Bald Eagle, Junkyard Dawg

You could spot that bald head a mile away. Well, maybe not a mile. But at least a football field. Or a parking lot.

The brow had wrinkles, like big waves crashing against a shore of skin. Like crooked rows in a South Georgia cornfield.

And Danny Ford, the former Clemson coach, used to look across the field and say a prayer of thanksgiving just knowing that tough old skull didn’t have eligibility left.

Erk Russell was proud of that head. It was his trademark. It was his calling card. It made him one of the most recognizable figures in this state.

It made him larger than life.

I’m not sure anyone would have ever recognized him with a full head of hair. I’m not sure I saw him wearing a hat too many times, if at all.

He was the Yule Brynner of coaching. Just think of all the money he saved on haircuts.

Friday was a sad day. Erk is gone. A coaching icon is now butting heads in that great locker room in the sky.

Gosh, I had no idea he was 80. He always seemed to be older than most any other coach. But I guess I never pictured him as an octogenarian.

He was a legend in the sleepy little town of Statesboro where – I know this from personal experience – it’s practically impossible to kill an afternoon. Half of an afternoon, maybe, but not the whole plum.

He coached Georgia Southern’s football program from infancy to three Division IAA national championships in eight years. He started from scratch. As I recall, they even had to borrow a football from a local high school when they announced he had been hired as head coach in 1982. He was named USA Today’s “College Coach of the Decade” for the 1980s.

He was one of college football’s greatest motivators. His philosophy in football – and life – was simple. Do right.

He had a knack for putting places on the map. Like Beautiful Eagle Creek, which was nothing more than a drainage ditch running through the middle of Georgia Southern’s practice field. But he espoused its magical waters.

And Snooky’s, the little restaurant near the campus. He made it famous when he regularly held court with the coffee crowd. Sports Illustrated even mentioned Snooky’s in a story on Russell, describing it as place where the coffee-crowd philosophers "arrive as early as 6 a.m. daily to discuss the four F's -- fighting, fishing, farming and, of course, football.’’

But, like others, I will always think of him as a Georgia Bulldog. He spent 17 seasons as Vince Dooley’s defensive coordinator. It was Russell who came up with the nickname “Junkyard Dawgs” for Georgia's scrappy defenses.

He borrowed it from a Jim Croce song: “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown. Baddest man in the whole damn town. Badder than old King Kong. Meaner than a junkyard dog.’’

James Brown, not Leroy Brown, took that name and turned it into a song, a tribute to those bend-but-don’t-break Georgia defenses of the mid-1970s. It was called “Dooley’s Junkyard Dogs’’ but Erk was the real master of the junkyard. (Click here for a video.)

Russell was famous for his head butts in the locker room. He would go one-on-one with his players. They were wearing helmets. He was not. He would emerge from the locker room, his famous head bloody.

You would go to war for that man, and a lot of players did.

That old bald head. That cigar chomping between his teeth.

All you had to say was Erk. Everyone knew who you were talking about. The most recognizable first name in Georgia football lore. Next to Herschel, of course.

(Photo courtesy of Georgia Southern.)