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Featherston: Past, Present & Future: Gutekunst Bleeds Duke Blue
8/10/2007 12:00:00 AM | Football
by Al Featherston, GoDuke.com
DURHAM, N.C. - John Gutekunst is Duke's newest assistant football coach, joining the staff on Mar. 14 last spring.
But Coach “Gutie” has Blue Devil roots that go back much further than any of his colleagues on Ted Roof's staff ... far longer than Roof himself ... longer than anyone currently working in the Duke athletic department. He first arrived on campus as a freshman football player in the late summer of 1962, when Bill Murray was the Blue Devil coach and Duke was the best football program in the ACC.
John Gutekunst is a link between the current staff and Duke's legacy of football greatness.
He can tell the current Blue Devil players about the great 1962 team that finished 8-2 with a 21-point rally for victory at Florida and a seven-point loss at eventual national champion Southern Cal. He can tell them about All-American running back Jay Wilkinson, the son of the legendary Oklahoma coach, who was Gutie's roommate on the road. He can talk about the win at Pittsburgh in his senior season or about the season-ending victory over North Carolina that year that gave Duke its seventh ACC title in the league's first 13 years of existence [see sidebar on 1965 ACC championship].
He can talk about the shock and dismay he felt in the locker room that day when Murray interrupted the post-game celebration to announce that he was retiring.
“We were on such a high and after the game, Coach Murray told us in the locker room that he was resigning,” Gutekunst said. “We [the players] had no idea at all that it was coming. When I came back to Duke as a coach, a lot of his assistant coaches were still around ? guys like Herschel Caldwell and Carmen Falcone. They told me they had no idea [Murray was retiring] either.”
It's obvious in hindsight that the retirement of Murray was a key moment in Duke's decline as a football power. But Gutekunst argued that it's wrong to pinpoint one reason for the program's struggles.
“I think the changes had already started a little bit,” he said, looking back on his final season as a player. “I think there were several reasons for it. One was [the coming of] two-platoon football.”
The change in the rules put a premier on numbers and Duke couldn't or wouldn't match the football factories that built rosters of 150-plus players.
“Also, here in the South, was integration,” he said. “I think Duke was ahead of the game [in the ACC] but was still behind nationally. For instance, the Big Ten had a great name in the Tidewater area because at the time I was playing, black players could not play [in the ACC].”
Gutekunst joined Tom Harp's Duke staff in 1967 and stayed on when Mike McGee became head coach in 1971. He coached a variety of positions for the two coaches, ending up as Duke's defensive coordinator under McGee. He saw close-up as the program struggled to keep up with rivals who had far more financial resources, bigger fan bases and less academic hurdles to clear.
“We don't make excuses for that time,” Gutekunst said.
In fact, he's proud of much of what McGee and his staff accomplished in the 1970s.
“You never hear this about Mike, but Mike did a great job making Duke a great place for black athletes to come to,” the Blue Devil assistant said.
Gutekunst left Duke when McGee stepped down in 1978, beginning a 29-year odyssey to a wide variety of football outposts. He coached for Bill Dooley at Virginia Tech (where he mentored a young defensive tackle named Bruce Smith) and for Lou Holtz at Minnesota. When Holtz left Minneapolis to become head coach at Notre Dame, Gutekunst replaced him as head coach, guiding the Gophers to a 29-37-2 record and two bowl games in six seasons. He also coached one year in the Arena League, five seasons at South Carolina and shorter stints at Rutgers, Rhode Island and North Carolina.
It was jarring for those who knew Gutekunst at Duke to see him working in Chapel Hill, especially since in his first season as the team's co-defensive coordinator, he helped the Tar Heels cut points allowed by 22.0 percent from the previous season en route to earning a bowl bid.
***
Of course, if things had worked out differently, Gutekunst might have returned to Duke much sooner than he did ? and as head coach.
When Steve Sloan left the Blue Devils to become athletic director at Alabama after the 1986 season, a representative of the university contacted the Blue Devil alum and asked if he'd be interesting in coming back to Durham.
