Warren Powers obit

Former Mizzou football coach Warren Powers passes away at 80

 

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Former Missouri head football coach Warren Powers died Tuesday night in St. Louis after a lengthy battle with Alzheimer's. He was 80.

His death came just weeks after the Sept. 21 passing of his wife, Linda, who was 73.

Powers coached the Tigers for seven seasons from 1978 to 1984, achieving a winning record in six of those years.

Missouri played in five bowl games during Powers' tenure, amassing a postseason record of 3-2.

Powers, a Kansas City native, posted an overall record of 46-33-3 as Missouri's coach.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with the Warren Powers family," current Missouri head football coach Eli Drinkwitz said Wednesday. "He was a big part of our football program's history and heritage."

Only three coaches in Missouri history — Gary Pinkel, Don Faurot and Dan Devine — won more games in Columbia than Powers.

Before coaching at Missouri, Powers was the head coach at Washington State for a year and served as Nebraska's defensive backs coach from 1969 to 1976.

Powers' debut season at Missouri is viewed as one of the Tigers' toughest schedules in program history. The Tigers started 1978 by defeating No. 5 Notre Dame, coached by Devine and quarterbacked by Joe Montana.

Missouri also faced three top-two teams that season and finished 8-4 and No. 18 in the country after defeating LSU in the Liberty Bowl.

He was the head coach at Washington State University in 1977, and the University of Missouri from 1978 through 1984, compiling an overall college football record of 53–37–3 (.586).

He was an all-state high school quarterback at Bishop Lillis High School from Kansas City, Missouri, and played college football at Nebraska, earning three letters as a Husker. As a senior, he helped lead Bob Devaney's first Nebraska team in 1962.

Powers played professionally for six years in the American Football League (AFL) with the Oakland Raiders. As a safety, he started for the 1967 AFL Champion Raiders and in the second AFL-NFL World Championship game, known now as Super Bowl II.

Following his playing career, Powers was an assistant coach under both Bob Devaney and Tom Osborne at the University of Nebraska from 1969 through 1976.

After leaving Nebraska, Powers became the head coach at Washington State. One year after he left Nebraska, Powers took his unranked Washington State Cougars into Lincoln and knocked off the fifteenth-ranked Huskers in the season opener at Memorial Stadium.

The following year in 1978, Powers became the head coach at Missouri. With the Missouri Tigers, Powers again went to Lincoln with another unranked team and pulled off a victory over the second-ranked Nebraska team. Following that game, it would be another 25 years until 2003 when the Missouri Tigers would again defeat the Nebraska Cornhuskers. During his tenure at Missouri, Powers compiled a 46–33–3 (.579) record, including four straight bowl appearances from 1978 to 1981. His best seasons came in 1980 and 1981, where he posted consecutive 8–4 records. In addition, his Tiger football teams went 3–2 in bowl games, defeating LSU in the 1978 Liberty Bowl, South Carolina in the 1979 Hall of Fame Classic, and Southern Miss in the 1981 Tangerine Bowl. During Powers' tensure, Missouri also played in the 1980 Liberty Bowl, losing to Purdue, and the 1983 Holiday Bowl, losing to a BYU Cougars team led by quarterback Steve Young.

On October 24, 1979, the NCAA's Committee on Infractions publicly reprimanded Missouri for a violation of NCAA Constitution related to a failure to exercise institutional control. The violation was in regard to the use of a fund established outside the university for the purpose of paying Powers for debt he assumed while negotiating to become Missouri's head coach. NCAA regulations require the university's involvement when its coach receives a cash supplement related to duties he is performing on the institution's behalf, and the NCAA found that Missouri had failed to do so.