Meeting in a group setting, Don James regularly encouraged his University of Washington assistant coaches to go around the table and provide updates on their football players — to a point.
In 1976, everyone's second year in Seattle, linebackers coach Merle "Skip" Hall took a turn at this. James had brought the likable, energetic man to the UW after they had been assistant coaches together at Colorado and James had hired him for his Kent State staff when he became a head coach for the first time.
On this day, Hall was noticeably frustrated and he let it show. Going down the list, he told how his UW players were struggling on the field, having trouble in the classroom, even on the outs with their girlfriends.
When he was done with his rant, Hall didn't draw any sympathy, comfort or solace from the head coach for these Husky travails.
He received a typical straightforward Don James response.
"Coach James just looked at me and said three words — coach 'em up," Hall said.
The directive seemed to suggest that the only way out of this mess was to take charge of it. Manage it.
Coach 'em up.
Forty-five years later, this is the title of Hall's recently released autobiography, words that have hung with him all these years, words that he gave a slight variance in passing them along a few years later.
In his book, Hall, 77, tells of how he was later serving as the Missouri defensive coordinator for Bob Stull when a former UW walk-on player, now a minister in the Midwest, drove an hour to come thank him for something he said.
It seems that this one-time, non-scholarship Husky had struggled mightily in practice one day and a graduate assistant coach got all over him, yelling and screaming.
Hearing all this commotion, Hall came over and pulled a Don James on the grad assistant on the spot, likewise offering him poignant advice.
"Coach 'em up, not down," he instructed.
The young pastor now lived by those five words.
As Hall points out in telling his life story, coaching can have such a huge influence on the guys in helmets and shoulder pads that it's intended for, and that simple yet memorable words can become a permanent part of people's lives.
And the title for a book.
Hall served as a James assistant for a dozen years at Washington, the longest he coached anywhere, before becoming the head coach at Boise State, then a Division II school, in 1987.
He stayed six years, compiling a 42-28 record, even coaching the Broncos to a 10-4 record and the NCAA 1-AA semifinals in 1990. Yet not everything went smoothly in the beginning.
"Three weeks into, I thought I had made a huge mistake," Hall said.
Grades came in and one third of the Boise State players were ineligible.
Hall did the only thing he could from his James preparation.
Coach 'em up.
By the time he left in 1992, 95 percent of the players were graduating.
Hall, who today resides in Boise, tells of his early upbringing that included briefly living in north Seattle and going to View Ridge elementary school, of being a highly successful high school athlete in Minnesota, of playing quarterback for NAIA Concordia College.
He shares his 18 years of coaching alongside James at those multiple stops, of how they survived the Kent State campus shootings to build a bowl-bound football team. He mentions how UW athletic director Mike Lude suggested to him that he become a head coach and maybe even lead the Huskies one day. He also describes how fellow UW coach Jim Mora Sr. nicknamed him "Skip" because he wasn't particularly fond of the name Merle.
Hall was there when the 1977 Huskies, their third team, began the season 1-3 and James called everyone remotely connected to the program together, even the equipment staff.
He asked everyone to go home that night and write down what they could do to make the Huskies better.
"We did that and we signed it," Hall said. "The next week was like World War III. We went down and beat Oregon 54-0."
That team, despite its tepid beginning, ended up in the Rose Bowl and beat Michigan 27-20.
It happened because James had everyone stop and think about what they were doing and recommit to the effort.
"It was a program-changer," Hall said. "We went to bowl games the next 10 years in a row."
And they coached 'em up.
Hall's book, published by Boise's Aloha Press and with a Nick Saban foreward, retails for $19.95 and can be obtained through coachemupbook.com.
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