Six degrees of Erickson

It’s only your imagination.

It’s not the same six or eight guys who have followed Dennis Erickson around from job to job for 25 years now, coaching up his linemen or adding a little defensive snarl to the usual airborne finesse. It hasn’t been the same lineup holding court at the Corner Club in Moscow, or rubbing Notre Dame’s nose in it or suffering the indignities of NFL ownership.

It just seems that way.

Sure, as the University of Idaho eagerly peddles tickets for Erickson, The Sequel, you can’t help but notice Gregg Smith standing alongside the boss again. He’s been with Erickson since 1982 – from Idaho to Wyoming to Wazzu. To Miami, to Seattle, Corvallis. To San Francisco. And back again. Amazingly, they don’t finish each other’s sentences.

“But we’re getting close to it,” Smith laughed.

Dan Cozzetto, too. He’s been with Erickson at four different stops, including that original Idaho staff.

But that’s about it, really. There are some other links on the current Idaho staff – a guy who played for him or for one of his disciples. But it’s more Six Degrees of Dennis Erickson stuff, a fun little football parlor game to play as you drive to the next game – or back, seeing as it really has no end.

“I don’t know if there’s any place I don’t have some connection to the staff,” Erickson admitted. “I go through these press guides and there’s always somebody connected one way or another. Washington with Tim Lappano and Yarbs (Eric Yarber) and (Chris) Tormey. Washington State. Miami – Rich Olson’s still there, and Randy Shannon the defensive coordinator coached for me. Mississippi. Eric Price coached with me at Miami and he’s with his dad at UTEP. Sonny Lubick at Colorado State, of course. It goes on and on.

“That also means I’m just getting old.”

True, anyone with this kind of service time as a head coach in college and the pros is going to have a “family” tree with a good strong trunk and expansive branches. Heck, NFL staffs are growing to be so large that soon every roster player will have his own personal coach, though the practice squad guys may have to share.

But the Erickson tree is unique, on a couple of counts.

One is just how often the old connections are made new again – when former aides who either left Erickson or were left behind in moves return to coach with him again.

Keith Gilbertson, the former Idaho, Cal and Washington head coach, would be prominent among those, but he’s in the Lifelong Friend Division and doesn’t really count. Better examples are Cozzetto, who went 14 years between Erickson jobs, and Lappano, who didn’t make the detour to Miami but re-upped in Seattle when Erickson became head coach of the Seahawks.

Craig Bray, Olson, Greg McMackin, Jim Michalczik – all have circled back at one time or another.

“Some of that’s just natural,” said Smith, “but sometimes you look at a job and it’s a maybe-the-grass-is-greener situation. And then maybe they find out it isn’t so good and that working with Dennis is what they really want to do.

“The thing I’ve always liked and that I think most coaches like is that he cares about the guys who work for him. He tries to make sure they’re taken care of, for one thing, but also he lets you coach. He gives you responsibility and let’s you do the job.”

Allowed Erickson, “I think a bond gets developed. I like to think I’m an easy guy to work for.”

And if a butt needs chewed?

“Then it gets chewed,” he said. “That’s part of the deal. Just like in a family – I’ll chew some butt, or rather my wife will chew mine. But I’ve always felt with my coaches, if I chew somebody’s butt out, they know they deserve it. And you don’t do it that often.”

But more remarkable than this sort of regeneration is how many of his acolytes have gone on to run their own programs.

No fewer than 14 former Erickson assistants and players have moved on to be head coaches – nine of them active, although Lubick and Dick Tomey had been head coaches before joining his staff. This number includes guys running small college programs (like Ed Rifilato at Fort Lewis), Division I head coaches (like John L. Smith, now in his fourth such job at Michigan State) and even the NFL. New St. Louis Rams coach Scott Linehan played for Erickson at Idaho, while Jim Mora Jr. of the Atlanta Falcons was his defensive coordinator with the 49ers.

Erickson’s first Idaho staff produced three future head coaches – has such a thing ever happened at the Division I-AA level, which Idaho played at then? Gilbertson, Smith and Tormey all carried on the Vandal legacy before jumping to other schools.

And Erickson’s first Miami staff had three guys who are still coaching major college programs – Lubick, Tommy Tuberville (Auburn) and Ed Orgeron (Mississippi) – plus Alex Wood, who ran the I-AA program at James Madison for four years.

“That’s not really me,” Erickson said. “All those guys had that goal and worked hard, and when you’re around a program that’s been successful, you’re going to get those opportunities. Some of those guys were ready even before they got their chances.”

They aren’t Erickson clones. Sure, some of them have stolen liberally from his playbook, but in many cases they helped write it. Some of them no doubt grip the reins a little tighter, and surely not all of them have his way with a game plan or a sideline hunch.

And, obviously, not all of them have had his success.

You can insert your joke about inbreeding here and how all this connectivity can’t be completely healthy, but a glimpse at the Erickson record – in college anyway – argues against it. In the end, the reason Erickson tows assistants along with him or welcomes them back is that he believes it increases the likelihood of success.

“There’s no question – guys who have been around you know what you want and know how you are,” he said. “There’s not a lot of time wasted in explaining.

“And I just believe staffs that stay together for a long period of time have a lot of success. That doesn’t happen much anymore. These days, they’re firing guys so fast and nobody wants to be accountable. There are a lot of head coaches who won’t take the blame and they’ll fire the assistant to keep the heat off. I believe in responsibility. Eventually, everything comes back to the head coach.”

Or within a degree or two of him, at least.