Legendary Baylor coach Grant Teaff honored by AFCA as retirement nears

After 21 years as Baylor’s head football coach, Grant Teaff took on a new challenge in 1994 as executive director of the American Football Coaches Association (AFCA), the leading organization for football coaches from high school to the professional ranks.

Four years later, he helped launch the American Football Coaches Foundation (AFCF) to raise funds that support the AFCA’s mission of educating and developing coaches at every level. In 2006, the AFCF created the CEO Coach of the Year Award; each year, the honor goes to a corporate CEO who best exemplifies the leadership qualities also found in football’s greatest coaches, complete with a “championship ring” much like those you’d see on a Super Bowl or league championship winner.

Past CEO Coach of the Year winners include GE Chairman and CEO Jeffrey Immelt, BP Capital founder T. Boone Pickens, and Baylor’s own Mark Hurd, BBA ’79, now co-CEO of Oracle. This year’s honoree was Berkshire Hathaway Energy’s Greg Abel, but he wasn’t the only person honored on stage Monday night.

After receiving his award, Abel turned around and presented Coach Teaff and his wife, Donell, with their own championship rings in honor of their years of service to the AFCA and football coaches nationwide. Immelt praised Teaff as his favorite coach of all coaches, noting that “there has never been a greater leader for all of us than Grant Teaff.” Abel added that both Grant and Donell (pictured together above), who founded the American Football Coaches Wives Association, “give far more than they receive… There is no one more deserving of the title ‘coach’ than Coach Teaff. There is no better leader.”

The winningest coach in Baylor football history, Coach Teaff announced this past spring that he would retire in February 2016 after 22 years at the AFCA.

Sic ’em, Grant and Donell Teaff!