Buffalo’s Best /The road to the Hall of Fame
Yakapovich’s teams always came prepared
This is the third in a series of stories on the 2008 inductees into the Greater Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame. The installments will appear in Saturday’s editions of The Buffalo News.
When you played football for Jules Yakapovich, either you took the field prepared or you didn’t take the field at all.
“When we practiced we ran plays over and over and over, literally we’d run them 100 times,” said Bob Miller, who played fullback on Kenmore West’s 1969 national championship team coached by Yakapovich. “It was just repetition after repetition. So when we played a game, we always knew we were better prepared.”
In October, Yakapovich will be enshrined in the Greater Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame’s Pride of Western New York, which honors area sports immortals posthumously.
Yakapovich, who died at age 72 in 1993, coached the Blue Devils for 26 seasons before retiring in 1976 with a 127-76-5 career record. His ’69 team outscored eight foes, 389-67, beating every opponent by at least 34 points.
Though he wrote a 224-page book titled, “The Radar Defense for Winning Football,” in 1970, Yakapovich was hands-on with the offense, too. His coaching methods, including the two-platoon system and motion offense, were way ahead of their time.
“He was quite an offensive tactician,” said Rob Sutton, who threw for 24 touchdowns and ran for 11 more while quarterbacking the ’69 squad. “We ran a true run-and-shoot offense in the ’60s. Our offense wasn’t much different than what you see with the service academies now. What we ran was pretty sophisticated for high schools.”
Yakapovich, who was born in Tonawanda in 1921, was a lieutenant in the Marine Corps during World War II. He graduated from Colgate University in 1944 and was drafted in the 16th round by the National Football League’s Detroit Lions.
But just three years later he began his coaching career as an assistant at what was then called Kenmore High School. West won four Niagara Frontier League championships during his tenure.
The radar defense, which he devised, dictated that a defender’s initial movement was lateral, rather than forward or backward.
That’s one of the reasons his ’69 squad, with an average weight of just under 161 pounds, was able to dominate.
It yielded an average of just 59.8 rushing yards, 70.1 passing yards and six first downs during a season that capped off a three-year run in which the Blue Devils went 23-1.
“Our linemen were quite a bit smaller,” Sutton said. “It gave a kid that was smaller a real chance to compete.”
For example, Mark Leous was a starting defensive tackle at 5-foot-5, 135 pounds, and Carl Price started at offensive tackle despite weighing just 138.
The players stood at the line of scrimmage rather than getting into the usual three-point stances. “Each offensive move . . . evokes a response from the defender which nullifies that block,” Yakapovich explained in 1970. “Since each block is vital to the pattern and is designed to open the hole for the runner, the play is destroyed.”
Playing at just under 200, Miller was one of the squad’s largest players. One of the keys to the offense’s success, according to Miller, was that Yakapovich was “constantly changing things,” not letting an opposing defense zero in on his team’s tendencies.
“He was tough, believe me,” Miller said of Yakapovich. “He wasn’t vicious but he certainly got this point across. He demanded that you listen to what he said and it was his way or the highway. But you wanted to play for him, you wanted to win for him, to do what it took to succeed.”
Miller credits his former coach with being a master psychologist, too.
During the national championship season, the Blue Devils trailed North Tonawanda, 15-12, at halftime but scored all 38 points in the second half.
“We came into halftime thinking we were really going to get our butts chewed out,” Miller said. “But he came in and just told us to relax and we were all looking at each other. We went back out and won, 50-15.”
After that game, Yakapovich said his team showed “character, courage and tenacity.”
Sutton called Yakapovich “a very strict disciplinarian, but in a good way.”
“Our practices weren’t all that long but we were always on the move,” said Sutton, who went on to play three seasons at Syracuse University. “He taught us an attitude that if you win your position, you’ll win the game.”
Miller went on to play linebacker at Kent State, as a teammate of Pro Football Hall of Famer Jack Lambert, and under coach Don James.
“Coach James was very similar to Jules’ demeanor,” Miller recalled. “If you walked into a [meeting] room a minute late, you knew you were in trouble. But Jules instilled winning, and a good positive attitude, into all of us. He was truly a great motivator.”
Yakapovich wasn’t just a great teacher on the field. Sutton recalls him being great in the classroom as well, teaching German and social studies.
“He made a pretty good student out of me,” said Sutton, whom Yakapovich called the best quarterback he ever coached. “When I played for him we never even considered losing. We just came in with a mind frame that if we played the best we could, we were going to win.
“Having a positive attitude was the most important thing he taught me. That, and being a team player.”
For ticket information, go to gbshof.com
