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Steve Sloan, coach of Texas Tech football's 10-win team of 1976, dies at 79
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- Steve Sloan, coach of Texas Tech football's 10-win team of 1976, dies at 79
Steve Sloan, the youthful coach who led the Texas Tech football program to a 10-win season in 1976 and jolted the Red Raiders a year later by returning to his Southeastern Conference roots, died Sunday in Orlando, Florida, where he had lived in retirement.
According to an obituary written by former Alabama sports information director Wayne Atcheson, Sloan had been in memory care the past three months and died at Orlando Health Phillips Hospital. He was 79.
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Sloan's 1976 Tech team won its first eight games and was ranked No. 5 before a loss to Houston. The Red Raiders lost to Nebraska 27-24 in the Astro-Bluebonnet Bowl, finishing 10-2 and No. 13 in The Associated Press final poll.
Sloan, 23-12 in three seasons at Tech, is one of five Red Raiders coaches with a season of at least 10 wins.
"I got really close with coach Sloan, even enough to name my son Sloan, so that tells you what I thought of him," said Rodney Allison, the quarterback in '76. "He was like a father figure to me pretty much my whole life. Coach Sloan to me was a great coach, but probably an even better human being. I've told people this a lot: He was probably the greatest human being I've ever met in my life, still believe that to this day."
Related: Pettit: Raider players affected Parcells' coaching style
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Related: Texas Tech welcomes back Sloan, Dockery teams
With roots as an all-American quarterback and assistant coach at Alabama, Sloan was viewed as a potential successor to Bear Bryant, but a different SEC school took him from Tech.
On Dec. 1, 1977, with the Red Raiders still to play Florida State in a bowl game, Ole Miss hired Sloan to his third head-coaching job in five years. At the local press conference arranged by Tech, Sloan choked up to the point publicist Ralph Carpenter read Sloan's prepared statement.
Sloan, an Austin native, grew up in Tennessee. He was the starting quarterback and Orange Bowl MVP on Alabama's 1965 national championship team.
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He was major-college football's youngest head coach when he got the Vanderbilt job at age 28 and was dubbed "Kid Coach" when Tech hired him at age 30.
Sloan's first Tech staff included Bill Parcells, Romeo Crennel and Mike Pope — two future NFL head coaches and a longtime NFL assistant.
The Red Raiders had gone 11-1 and beaten Tennessee in the Gator Bowl in 1973 under Jim Carlen, and Sloan coached a team nearly as successful three years later.
"I know everybody was going to say he did it with Carlen's players, and it probably is true," Allison said, "but he still coached a team and an offense that was very unique back in that day. The combination of the veer offense with the dropback pass was not really heard of back then. If you ran the veer, you (paired it) with play-action.
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"His genius was offensively and putting good people around him, which he did at Tech. He brought just legendary coaches to Tech. He had a great winning percentage and brought people in and was very successful."
Steve Sloan, who coached Texas Tech to a 10-2 season in 1976, died Sunday at age 79. Sloan is pictured on the cover of the 1975 Tech football media guide when he was starting the first of his three seasons with the Red Raiders.
On the 1976 team, offensive linemen Dan Irons and Mike Sears, running back Larry Isaac, defensive end Harold Buell and linebacker Thomas Howard were consensus all-Southwest Conference honorees with Howard earning all-America recognition. Allison was named first-team All-SWC by The Associated Press and SWC most valuable player by The Dallas Morning News.
"We were fortunate that year, and we had a lot of good players," Sloan told The A-J in 2010. "We had an extraordinary amount of speed. In college football, speed makes a big difference, because you can make more big plays. Rodney was real fast. He made a lot of plays with his feet as well as throwing the ball."
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Sloan led Vanderbilt to a 7-3-2 season in 1974, the Commodores' first winning record in six years. Vanderbilt and Texas Tech tied 6-6 in the Peach Bowl before Sloan switched teams.
Despite Sloan's credentials as a player, his personality and his meteoric rise in coaching, he never again coached a team to a winning record after leaving the Red Raiders at age 33. From 1978-82 at Ole Miss, his teams went 20-34-1, and from 1983-86 at Duke, his teams went 13-31.
He served as athletics director at Alabama (1987-89), North Texas (1990-92), Central Florida (1993-2002) and Chattanooga (2002-06).
He and his wife Brenda returned to Orlando, the city where UCF is located, when he retired.
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"Steve was a gifted athlete," Atcheson wrote. "He dearly loved coaching young men, he was an outstanding administrator, a committed Christian, always the perfect gentleman, and most would tell you that he was one of the finest persons they had ever known. He had an infectious smile, he loved people, was never critical and always complimentary."
Steve Sloan is all smiles as he meets the press and supporters during Feb. 15, 1973, press conference when he was introduced as head coach at Vanderbilt. Sloan, a head coach at Vandy, Texas Tech, Ole Miss and Duke, died Sunday at age 79.
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Steve Sloan, coach of 10-win Texas Tech football team in '76, dies at 79
