Stephens: Fired from CSU, skydiving football coach 'bounced' back

TUCSON, Ariz. — Mike Lude was never supposed to coach football at Colorado State.

The school he was hired at was the University of Denver. But it’s hard to coach football somewhere that doesn’t field a team.

It was Jan. 8, 1961, and Lude had spent the previous decade as the offensive line coach at Delaware and the two years prior at Maine, where he invented the Wing-T. He was looking for an opportunity to become a head football coach for the first time since his time in the Marine Corps. Denver athletic director Tad Wieman called him asking if he’d like a job. Lude accepted.

His employment lasted 12 hours.

The next day, Wieman called Lude with bad news. Denver’s board of trustees unanimously voted overnight to disband the football program.

Lude returned to Delaware for a season where he was earning a salary of $19,000 before his next opportunity arose. CSU athletic director Bob Davis had just fired coach Tuffy Mullison after 16 consecutive losses and needed someone to stop the bleeding. He leaned on Wieman for suggestions.

“Call Mike Lude in Delaware.”

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Sitting at a Waffle House in Southern Arizona, Lude, 93, recalls the past 70 years of his life as a coach and athletic director more vividly than he does checking skydiving off his bucket list two weeks ago. Over three cups of coffee – black – four Cokes and a T-bone steak chew toy, he apologizes for talking so much during a 2½-hour lunch.

He’s proud of the green CSU polo he dusted off Monday. His manila folder of all things CSU. The modest Fort Collins home he and his wife, Rena, purchased on Blevins Court; it’s all they could afford on an income of $18,500 a year.

His first year at CSU in 1962 was unforgettably poor. That 16-game losing streak Davis wanted to see end was pushed to 26 in a row with another 0-10 season. They were so bad, Lude said, the Skyline Conference wanted nothing to do with the Rams. He’ll never forget the night former Oregon State coach Tommy Prothro came to his hotel room before their game in Corvallis and said, “Mike, I’ve been watching you guys on film. You have one sh---y team, you know that?”

Lude prefers not to use that kind of language, but he couldn’t argue. He had more talent at Delaware.

“At halftime, we’re walking up the ramps going to the locker rooms. The score is 7-6 in favor of them. We missed the extra point,” Lude said. “Tommy runs up to me, puts his arm around me and says, ‘You little son of a bitch, you’re after my ass, aren’t you?’

“I told him, ‘Tommy, we’re going to play as hard as we can.’ ”

CSU lost 25-14 and fell again the next week in the season finale to Montana 16-15 to complete the winless schedule, but Lude’s bout with Prothro epitomized his career. He might not have a lot of talent or resources on his side, but he’d never stop fighting. He was going to find a way to succeed.

He built his own football weight room and was the underlying reason Hughes Stadium was built, successfully arguing he couldn’t recruit quality prospects when most high school facilities were nicer than Colorado Field.

Lude had one winning season at CSU, 1966 (7-3), when the Rams ran the (in)famous bounce-pass play that spoiled Wyoming’s chance of perfection. There were no bowl games. No plaque for him in the school’s hall of fame. He was fired by Perry Moore in 1969 after a 4-6 season, losing four of those games by an average of two points. He still can’t believe it, but in the wake of his termination, he became a legendary athletic director.

Former CSU coach Mike Lude breaks down infamous bounce pass vs. Wyoming Former Colorado State football coach Mike Lude sits down for lunch with columnist Matt L. Stephens and draws up how the bounce pass worked to beat Wyoming in 1966.

“My biggest disappointment in my career was not really getting it done at Colorado State and not being able to get the resources necessary to compete. We were getting close when Perry Moore got there, but then they got rid of me,” Lude said. “But the way I approached the job at CSU set the foundation for the rest of my life.”

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Instead of applying for another coaching job, he took his friend Lou Holtz’s suggestion and sent his resume to Kent State, a school seeking change following the National Guard’s massacre of students, to be its first full-time AD. He was hired in 1970, took over at Washington in ’76 and finished his career by straightening out Auburn in 1992 before retiring in ’94.

Everywhere Lude has been — save CSU — he’s a legend. It’s because he’s meticulous. Anyone who ever worked with him (no one ever worked for him) would tell him he’s unequivocally detailed-oriented. As a Marine, he knows order is important, and that extends to Waffle House menus, which he’d straighten every time they were bumped.

He never received enough resources to become a successful head football coach (Jim Williams once took six scholarships and gave them to two defunct programs: men’s swimming and gymnastics), so he tried the approach he wishes the four bosses he had in eight years in Fort Collins would have used: Put the most money into football and let it carry the rest of the sports.

Apparently trickle-down economics does work.

Washington went to five Rose Bowls under coach Don James — who Lude first hired at Kent State — while he was athletic director, with the other varsity sports in Seattle claiming more than 50 conference championships.

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Lude can count on one hand the CSU games he’s attended since being knocked from his coaching post in 1969. He and his wife moved to Tucson 20 years ago (ironic, since for three years, his vote was the one stonewalling Arizona and Arizona State from joining the Pac-10), but they won’t be able to attend Tuesday’s Arizona Bowl between CSU and Nevada. His knee doesn’t have enough cartilage left to climb bleachers, and Rena, 92, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s 13 years ago. Lude makes sure to dress her up and take her out for date night once a week, even if she won’t remember it the next morning.

His is a name few still associate with CSU. Fort Collins is a city in which he was never supposed to live. It’s good he did. Without those eight years, 29 wins, 51 losses and surprising termination, he’d never have become the legend sitting across the table at a Waffle House in Southern Arizona, asking if he can tell just one more story.

For insight and analysis on athletics around Northern Colorado and the Mountain West, follow sports columnist Matt L. Stephens at twitter.com/mattstephens and facebook.com/stephensreporting.