IF you ever needed to be reminded that there's no security in coaching a Division I football program, look at what happened last week to Jim Lambright. A winning record
wasn’t good enough
for LambrightYou've got to realize that if the University of Hawaii had a coach like this, they'd be commissioning a statue in his honor.
But the University of Washington has much higher standards, and athletic director Barbara Hedges fired Lambright.
Fred vonAppen was allowed to reach 0-18 before he got the heave-ho. But all it took for Lambright's dismissal was an Oahu Bowl loss to WAC champion Air Force's tricky option offense on Christmas Day.
For the first time in 22 years, the Huskies did not finish over .500. They finished 6-6, and there's no way Hedges could tolerate that.
Nope. Not even though Lambright:
-- Had 10 starters who missed a total of 27 games last season due to injuries.
-- Led the Huskies to four bowl appearances -- Sun Bowl, Holiday Bowl, Aloha bowl and Oahu Bowl -- in his last four years.
-- Had a 44-25-1 record in six seasons as head coach.
-- Kept making Washington a winner despite NCAA sanctions brought on by his predecessor.
-- Signed a contract extension that should have kept him with the Huskies through 2001.
-- Saw 10 of his players selected in the 1998 NFL draft -- more than any other college offered.
-- Was a superb defensive coordinator before being named head coach and implemented the 'attack style' defense that led to a perfect season and the national championship in1991.
-- Was one of only three active college head coaches who had been associated with their schools for 30 or more years.
Lambright had made more of a life investment in his university, yet that didn't matter either.
OF course, I'm not even mentioning the fact that the 56-year-old Lambright, who has been well-known in the islands for years as a recruiter of young local talent, is one of the college game's most decent human beings.
He is founder of the Jim Lambright Medical Research Foundation, which collects money to find a cure for the incurable Niemann-Pick Disease. The degenerative disorder, which attacks the liver, spleen and brain, afflicts two of Lambright's stepsons. He had to watch them deteriorate last year, along with his football coaching career at Washington.
He saw another stepson collapse and die of a massive heart attack last February.
These emotional burdens, combined with the fact that the effects of the scholarship sanctions were being fully felt in 1998, must have weighed a ton on Lambright.
Yet Hedges said she had serious concerns about the ''quality of leadership" that Lambright was providing Washington players.
I think she meant that none of those four bowl appearances was a Rose Bowl.
Well, I'm not the Huskies' AD, and all I can go on is my own dealings with Lambright, and what I know of his reputation.
But one thing he said to me during Christmas week might have been the key to his downfall. He said his family tragedies had taught him that football was not the most important thing in life.
In the coldly competitive world of high-powered NCAA football, I'm not sure that sort of attitude can ever be tolerated.
Pat Bigold has covered sports for daily newspapers
in Hawaii and Massachusetts since 1978.