Dear Wyoming, Thank you for Bob Devaney

[NUance]

Remembering Bob DevaneyBy Cody Tucker, Northern Wyoming Daily NewsPosted 09/21/2011 01:38:00 PM

WORLAND, Wyo. — The college football landscape was changed forever when a competitive, motivated coach looking to make his mark walked off the sidelines of War Memorial Stadium in the winter of 1961.

Bob Devaney, who in the previous five seasons led the Wyoming Cowboys to an overall record of 35-10-5, including four consecutive Skyline Conference championships and a win in the 1958 Sun Bowl over Hardin-Simmons, was gone. A man who brought winning to Laramie all the way from the bay of Saginaw, Michigan, left to take over a team that had two winning seasons in two decades, for $19,000 a year and he wasn't even their first or second choice.

A coach, a man that meant so much to the Cowboy State left for a team that settled to have him as its coach. That team, the Nebraska Cornhuskers, would never be the same.

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[The Virginian]

Devaney stills holds the best winning percentage of any Wyoming coach. From his staff came Lloyd Eaton who built on Devaney's success and got Wyoming into the 1967 Sugar Bowl and a No. 5 finish in the polls. He had players like Jim Kiick, Dave Hampton, Vic Washington and Larry Nels, who all went into the NFL. Eaton then went on to screw it up with his mismanagement of the Black 14 incident in 1969.

 

[Nexus]

Actually we have to thank Duffy Daugherty from Michigan State for Devaney. Daugherty was Nebraska's first choice to replace Bill Jennings but he declined our offer and instead suggested that we lure his old assistant, Bob Devaney away from Wyoming.

Daugherty also was instrumental in Devaney’s pursuing the Nebraska job after Jennings was fired.

The Huskers had managed only three winning seasons since the 1940 team went to the Rose Bowl, and “Duffy thought it was a better job than I did,” Devaney wrote in his 1981 autobiography.“He told me if I won here as I had been able to win at Wyoming, things could go big.”

http://nebraska.247s...o-Lincoln-41189

 

[irieboy8]

Bob was the man and whever or how we got him i'm stoked!!!!

 

[huskernumerouno]

That was a great article.