Quirky coach Rodgers made pro football fun in Memphis
Go to Pepper Rodgers' Facebook page and find the March 26, 2015 post with a picture featuring Rodgers in an old car phone advertisement from the early 1990s. Rodgers is leaning against a car with Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium in the background, holding a car phone to his right ear.
“Memphis deserves an NFL team, and I certainly don't intend to be out of reach when they call,” reads the quote attributed to Rogers written in big bold letters above his head. “As long as I've got my Cellular One car phone, the NFL can get hold of me anytime, anywhere.”
Rodgers wasn't from Memphis, but he was of Memphis and for Memphis. He was what every transplant who falls in love
with Memphis hopes to become and what Memphis hopes every transplant who comes here wants to be.
Quirky coach embraced Memphis
Beyond his many accomplishments on the football field, beyond his colorful personality and his endearing southern accent and his infectious sense of humor and his wacky sideline antics with the Memphis Showboats, Rodgers was the quirky coach who embraced Memphis and all its quirks.
Long before John Calipari famously reminded us if you hug Memphis, it'll hug you back, Rodgers wrapped this city in his arms and took it along for a wild ride that almost brought the NFL here.
Get past all the laughs – and boy, there were a lot of those if you ask anyone who ever spent a minute around Rodgers – and there was substance and earnestness in everything he said. When Memphis needed a face for professional football, Rodgers grabbed the microphone and burst through the camera with irresistible charm.
No wonder Rodgers' death at the age of 88 Thursday night resonated with Memphians more than 20 years after he left town.
“He'd introduce himself, ‘This is Pepper Rodgers from Memphis, Tennessee,'” former Memphis Showboats president Steve Ehrhart said, mimicking Rodgers' distinctive drawl. “He was proud. He knew how to take his job seriously but never himself.”
“He had such an entertaining personality that the fans loved to watch him,” former Showboats owner Billy Dunavant said.
“Never will be another one,” Dunavant's wife, Tommie, wrote in an email.
There might never be another football coach who turned down the NFL to be a pilot in the Air Force, wrote a fictional novel that was actually an exposé of dirty college football recruiting (“Fourth-and-long Gone”), appeared in plays at The Playhouse on the Square here in Memphis and a Hollywood blockbuster (“The Blind Side”) based in Memphis and helped usher offensive football into the modern era.
There probably won't be another football coach who, according to the Atlanta Journal-constitution, liked to tell reporters, “The four most important things are to have a fast back, a big line during football games and after six a beautiful woman and a cold beer. Well, it's after six, so I am going to get a cold beer.”
And we can only hope there is another football coach who, according to Jeff Pearlman's 2018 book, “Football for a Buck: The Crazy Rise and Crazier Demise of the USFL,” described his recruiting pitch to potential Showboats players like this:
“I take them out for a big spare ribs dinner, show him Memphis and take him to my big ol' house overlooking the beautiful Mississippi. Then I ask him, ‘Boy, do you really want to play in Buffalo?'”
‘The best storyteller that was ever in football.’
So yes, “Pepper Ball” was about innovative game management and risky play-calling and Rodgers' over-the-top persona.
But the salesmanship that filled Liberty
Bowl Memorial Stadium wouldn't have worked without the love affair between Rodgers and Memphis.
After the USFL collapsed, he became part of the movement to bring the NFL to Memphis, organizing exhibition games at the Liberty Bowl in the late 1980s before being named the coach of the Memphis Hound Dogs.
They were the Memphis NFL team that never was because the city elected not to build a new stadium, not because Rodgers didn't answer that car phone.
After that, he even coached the Canadian Football League's Memphis Mad Dogs for a season in 1995.
In many ways, you can tell the modern history of football through Rodgers.
He won a national championship as a quarterback and placekicker at Georgia Tech.
He coached Kansas to the Orange Bowl with John Riggins.
He coached eventual Heisman Tropy winner Gary Beban at UCLA, and Steve Spurrier won one when Rodgers was an assistant at Florida.
It was Rodgers who was the first person to give Spurrier a coaching job, and he coached Reggie White with the Showboats.
He was even the opposing head coach, for Georgia Tech, back in 1975 when Notre Dame walk-on Rudy Ruettiger was carried off the field and inspired the movie, “Rudy.”
His coaching tree includes UCLA'S Terry Donahue, Ohio State's John Cooper and Arizona's Dick Tomey, all of whom became Hall of Famers after working under Rodgers.
During Rodgers' stint with the Washington Redskins front office (20012004), the team's coaches included Joe Gibbs, Marty Schottenheimer and Spurrier.
“I just wished we would have gotten into the NFL. He would have shaken up the stodgy, ‘No Fun League.'” Ehrhart said.
“He was the best storyteller that was ever in football.”
So go type “Pepper Rodgers” into the search function on Youtube.
The first video that pops up is a seven-minute clip from the final “Pepper Rodgers Show” of the Memphis Showboats' first year in the USFL.
It's a glimpse back in time to a football coach unlike any Memphis had seen before and unlike any it's seen since.
It's Rodgers pacing back-and-forth in the locker room, delivering a pregame speech to the team before a game against the Birmingham Stallions.
“You've got to remember one thing about this ballgame. You've got the one thing going for you that's the most important thing in all of athletics and anything that involves physical violence,” Rodgers says, elevating his voice and pausing for effect like the coach you usually only see in the movies.
“There's all kind of passions in this world. There's love and greed, patriotism,” he continued.
“But the one that makes the man win the medal of honor is anger. He's so damn mad he'll do anything. He will sacrifice his body for his buddy who was blown to bits beside him. That's anger. It's not patriotism. That ain't love. That's anger.”
And then Rodgers let slip that sly smirk, and took up for Memphis once more.
“Now I don't like them,” he said. “I love you.”
You can reach Commercial Appeal columnist Mark Giannotto via email at mgiannotto@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter: @mgiannotto