“A lot of people don't know that I was offered the job in 1986,” Gutekunst said. “But I didn't want to leave those kids at Minnesota after one year.”
Gutekunst's decision turned out to be Duke's gain as Steve Spurrier was hired instead and sparked the best three-year run in modern Duke history, including an eight-win season and an ACC championship in 1989. But by the end of the 1993 season, Spurrier was long gone back to Florida and Duke was once again looking for a head coach after the resignation of Barry Wilson.
Gutekunst, then working as an assistant at South Carolina, was one of three finalists for the head coaching job.
“I think that was a time when I had some questions of the Duke administration about the program,” he said.
Those questions have been answered in the 14 years since Gutekunst lost out to Fred Goldsmith in the 1993 coaching search. The university has made a far stronger commitment to the football program ? a commitment exemplified by the Yoh Football Center.
“The tangible evidence is here and if you look at the future plans, you can see that,” Gutekunst said. “I think Duke should always have the goal that in whatever it participates in ? be it the hospital, biomedical engineering, the school of environment ? Duke should never accept not trying to be one of the best. And I have no reason to believe this administration doesn't think so too.”
Gutekunst joined Coach Roof's staff just in time to host many of his former teammates and players from his coaching days for last spring's Football Summit. He was particularly well placed to explain to players from the past just how bright the future is.
“If you took the summit as an example, the guys that are here now all told me, ?Gee, we didn't know there was so much passion so many ex-players have for Duke.' We are still proud of being Duke players and Duke graduates. Most of them wanted to know what they can do to help.”
Gutekunst explained that Duke football has more going for it today than it did in the post-Murray era. For instance, the numbers disparity that came with two-platoon football disappeared when the NCAA adopted its 85-scholarship limit. The school's facilities are better than they were in the 1970s and 1980s (and will be better still when the planned upgrades to Wade Stadium are carried out). And the era of awkward integration is long past.
Duke still has its tough academic standards to deal with, but Gutekunst suggested that every school has its own particular handicaps.
“The easy assumption is that [the way to succeed is to] compromise academics,” he said. “And that's probably the biggest fallacy that there is. Every school has its individual problems. Take the University of Miami, for instance. I can remember going down there and wondering if anybody was going to show up for the game. When they became a national championship contender, all of a sudden they had full houses.”
Duke also has a small fan base with its alumni scattered across the nation.
“We have had a problem with live attendance,” he pointed out. “We went from being a primarily Southern university during my time here to being a national school. Still, with the population that has come into the Research Triangle, I think there are fans who would like to go to a college football game and it's our job to try to get them here.
“We're assigned to put a product on the field that people want to see. Everybody likes to follow a winner, but you also have to make it an event for people who have no other affiliation.”
Basically, Gutekunst's view is that Duke has no excuses for not rebuilding its football tradition.
“As far as competing, that's our job [as coaches],” he said. “I certainly believe ... I absolutely believe it's possible to compete and play well. “
***
As Duke's defensive secondary coach, Gutekunst will have a lot to do with Duke's ability to compete this season. He has to rebuild a unit that lost both starting cornerbacks to graduation, including two-time first team All-ACC corner John Talley, the school's all-time interception leader.
He does return both starting safeties from last season ? senior free safety Chris Davis and junior strong safety Adrian Aye-Darko. Unfortunately, Davis missed all of spring practice after postseason shoulder surgery, so Gutekunst never got a chance to see the most logical leader of the secondary in action.
“I'm really anxious to get him on the field and see what he can do,” the new secondary coach said. “But I've been in this game long enough to know, you better count on the guys who are there and if anybody else shows up, that's going to be a bonus.”
Gutekunst has been pleasantly surprised with the reception his players have given him.
“When you've been through what they've been through, they're eager beavers to listen to somebody who can help them win,” he said. “I see a lot of willingness to be good and some ability to be good. This whole team has a tremendous work ethic. I can push them.”
