SURVIVED A STORMY ERA; HELPED YOUNG ATHLETES
Former Chargers GM, coach was target of a ‘Sack Svare’ campaign
Harland Svare, general manager and head coach for the San Diego Chargers during the turbulent early 1970s, has died. Svare’s daughter, Mia Anderson, said her father passed away April 4 at a nursing home in Steamboat Springs, Colo.
Cause of death was listed as respiratory arrest. He was 89.
“My father was an amazing man,” said Anderson, who was adopted at birth by Svare and was an only child. “He always was my rock, always stood beside me in everything in life. That first night he fell in love with me and the feelings were mutual.”
Svare grew up in Washington, played at Washington State and compiled an eight-year NFL career as a linebacker for the Los Angeles Rams and New York Giants. He played on the 1956 NFL champion Giants, his teammates including Pro Football Hall of Famers Frank Gifford, Sam Huff, Emlen Tunnell and Andy Robustelli.
After two years as an NFL assistant coach, Svare was named Rams head coach eight games into the 1962 season. He was 31 years old, making him the NFL’S youngest head coach ever, a distinction he held for 45 years.
In three-plus seasons with the Rams, Svare recorded a 1431-3 record. He would go 7-17-2 as Chargers coach for a 21-48-5 career mark.
Before the 1971 season, Chargers owner Gene Klein hired Svare as the team’s general manager. Svare’s first big move was trading Chargers icon and future Hall of Famer Lance Alworth to the Dallas Cowboys for three journeyman players.
Ten games into the ’71 season, with the team 4-6, Klein fired Sid Gillman as head coach and appointed Svare as his interim successor. By the end of the season the interim tag was lifted.
Svare the GM was a busy man before the 1972 season, conducting 21 trades.
Recalled Bobby Hood, then a special assistant to Svare, “I made a lot of trips to the airport.”
Svare’s trading penchant was to imitate the man who succeeded him as Rams head coach, George Allen. Later, with the Washington Redskins, Allen built the team by acquiring older, veteran players with the Skins earning a memorable nickname: “The Over The Hill Gang.”
Among the players Svare acquired before the 1972 season were future Hall of Fame defensive end Deacon Jones, mysterious running back Duane Thomas and colorful linebacker Tim Rossovich.
“He had a plan to copy George Allen. It just didn’t work out,” said Dan Fouts, whom Svare chose in the third round of the 1973 draft. “Allen had The Over The Hill Gang. This was The Over The Over The Hill Gang.”
The trades did not work out well for the Chargers, who slipped to 4-9-1 in 1972. Nonetheless, Klein rewarded Svare with a fiveyear contract at halftime of a late-season game.
Before the 1973 season, Svare went to the veteran trade well one more time, acquiring another future Hall of Famer, Baltimore Colts quarterback Johnny Unitas. Unitas, though, was 40 years old with rusted knees, his best spirals to Raymond Berry aimed in the distant past.
Unitas played just five games with the Chargers, completing only 44.7 percent of his passes. He threw seven interceptions and just three touchdown passes. By the middle of the season Unitas was on the sideline and Fouts behind center, but the losses continued piling up.
In the season’s sixth game, a 41-0 loss to the Atlanta Falcons, fans inside San Diego Stadium were toting signs reading “Sack Svare.” Near the end of the game, fans cried, “Four more years! Four more years!” referring to the remainder of Svare’s contract.
“It really echoed because there were only about 20,000 fans in the stadium,” said Fouts.
Fans pelted Svare with debris as he walked off the field.
“I know that only too well,” said Fouts. “I was leaving the field and was the target of a beer. I had a teammate next to me on crutches. I saw the beer coming and ducked. He didn’t and got doused with the beer.”
Later, an awning was erected to protect players and coaches.
Two weeks later the Chargers were blanked again, 19-0 by the Kansas City Chiefs. According to the website sbnation.com, the tires to Svare’s car were punctured at a restaurant after the game. He resigned with six games remaining in the season but retained his role as general manager. The team finished 2-11-1.
The year would later be dubbed “The Nightmare Season” in a book by Dr. Arnold Mandell, a UC San Diego psychiatrist hired by Klein to interact with the players. An internal investigation found that Mandell was prescribing amphetamines, which were banned by the NFL that year.
In 1974, eight players were collectively fined $15,000 and suspended by the NFL. The team was fined $20,000. Svare was hit with a $5,000 penalty by Commissioner Pete Rozelle for “failure to exercise supervisory control.”
In 2001, Svare said two years after Rozelle assessed the fine that he returned the money. Svare said he did not know why Rozelle, who died in 1996, acted as he did.
The pair had a history dating back to 1962, when Svare was hired as Rams head coach and Rozelle served as the team’s publicist.
Svare did not coach again after stepping down as Chargers head coach. He worked for Pete Egoscue, who designed postural therapy for injured clients. Svare later devised training programs for athletes.
“I just remember him being a real good genuine guy, always more than willing to give advice to people,” said Andrew Harrah, who coached girls volleyball at Torrey Pines High. Harrah said Svare helped train some of the Torrey Pines players.
“He had a great sense of humor,” said Harrah. “He would joke and tell funny football stories. He liked to bark orders, but it was all in fun.”
Svare’s daughter suspects her father contracted COVID-19. She said a nurse at her father’s facility tested positive for the virus. Svare tested negative, but Mia Anderson wonders if the test was accurately administered.
Though Svare suffered from dementia and Alzheimer’s, she said her father otherwise was in good cardiovascular health.
“Just the way he went,” said Anderson. “It was very quick.”
One of Anderson’s favorite memories of her father was when she was a young girl, maybe 8, 9 or 10. Her father would wake her up at 4 a.m., get them coffee and hot chocolate and they would go to Del Mar during the horse racing season to watch the horses train.
“It’s hard to describe him in a couple words,” said Anderson. “He would give you the shirt off his back if you needed it. We were lucky to have him as long as we did.”