After Berry’s dismissal and the inconceivably terrible 2003 season, West Point’s athletic department faced incredible pressure from alumni to find a big-time football coach to right the program.
Enter Bobby Ross.
A legend in many ways, Ross was an interesting fit for the academy. He was a VMI graduate who had served as an Army officer in the early-70s. He began his head coaching career at another military school, The Citadel.
In the ‘80s he had great success leading Maryland and then Georgia Tech. With the Yellow Jackets, he won the National Championship in 1990 and the Bobby Dodd Coach of the Year award.
Yet when Army approached him in 2004, Ross had been retired for four years and hadn’t headed a collegiate program in 13.
In many ways, his decision to leave retirement to coach at Army seemed more an act of pity than confidence in the program’s resurgence.
This attitude would haunt the program’s most recent regime. He seemed exhausted before his first season began at West Point.
Still, it was Bobby Ross.
The Bobby Ross who had taken Georgia Tech from a 2-9 record in his first season to a National Championship in his fourth; the one who went on to lead the San Diego Chargers to the Super Bowl in 1995. Certainly, he could turn the program at Army around.
But despite making some slow progress, Ross could not get the program on the right track. Initially, he too shrugged off any notion of reinstating the triple-option (though in his third season, he added an I-formation-based triple option to the playbook).
His teams struggled mightily on offense: relying on a tough but vanilla running game and a primitive passing scheme in Ross’ “balanced” attack.
The defense on the other hand, made steady albeit marginal improvement under experienced defensive coordinator John Mumford.
2 Comments
Loading more comments...
This comment and all replies have been deleted This comment has been deleted Undo delete