Bill Mallory, Hoosiers' career leader in wins, dies at 82
Bill Mallory, Indiana's?all-time coaching wins leader who upgraded football teams at Colorado, Northern Illinois?and Miami (Ohio), died Friday in Bloomington, Indiana.
Indiana University confirmed Mallory's passing following a tweet by Mallory's son, Curt, the football coach at Indiana State.
Bill Mallory was 82. He underwent emergency brain surgery after falling on Tuesday. Curt Mallory tweeted Thursday that his father had been placed in hospice care.
Bill Mallory went 168-129-4 in 27 seasons as a college head coach, guiding 10 teams to bowl appearances with four AP top-20 finishes. He led Miami (Ohio), his alma mater, to an 11-0 record in 1973 and a No. 15 finish in the final poll. Mallory later coached Colorado to the 1977 Orange Bowl and Northern Illinois to its first Mid-American Conference title in 1983.
He is best remembered for boosting Indiana's moribund program, which under his leadership reached six bowl games between 1986 and 1993 and tied for second in the Big Ten in 1987. The Hoosiers had made just one bowl game in the 16 seasons before Mallory arrived. After firing Mallory in 1996, Indiana didn't go back to the postseason for 11 years.
On Friday afternoon, Indiana football's Twitter account paid respect to Mallory.
After being named Big Ten Coach of the Year in 1986, Mallory became the first man to win the award in consecutive seasons. He won MAC Coach of the Year honors in 1973 and 1983.
"I believe in just kick-tail, lock-jaw hard work," he told The Washington Post in 1988. "And no excuses."
Mallory was raised in Sandusky, Ohio. He played two-way end at Miami (Ohio) for Ara Parseghian and John Pont, earning first-team All-MAC honors as a senior captain.
"John and Ara were great mentors for me," Mallory told the Hamilton-Middletown Journal-News in 2013. "They were excellent teachers and very caring people about their players. They had a lot of important traits that I tried to take with me when I had the opportunity to be a coach."
Mallory's father, Guy, coached basketball, and Bill followed him into coaching, first with Doyt Perry at Bowling Green and eventually as an assistant for Woody Hayes at Ohio State. Mallory landed his first head-coaching job at his alma mater, succeeding Bo Schembechler, who had left for Michigan.
"Bob Knight called me and asked if I was interested," Mallory told The News-Gazette of Champaign, Illinois, in 2008. "I asked him if there would be a commitment to football, and he said there would be. We made a commitment, and things got much better."
"You tell Earle I've had a couple of dark days too," Mallory countered, "and I don't want to hear that."
"He could really work up a lather, foaming at the mouth," former Indiana running back Cal Miller told the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel in 1994. "He'd have real foam at the side of his mouth. We'd sit there in awe of him. I remember sitting in a meeting prior to any big game and watching [Mallory] orchestrate this talk, and I'm wondering how much I am seeing of what Woody Hayes or Ara Parseghian was like when he played or worked for them."
Bill Mallory was inducted into the athletic halls of fame at Indiana, Northern Illinois and Miami (Ohio), as well as the MAC Hall of Fame in 2013.