Pacific Football Coaches Seek New Positions

This was supposed to be a light, Christmas Eve story about football coaching families; kidding about how BYU quarterback coach Norm Chow’s teen-age children are missing a December bowl vacation for the first time in their lives.

Then Pacific dropped football.

No bowl game this Christmas? Try no job.

Ex-Utah State quarterback Michael “Chico” Canales spent eight years coaching quarterbacks and women’s softball players at Snow College. At last, his break into Division I-A came when Coach Chuck Shelton brought him to Pacific.

Ten months later, the Tigers stopped playing. Canales’ contract ends in February.

After 77 years of football, Pacific’s administration cited financial losses in dropping the program. Not even playing ridiculous big-money games could balance the athletic department books, amid gender-equity requirements.

Try explaining Title IX to Christopher, Tyler and Dakota Canales, who stayed in Ephraim, Utah, this year while their father went to California. Michael Canales was told that Pacific’s Board of Regents would not revisit the football issue for five years, but a new president arrived and was convinced to allow another vote.

When Canales and other coaches returned from lunch Tuesday and found the secretary crying, they knew the outcome.

“I don’t know if it’s even hit me yet,” Canales said the next day. “Maybe when the last check comes in February, that’s when it’ll really set in.”

Between now and then, it’s recruiting season of another kind in Stockton. While the Pacific coaches were dealing with the news, about a dozen members of other staffs were arriving to pursue Tiger players, who can transfer and play right away. “The sharks and barracudas are out,” Canales said good-naturedly.

And the 34-year-old Canales was calling coaches around the country, targeting staff openings and playing all the angles, just like before.

“I’ll go anywhere in the country to coach,” he says. “I’m going to do whatever it takes. It’s just a great profession. It’s hard on the family, but it’s what I chose to do.”