Coach D

And now the memories, as word comes down that Kevin Donley is stepping away from what he created at the University of Saint Francis. Now the memories, popping up as memories will, because when you know a man for going on 50 years, there is an almighty lot of them to pop up ...

... sitting in a spartan pressbox on a blue-sky autumn day in Anderson, In., kid sportswriter watching a kid football coach send the Anderson College Ravens against Defiance or Findlay or Hanover or Bluffton ...

... sitting across the table from Coach in a Fort Wayne eatery 20 years later, neither of his kids anymore, the football coach's hair gone prematurely white but the words bursting out of him in that soft voice about the football program he'd been hired to build from the ground up at Saint Francis ...

... watching, a few months later on another blue-sky day, as he and his staff put a team together from raw freshmen, spare parts and a quarterback room that includes a 36-year-old who'll wind up a coaching assistant ...

... watching again while that football team goes 2-8 on a field that gets churned into mud lasagna every time it rains, and listening to him talk softly again about what an incremental process growing and learning can be ...

... watching, a year later on a football field in Canton, Ohio, as St. Francis finishes an 8-2 season with a win over Walsh that seals the conference title, and hearing sudden emotion tilt Kevin Donley's even-keel public persona and steal his voice for a moment ...

So many memories. So much to say about a man who came to town to start a football program at a tiny school that had never had one. So much to say about someone who was determined to do it what he always called "the right way," by bringing in kids who would go to class during the week and play you off your feet on Saturdays.

So much to say after 28 years at that tiny school, where his teams played so many people off their feet on Saturdays he became simply Coach D to his adopted city.

There's a stadium with an immaculate turf surface at that tiny school now, hard by the railroad tracks and Mirror Lake, where geese settle into the water in the fall and provide flyovers on game days. There's a training center and VIP seating behind one end zone,  and there's a name on that immaculate turf surface: Kevin Donley Field.

Like they'd name it anything else when it was Kevin Donley who brought all this to St. Francis, along with 240 wins, 14 conference titles, five NAIA championship game appearances and back-to-back NAIA titles in 2016 and 2017. In one astonishing nine-season stretch between 2000 and 2008, St. Francis won fewer than 10 games only once -- and that year they won nine.

In 2024, the Cougars won one last conference title, and Kevin Donley was named conference Coach of the Year. By that time, he was the winningest active coach at any level of college football, and he remains the fifth-winningest coach of all time.

The four names above his?

John Gagliardi, Joe Paterno, Eddie Robinson and Bobby Bowden. Some fast company there.

And only numbers, in the end. 

Only numbers, because all of my aforementioned memories have nothing to do with numbers. Or very little, at least.

No, the memories are of that first meeting with Coach D's first team at St. Francis, when he looked around the room and explained the concept of Donley Time, which ran five minutes faster than actual time. In other words, if you showed up on time, you were five minutes late.

The memories are of another meeting a month or so later, before the program's first game against St. Xavier in Chicago, and the expression on Donley's face when he told his players this was a business trip, and one kid raised his hand and asked if they could bring their bathing suits for the hotel pool.

They're of the news from Chicago a day later, where the Cougars won that first game 56-28 and that sound you heard was jaws all over the Fort hitting the floor.

They're of another Saturday in 2005, when the Cougars opened at D-I Indiana State and the Sycamores radio announcers were all solicitous, talking about what a fine NAIA program they had up here at Saint Francis. And then the Cougars tattooed the Trees 42-10, and that sound you heard was jaws all over Terre Haute hitting the floor.

They're of all the times Kevin Donley and I sat in his office and marveled at everything that had happened since the Anderson days. And of that aforementioned day at Walsh, 26 years ago now, when the Cougars rolled 40-23 to win the conference in just their second season, and all that emotion came barreling up from Donley's Irish heart.

"We won a lot of big ballgames ..." he choked out, and then his voice was gone for a bit.

You sure did, Coach. You sure as hell did.