Coupeville coach Randy Bottorff returns to the University of Miami of Ohio.
It’s been a month of milestones for Randy Bottorff.
The longtime coach is set to return to the floor as an assistant to Brad Sherman when Coupeville High School boys’ basketball kicks off a new season Monday afternoon.
But, before returning to his role as a hoops mentor, Bottorff celebrated his own athletic roots.
Foremost among that was taking part in a Hall of Fame induction at the University of Miami of Ohio, which recently honored its undefeated 1973 squad.
Those Redhawks went 11-0, including a win over Florida in the Tangerine Bowl.
Miami had the nation’s top-rated defense that season, outscoring opponents 223-76 as the ’73 team put together the last undefeated season for a storied program which has produced numerous NFL players and coaches.
As he looked back at his younger days on the gridiron, Bottorff sent us the following first-person account of his trip back down memory lane.
David,
Please accept my very deep apologies for not getting back to you in over a month.
My time in Oxford was the beginning of a nearly month-long trip back to the Midwest and the East Coast and included not only the Miami Hall of Fame induction but also my fiftieth high school reunion from Western Hills High School in Cincinnati.
When we returned the furnace was broke as well as a water pipe, so it took some time to recover once we got home.
In the spring of 1973, I contacted the coaching staff at Miami and inquired about walking on.
After talking to my high school coach, they kept in contact with me that summer and offered me a position as a preferred walk-on.
Walking on at Miami is much different than at most schools because a lot of guys start football careers there.
Case in point – there were already two walk-ons starting on the defense in Ron Zook (who later was the head coach at Illinois and at Florida and is currently at Rutgers or Maryland I believe as an assistant) and Brad Cousino, who was an All-American nose guard and later played in the NFL.
There are several books out there that cover Brad’s life because he was such a success story.
John Harbaugh of the Baltimore Ravens walked on about five years after I did and is in the Cradle of Coaches there, along with Sean McVay of the Los Angeles Rams.
Sean was inducted into the Cradle back in May of this year.
I played with Sean’s Uncle John in 1973 and 1974.
In the fall of 1973, there were a handful of us walk-ons that began practicing with the team once school had begun, but the team had started practicing earlier that fall.
At first, we walk-ons and some of the scholarship freshmen did not participate in practice much beyond individual drills.
About a week into fall practice Coach Crum (our defensive coordinator and later coach at North Carolina) grabbed me and told me to go in for the guy who was practicing as the scout team fullback — who had just screwed up a play.
I was as nervous as I could be, but I was tired of standing on the sidelines, so I did everything I could to keep the job.
I remember being scared to death one day when Bill Mallory, the head coach, came over to specifically watch me practice at fullback.
Apparently, I had made an impression on somebody on the coaching staff and didn’t know it.
It was like God walked over to watch me.
I was the only walk-on from that class that was practicing fully and eating at the athletic dining hall, and I wanted to keep it that way.
For reference, Rob Carpenter was the scout team tailback in the backfield with me. He played in the NFL for about 10 years.
We practiced hard. Very hard.
The previous summer I had begun to work out with Don Hasselback (who went to Colorado and later played in the NFL; you may remember his son, Matt) after playing against him in high school.
We worked so hard that we had to sit at the gym until we could lift our arms up enough to drive home.
But at Miami, we worked even harder.
Nobody, and I really mean nobody in the nation, was going to out-work us in practice and games.
We were going to win every game because we outworked and out-prepared anybody we played.
If you screwed up in practice, the juniors and seniors came after you – not the coaches.
I made one mistake in practice as the scout team fullback that year and Brad Cousino grabbed me by the face mask and chewed me out in front of everyone else.
That was the last mistake I made.
Our defense was the number one defense in Division I football that year, so four days a week I was practicing against the nations’ top defense.
By the end of the week, at the end of the season, I could barely walk back to my dorm room.
I still remember how hard we worked collectively and individually.
I quickly understood that if I was going to be a success at anything during my life, I was going to have to work that hard to achieve it.
Bottorff and fellow inductee Ken Hauck.
Even though I only played for one year before my knees told me it was time to quit, those guys remained the best friends I had in college.
I have remained in contact with Ken Hauck over the years in particular.
Ken was a defensive tackle on that team, a high school vice principal and the best man at my wedding.
Around here, everyone remembers Don James as the “Dawg Father” at Washington.
But before he came to Washington, he was the head coach at Kent State, and in 1973 Nick Saban was a graduate assistant with their team.
Jack Lambert, the former Hall of Fame linebacker for the Steelers, was their All-League middle linebacker as well – we called him the “Stork” cuz he looked like an ungainly bird.
At the beginning of practice on the Thursday before we played Kent State, our head coach, Bill Mallory, gathered us all around him and pulled out a tape recorder.
He then played a recording of a female voice saying, “You’ve reached the Kent State University Athletic Department, home of the next Mid-American Conference Football Champions.”
We beat Kent State 20-10 that Saturday.
These are just some of the remembrances that I have of that team.
Needless to say, it was quite an honor to be inducted into the Hall of Fame.
Coach B
Showing the wives where it all began.
The 1973 season:
Miami 32 Dayton 0
Miami 24 Purdue 19
Miami 13 South Carolina 11
Miami 31 Marshall 6
Miami 10 Ohio 6
Miami 31 Bowling Green 8
Miami 16 Toledo 0
Miami 24 Western Michigan 9
Miami 20 Kent State 10
Miami 6 Cincinnati 0
Miami 16 Florida 7
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