Gutekunst pushed them hard last spring, trying to teach the techniques and schemes that made his secondary expertise prized by coaches such as McGee, Dooley and Holtz.
“At the end of spring practice, I did not think we'd made as much progress as I'd wanted,” he said. “Then when I went back and watched the cutups after the spring recruiting, I had to almost apologize to the kids. We really had made more progress [than I thought].
His biggest complaint was the lack of cohesiveness, which he now blames on himself.
“I was trying to find out who could do what and I was shuffling players and trying to see who could take charge,” Gutekunst explained. “As I looked through the cutups and watched the improvement of individual techniques and recognition and reaction to situations, I was actually a little more pleased than I had been in my mind.”
But Gutekunst warns that the cohesiveness that was lacking in spring had better come quickly in preseason practice.
“They are still not playing within themselves within a team concept, which will get you beat in this league,” he said. “What will come to the top are the guys who can recognize and react and play within the scheme of the team.
“It's got to be developed. One of the things I've always told players is that they decide who starts. Great physical gifts may give you more chances, but production is the only thing that keeps you on the field. If they don't settle that problem a third of the way through camp, then I'll make the decision for them. I'd rather they make it, but my point to them is you don't have the whole camp to do that. I'm not going to wait until the week of the game.
He has to make that decision quickly enough to give the starting secondary time to develop the cohesion it needs.
“Football is a team game, so people working together, getting reps and ability to communicate quickly is important in success,” he said.
Gutekunst believes that he has enough raw material to fashion a productive secondary. But he said that too much emphasis is often put on a player's “athletic” attributes, such as speed and strength and size.
“You ask all these young men what they can bench press and they can all tell you to the pound,” he said. “You ask them their 40 speed and they'll tell you in the hundredths of seconds. You ask them their vertical jump and they'll tell you down the inch ...
“Then you ask them their vision, their intelligence and they sort of stare at you. You might get a ?20-20' or a ?Coach I'm smart' back, but what I'm really saying is all that athletic talent you have is meaningless until you recognize with your eyes and then relay it through your brain to tell you what to do. That is a skill and a talent, every much as much as what you bench press ? and in many cases more so. A guy may run a 4.4 40, but if he's running the wrong way, that just means he's farther away from where the hell he should be.”
It's too early for Gutekunst to sort out all the candidates he has for playing time. He admits that he was impressed by sophomore cornerback Leon Wright, who saw considerable action in a reserve role last season as a true freshman.
“Unfortunately, Leon Wright got hurt a third of the way through spring,” Gutekunst pointed out. “He was really coming on.”
Gutekunst also had words of praise for little-used senior Rodney Ezzard. The 5-11, 180-pounder from Atlanta played in just one game last season, the opener against Richmond. But his play in spring practice impressed the new Duke secondary coach.
“One of the pleasant surprises to me was Rodney Ezzard,” he said. “The more I watched him through individual drills and awareness on the field, I started seeing signs of [All-American and second-round NFL draft pick] Sheldon Brown, who I had at South Carolina. Now I didn't want to put that kind of pressure on a man who hasn't played a whole lot, but he has the hips and he has the feet and another thing is the vision.
But there is still almost a month before Duke's Sept. 1 opener against Connecticut and Gutekunst will get to watch a lot of secondary candidates take a lot of snaps before then.
He'll get to see Davis in action and see how Wright has bounced back from his injury. He'll take a longer look at converted wide receiver Jabari Marshall ? one of the fastest players on the team and a proven kick returner ? and he might even try out veteran backup safety Glenn Williams. He'll check out the progress made by youngsters such as Chris Rwabukamba, Catron Gainey, Abraham Kromah and Matt Pridemore, who were here last spring, and by newcomers Tony Jackson and Colin Jones, who weren't.
Gutekunst has the responsibility of fashioning a smoothly functioning secondary out of those disparate pieces. After 40 years of college coaching experience, the former Duke captain is confident that he can succeed.
