ’72 was 11-31, and made it competitive.

He was among the first to use a 3-4 defense in the N.F.L. — three down linemen and four linebackers — which simplified reads for young linebackers and took advantage of their speed. He drafted shrewdly, including players who became stars, like Sam Cunningham, Steve Grogan and John Hannah, later the first Patriot to be elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. From 1973 to ’78, his Patriots teams went 46-40 in the regular season, including 31-13 with two playoff appearances (both losses) in his last three years. He was named the league’s coach of the year in 1976 by The Sporting News.

Once again, however, Fairbanks made a shady exit. During the 1978 regular season, with an unexpired contract with the Patriots, he secretly accepted a job back in the college ranks at the University of Colorado.

When the Patriots’ owner, Billy Sullivan, learned of Fairbanks’s plans, which were presented as a fait accompli, he was enraged. He suspended Fairbanks for a game, reinstated him, and watched as the Patriots were eliminated from the playoffs.

The Patriots sued the university, the university sued the Patriots, and the affair was finally settled after a Colorado booster organization, also negotiating in secret, paid the Patriots $200,000 to release Fairbanks from his contract. Distaste was widespread.

“This is public business; it should be conducted in sunlight,” Gov. Richard D. Lamm said at the time. “I, like a lot of Coloradans, was upset reading the newspaper, thinking the citizens of this state were being treated like mushrooms — kept in the dark and a bunch of manure spread on us.”

Fairbanks’s tenure at Colorado was calamitous: in three seasons, the team went 7-26, including a humiliating 82-42 loss in 1980 — to Oklahoma — and was tainted by stories of off-the-field misdeeds by players, including two who were expelled for selling copies of an exam to an undercover police officer.

Charles Leo Fairbanks was born in Detroit on June 10, 1933, and played football at Michigan State. He began his coaching career at Ishpeming High School in Michigan, and he was an assistant at Arizona State and the University of Houston before landing at Oklahoma. He was married and had several children.

After Colorado, Fairbanks became the president and coach of the New Jersey Generals in the fledgling United States Football League and signed Herschel Walker. Before play started, he reflected on his peripatetic career in The New York Times.

“I left to satisfy myself, I guess, to see if I could be successful as a professional coach,” Fairbanks said about leaving Oklahoma for New England. “It was a challenge, another step up the ladder, maybe a matter of ego.”

He went on: “The New England Patriots were really down at the time. We built them into a contending team. When I left, I got involved in an extended legal controversy. If I had known there would be as many problems, I probably wouldn’t have done it. Leaving Colorado was a pure business decision. It was a fine business opportunity for me that very few people in my profession have.”

The Generals performed poorly in their first season, 1983, and Fairbanks was dismissed. The USFL was disbanded after the 1985 season.