Pruett wraps up storied career

Bob Pruett’s football coaching career spans five decades, including winning one national championship, playing for another, several bowl trips, a couple of undefeated seasons, developing three Heisman trophy finalists, and working with a number of high profile coaches.
One of his sweetest memories, however, isn’t about trophies or glory. It’s about a team that won only five games and fought adversity from start to finish. This everlasting memory is about guts and determination.
It’s about Virginia’s 5-7 team in 2008, the final season of Pruett’s storied career.
“This past year was the most phenomenal coaching job I’ve been around in all my years of coaching,” said Pruett, who officially
announced his retirement from the game on Wednesday. “When I got here (last February), someone told me we were predicted to win one game.
“We lost so many starters for various reasons, including our two starting quarterbacks and had to play several freshmen and redshirt freshmen,” Pruett said. “Coming off a disaster at Connecticut and an embarrassment at Duke, to come back and beat four bowl teams and the I-AA national championship team, that’s something to be really proud of.”
For a coach of Pruett’s stature to list this past season, his last coaching job over an illustrious career, as the best, that’s really saying something.
Consider that he was a successful high school coach in the state of Virginia, particularly at Gar-Field High School. He went on to work for successful coaches such as Steve Spurrier at Florida, Billy Brewer at Ole Miss and Bill Dooley at Wake Forest, before taking his alma mater, Marshall University, to unprecedented heights.
In nine seasons at Marshall, Pruett posted a 94-23 record (.803), claimed the then-Division I-AA national championship, played for another, took the Thundering Herd to seven bowl games, coached two undefeated seasons, coached three Heisman Trophy finalists, and sent dozens of players to the NFL while overseeing the program’s transition from I-AA to I-A status.
What a ride, one that left Pruett somewhat exhausted and ready — he thought — for retirement. During a three-year hiatus from the gridiron, Virginia’s Al Groh attempted to lure his old friend back into the game and finally got his wish about this time last year when he hired Pruett as the Cavaliers’ defensive coordinator.
Now, a year later, perhaps the toughest year of his life, family matters dictate that the coach will walk into the sunset. This time, he swears, he won’t be coming back to the game he loves.
During the past year, two of his former players at Marshall died. He lost a brother, the second in five years. His best friend that worked for him at Marshall is battling terminal cancer. His wife has had two major surgeries, and even he has gone under the knife to repair a rotator cuff.
“It really started weighing on me when my brother passed away,” Pruett said. “One day he went into the hospital with a gallbladder problem and never came out. That bothered me. My dad died at an early age and that started me thinking about retiring.”
When he signed on as UVa’s defensive coordinator he had no intentions of leaving. He and his wife of 47, Elsie, years bought a condo here and were happy until all the tragedies struck home.
“You have to set your priorities to do what you think is best for your family, your loved ones, and your health,” Pruett said. “You start assessing all those things and I think this is a direction I need to turn.”
It’s very tough for a man who has lived and breathed football for as long as he can remember to give up the addictive profession of coaching.
“I think telling Al was the toughest part,” Pruett said of the man he has called a friend for their entire careers.
Certainly, Groh didn’t want to lose someone of Pruett’s expertise, both as a coach and a recruiter. In fact, Groh had promoted him from defensive coordinator to assistant head coach/defense in the offseason.
“Bob is a treasured colleague and a treasured friend,” Groh said. “He loves football and loves being around football players. It’s fair to put this in the category of a gutsy decision.
“It’s not easy to walk away from a lifestyle and a group of people that have been part of his adult life and know that this is the last time, that he’s not coming back,” Groh added. “To make this decision and be true to his priorities and say, ‘Look, I’d like to be here, but it’s the right thing to do, I belong someplace else,’ says everything about Bob Pruett.”
The Cavaliers’ head coach praised Pruett’s year of contribution to the program, as a recruiter who reopened valuable avenues with high school programs in the Tidewater area, and as an experienced voice in the locker room, meeting rooms, practice fields and games.
“We both understood each other very well as a result of our longstanding relationship,” Groh said. “He knew what was going on behind this desk, having been the head coach at Marshall. He knew when to offer something and what to offer. He also could tell some of the other assistants, ‘Hey, I’ve been over there before ... you may not understand why [the head coach] is reacting the way he is, or what he’s dealing with, but I do.’”
Pruett, a very goal-oriented man with a quick wit and even quicker smile, had three lifelong coaching dreams: to coach his alma mater, Marshall; to coach at the University of Florida; and to coach at UVa.
“I had to come out of retirement to get to the Virginia part of the goal,” he said. “I’m truly thankful and really proud of the opportunity afforded me and the job we did here last year.
“That’s basically a credit to Al Groh,” Pruett said. “He held it together when things could have fallen apart. When we were standing on the tarmac after the Connecticut game, this team was so fragile that it could have fallen to pieces. Because of his system and the values he instills into young people, he was able to keep it together.”
Pruett said the only regret he has is that he won’t be a part of next year’s team.
Groh disagreed.
“Once you’ve been part of Virginia’s football program, you’re always a part of this family, forever,” Groh said.
He remembered back to his days at Gar-Field in the ‘70s when he first met Groh, an assistant at UVa. He used to come down to Charlottesville and talk football into the wee hours of the morning, then slept on the floor of Al and Anne Groh’s small apartment.
The relationship continued through the years as he worked for Groh at Wake Forest, then climbed the ladder to head coach at Marshall and lived that dream, while his friend navigated a career in the NFL before returning to his own alma mater, UVa, where the two finally had a last hurrah together.
Asked how he would like to be remembered as a football coach, Pruett didn’t blink.
“Maybe the best compliment I ever had was that someone told me I have never changed from those days at Gar-Field, to all the success in college, until now,” Pruett said. “I still wanted to be the same guy, to know that Bob is Bob.”
(Friday: Pruett’s formula to winning a championship)