“I have a great confidence that the way we teach and what we're doing and that kids will get better and better as we go long,” he said.
DURHAM, N.C. - John Gutekunst is Duke's newest assistant football coach, joining the staff on Mar. 14 last spring.
But Coach “Gutie” has Blue Devil roots that go back much further than any of his colleagues on Ted Roof's staff ... far longer than Roof himself ... longer than anyone currently working in the Duke athletic department. He first arrived on campus as a freshman football player in the late summer of 1962, when Bill Murray was the Blue Devil coach and Duke was the best football program in the ACC.
John Gutekunst is a link between the current staff and Duke's legacy of football greatness.
He can tell the current Blue Devil players about the great 1962 team that finished 8-2 with a 21-point rally for victory at Florida and a seven-point loss at eventual national champion Southern Cal. He can tell them about All-American running back Jay Wilkinson, the son of the legendary Oklahoma coach, who was Gutie's roommate on the road. He can talk about the win at Pittsburgh in his senior season or about the season-ending victory over North Carolina that year that gave Duke its seventh ACC title in the league's first 13 years of existence [see sidebar on 1965 ACC championship].
He can talk about the shock and dismay he felt in the locker room that day when Murray interrupted the post-game celebration to announce that he was retiring.
“We were on such a high and after the game, Coach Murray told us in the locker room that he was resigning,” Gutekunst said. “We [the players] had no idea at all that it was coming. When I came back to Duke as a coach, a lot of his assistant coaches were still around ? guys like Herschel Caldwell and Carmen Falcone. They told me they had no idea [Murray was retiring] either.”
It's obvious in hindsight that the retirement of Murray was a key moment in Duke's decline as a football power. But Gutekunst argued that it's wrong to pinpoint one reason for the program's struggles.
“I think the changes had already started a little bit,” he said, looking back on his final season as a player. “I think there were several reasons for it. One was [the coming of] two-platoon football.”
The change in the rules put a premier on numbers and Duke couldn't or wouldn't match the football factories that built rosters of 150-plus players.
“Also, here in the South, was integration,” he said. “I think Duke was ahead of the game [in the ACC] but was still behind nationally. For instance, the Big Ten had a great name in the Tidewater area because at the time I was playing, black players could not play [in the ACC].”
Gutekunst joined Tom Harp's Duke staff in 1967 and stayed on when Mike McGee became head coach in 1971. He coached a variety of positions for the two coaches, ending up as Duke's defensive coordinator under McGee. He saw close-up as the program struggled to keep up with rivals who had far more financial resources, bigger fan bases and less academic hurdles to clear.
“We don't make excuses for that time,” Gutekunst said.
In fact, he's proud of much of what McGee and his staff accomplished in the 1970s.
“You never hear this about Mike, but Mike did a great job making Duke a great place for black athletes to come to,” the Blue Devil assistant said.
Gutekunst left Duke when McGee stepped down in 1978, beginning a 29-year odyssey to a wide variety of football outposts. He coached for Bill Dooley at Virginia Tech (where he mentored a young defensive tackle named Bruce Smith) and for Lou Holtz at Minnesota. When Holtz left Minneapolis to become head coach at Notre Dame, Gutekunst replaced him as head coach, guiding the Gophers to a 29-37-2 record and two bowl games in six seasons. He also coached one year in the Arena League, five seasons at South Carolina and shorter stints at Rutgers, Rhode Island and North Carolina.
It was jarring for those who knew Gutekunst at Duke to see him working in Chapel Hill, especially since in his first season as the team's co-defensive coordinator, he helped the Tar Heels cut points allowed by 22.0 percent from the previous season en route to earning a bowl bid.
***
Of course, if things had worked out differently, Gutekunst might have returned to Duke much sooner than he did ? and as head coach.
When Steve Sloan left the Blue Devils to become athletic director at Alabama after the 1986 season, a representative of the university contacted the Blue Devil alum and asked if he'd be interesting in coming back to Durham.
“A lot of people don't know that I was offered the job in 1986,” Gutekunst said. “But I didn't want to leave those kids at Minnesota after one year.”
Gutekunst's decision turned out to be Duke's gain as Steve Spurrier was hired instead and sparked the best three-year run in modern Duke history, including an eight-win season and an ACC championship in 1989. But by the end of the 1993 season, Spurrier was long gone back to Florida and Duke was once again looking for a head coach after the resignation of Barry Wilson.
Gutekunst, then working as an assistant at South Carolina, was one of three finalists for the head coaching job.
“I think that was a time when I had some questions of the Duke administration about the program,” he said.
Those questions have been answered in the 14 years since Gutekunst lost out to Fred Goldsmith in the 1993 coaching search. The university has made a far stronger commitment to the football program ? a commitment exemplified by the Yoh Football Center.
“The tangible evidence is here and if you look at the future plans, you can see that,” Gutekunst said. “I think Duke should always have the goal that in whatever it participates in ? be it the hospital, biomedical engineering, the school of environment ? Duke should never accept not trying to be one of the best. And I have no reason to believe this administration doesn't think so too.”
Gutekunst joined Coach Roof's staff just in time to host many of his former teammates and players from his coaching days for last spring's Football Summit. He was particularly well placed to explain to players from the past just how bright the future is.
“If you took the summit as an example, the guys that are here now all told me, ?Gee, we didn't know there was so much passion so many ex-players have for Duke.' We are still proud of being Duke players and Duke graduates. Most of them wanted to know what they can do to help.”
Gutekunst explained that Duke football has more going for it today than it did in the post-Murray era. For instance, the numbers disparity that came with two-platoon football disappeared when the NCAA adopted its 85-scholarship limit. The school's facilities are better than they were in the 1970s and 1980s (and will be better still when the planned upgrades to Wade Stadium are carried out). And the era of awkward integration is long past.
Duke still has its tough academic standards to deal with, but Gutekunst suggested that every school has its own particular handicaps.
“The easy assumption is that [the way to succeed is to] compromise academics,” he said. “And that's probably the biggest fallacy that there is. Every school has its individual problems. Take the University of Miami, for instance. I can remember going down there and wondering if anybody was going to show up for the game. When they became a national championship contender, all of a sudden they had full houses.”
Duke also has a small fan base with its alumni scattered across the nation.
“We have had a problem with live attendance,” he pointed out. “We went from being a primarily Southern university during my time here to being a national school. Still, with the population that has come into the Research Triangle, I think there are fans who would like to go to a college football game and it's our job to try to get them here.
“We're assigned to put a product on the field that people want to see. Everybody likes to follow a winner, but you also have to make it an event for people who have no other affiliation.”
Basically, Gutekunst's view is that Duke has no excuses for not rebuilding its football tradition.
“As far as competing, that's our job [as coaches],” he said. “I certainly believe ... I absolutely believe it's possible to compete and play well. “
***
As Duke's defensive secondary coach, Gutekunst will have a lot to do with Duke's ability to compete this season. He has to rebuild a unit that lost both starting cornerbacks to graduation, including two-time first team All-ACC corner John Talley, the school's all-time interception leader.
He does return both starting safeties from last season ? senior free safety Chris Davis and junior strong safety Adrian Aye-Darko. Unfortunately, Davis missed all of spring practice after postseason shoulder surgery, so Gutekunst never got a chance to see the most logical leader of the secondary in action.
“I'm really anxious to get him on the field and see what he can do,” the new secondary coach said. “But I've been in this game long enough to know, you better count on the guys who are there and if anybody else shows up, that's going to be a bonus.”
Gutekunst has been pleasantly surprised with the reception his players have given him.
“When you've been through what they've been through, they're eager beavers to listen to somebody who can help them win,” he said. “I see a lot of willingness to be good and some ability to be good. This whole team has a tremendous work ethic. I can push them.”
Gutekunst pushed them hard last spring, trying to teach the techniques and schemes that made his secondary expertise prized by coaches such as McGee, Dooley and Holtz.
“At the end of spring practice, I did not think we'd made as much progress as I'd wanted,” he said. “Then when I went back and watched the cutups after the spring recruiting, I had to almost apologize to the kids. We really had made more progress [than I thought].
His biggest complaint was the lack of cohesiveness, which he now blames on himself.
“I was trying to find out who could do what and I was shuffling players and trying to see who could take charge,” Gutekunst explained. “As I looked through the cutups and watched the improvement of individual techniques and recognition and reaction to situations, I was actually a little more pleased than I had been in my mind.”
But Gutekunst warns that the cohesiveness that was lacking in spring had better come quickly in preseason practice.
“They are still not playing within themselves within a team concept, which will get you beat in this league,” he said. “What will come to the top are the guys who can recognize and react and play within the scheme of the team.
“It's got to be developed. One of the things I've always told players is that they decide who starts. Great physical gifts may give you more chances, but production is the only thing that keeps you on the field. If they don't settle that problem a third of the way through camp, then I'll make the decision for them. I'd rather they make it, but my point to them is you don't have the whole camp to do that. I'm not going to wait until the week of the game.
He has to make that decision quickly enough to give the starting secondary time to develop the cohesion it needs.
“Football is a team game, so people working together, getting reps and ability to communicate quickly is important in success,” he said.
Gutekunst believes that he has enough raw material to fashion a productive secondary. But he said that too much emphasis is often put on a player's “athletic” attributes, such as speed and strength and size.
“You ask all these young men what they can bench press and they can all tell you to the pound,” he said. “You ask them their 40 speed and they'll tell you in the hundredths of seconds. You ask them their vertical jump and they'll tell you down the inch ...
“Then you ask them their vision, their intelligence and they sort of stare at you. You might get a ?20-20' or a ?Coach I'm smart' back, but what I'm really saying is all that athletic talent you have is meaningless until you recognize with your eyes and then relay it through your brain to tell you what to do. That is a skill and a talent, every much as much as what you bench press ? and in many cases more so. A guy may run a 4.4 40, but if he's running the wrong way, that just means he's farther away from where the hell he should be.”
It's too early for Gutekunst to sort out all the candidates he has for playing time. He admits that he was impressed by sophomore cornerback Leon Wright, who saw considerable action in a reserve role last season as a true freshman.
“Unfortunately, Leon Wright got hurt a third of the way through spring,” Gutekunst pointed out. “He was really coming on.”
Gutekunst also had words of praise for little-used senior Rodney Ezzard. The 5-11, 180-pounder from Atlanta played in just one game last season, the opener against Richmond. But his play in spring practice impressed the new Duke secondary coach.
“One of the pleasant surprises to me was Rodney Ezzard,” he said. “The more I watched him through individual drills and awareness on the field, I started seeing signs of [All-American and second-round NFL draft pick] Sheldon Brown, who I had at South Carolina. Now I didn't want to put that kind of pressure on a man who hasn't played a whole lot, but he has the hips and he has the feet and another thing is the vision.
But there is still almost a month before Duke's Sept. 1 opener against Connecticut and Gutekunst will get to watch a lot of secondary candidates take a lot of snaps before then.
He'll get to see Davis in action and see how Wright has bounced back from his injury. He'll take a longer look at converted wide receiver Jabari Marshall ? one of the fastest players on the team and a proven kick returner ? and he might even try out veteran backup safety Glenn Williams. He'll check out the progress made by youngsters such as Chris Rwabukamba, Catron Gainey, Abraham Kromah and Matt Pridemore, who were here last spring, and by newcomers Tony Jackson and Colin Jones, who weren't.
Gutekunst has the responsibility of fashioning a smoothly functioning secondary out of those disparate pieces. After 40 years of college coaching experience, the former Duke captain is confident that he can succeed.
“I have a great confidence that the way we teach and what we're doing and that kids will get better and better as we go long,” he said.
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