GIVE ’EM HELL, PELL: PART I – Florida hires Charley Pell with an eye on its first SEC crown
Florida hires Charley Pell with an eye on its first SEC crown

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“Charley Pell is the black sheep of the Florida football family. His tenure wreaked all kinds of havoc within the NCAA…”

“…Florida is capable of winning a heckuva lot more than the SEC.”

Why do I have any level of interest in a coach with a lengthy NCAA rap sheet from the late 1970s/early 1980s who went 33-26-3 in under six seasons in Gainesville?

Well, he’s overlooked.

Charley Pell is the black sheep of the Florida football family. His tenure wreaked all kinds of havoc with the NCAA, but he also arguably laid the beginnings of the foundation that Galen Hall would manage turn over for Steve Spurrier to run with in the 1990s.

I’m careful about how much credit Pell should be given considering the negatives that came with the positives. However, it’s hard to argue that Charley Pell did not play a significant role in developing Florida into one of the major powers in college football.

One thing I know for certain: Charley Pell should not be ignored.

Some Backstory

I didn’t make it to my first game in Ben Hill Griffin Stadium until I was 15 years old. My family had moved to Florida from Ohio a few years earlier, and our lack of a connection to UF, combined with my loyalty to the Buckeyes, postponed my first trip to The Swamp.

As I sat in the blistering September sun in the aptly named “Sunshine Seats,” I couldn’t help but notice something odd painted across the way in the south end zone. In the middle of the orange wall separating the upper and lower decks was “1996 NATIONAL CHAMPIONS” in big blue letters with a white outline. To the right read, “SEC CHAMPIONS 91, 93, 94, 95, 96, 00.” But it was the left side that caught my attention: “1ST IN THE SEC 84, 85, 90.”

Why the distinction between “SEC CHAMPIONS” and “1ST IN THE SEC?”

I asked around, but my inquiries were met by only a few non-specific grumbles from Florida fans about how the program was sanctioned by the NCAA in the mid-1980s. Of course, one fan assured me, “But those days are long gone now,” without any further elaboration.

Something seemed off to my 15-year-old brain. Why would the university be proud of the titles they had won when the NCAA found that they were cheating? The Gators were coming off the most successful decade in their history, and it’s not like they were starving for championships to brag about after winning six SEC titles and a national championship since 1991. Why bother mentioning those tainted seasons?

Looking back on the it, the easy answer to those questions would have been “Welcome to the SEC, kid.”

I ended up attending UF a few years later, and shortly after my arrival on campus, I landed a job with the University Athletic Association. During slow times at work, I would read up on the history of the football program. I couldn’t get over how little I knew about the early to mid-1980s teams considering the level of talent on the rosters (highlighted by All-Americans Cris Collinsworth, Wilber Marshall, and Lomas Brown), the new heights to which those teams took the program (the first ever SEC championship and a top-five finish in the polls in 1984), and the fascinating rise and fall of head coach Charley Pell.

Forging Ahead

Florida football has always had its share of support within the state, but most college football fans on the national level likely view Florida gridiron history in the simplistic terms of Before “Fun ’N Gun” and After Spurrier.

The early days get some credit once in a while. Spurrier’s Heisman is often acknowledged, the invention of Gatorade is also mentioned, and good ole Ray Graves even receives the occasional recognition he deserves every now and then. But the Charley Pell era—along with the rest of the 1980s—is a part of Florida football history that has almost been blackballed.

After Urban Meyer brought a few more titles to town, the walls of The Swamp received a facelift and no longer defiantly proclaimed “1ST IN THE SEC,” trading a paint job for neon-blue signs that light up for night games. Was this a sign of a maturing program? No longer an upstart, did the UF athletic department feel that it was time to let go of those “1ST IN THE SEC” claims?

Has Florida moved on from its stubborn pride? Or should the program continue find some way to acknowledge its teams that won the first SEC titles in school history as a gesture toward the people who accomplished the feat?

These are complicated questions surrounding a complicated era, and I hope this series will provide some perspective to the highs and the lows of the Charley Pell era and its relationship with the rest of Gator football history.

Dickey’s Downfall

There was unrest in Gainesville in 1978. For the 46th time in 46 years, the Fighting Gators did not win the SEC football championship. It was time for a change.

UF head coach Doug Dickey had captured two SEC titles at the helm of the Tennessee Volunteers in the 1960s, but that success did not carry over when he left Knoxville for his alma mater after the 1969 season to replace Ray Graves, the winningest head coach in Florida football history.

In nine seasons, Dickey’s two best shots at Florida’s first SEC title were ruined by the Georgia Bulldogs and their head coach, Vince Dooley, in 1975 and 1976 (though some would argue that Dickey did the damage in 1976 with the infamous “Fourth and Dumb” call in the third quarter).

Dickey, who would later return to Tennessee to serve as their athletic director from 1985 to 2002, was dismissed at the end of the disappointing 1978 season. The 4-7 record ensured Florida would finish fourth or worse in the SEC for eighth time in Dickey’s nine years.

Rumored replacements included Lou Holtz, fresh off of 11-1 and 9-2-1 records in his first two seasons at Arkansas; Don James, who led the Washington Huskies to their first Rose Bowl in 14 years after the 1977 season; and Ron Meyer, the head coach credited with the start of SMU’s rise in the early 1980s but who had yet to put together a winning season in his first three years with the Mustangs.

As with any coaching search, the end result differed from the early speculation. When UF President Robert Marston announced Clemson head coach Charley Pell would be leaving the ACC champions to come to Florida, the hire was met with enthusiastic optimism, and the “Give ’em hell, Pell” era was born.

A New Era

In just two years at Clemson, Pell led the Tigers to their first ACC title since 1967. The glory days under legendary head coach Frank Howard had ended in the 1960s, and the Tigers managed only one winning season in the first seven seasons of the 1970s before Pell stepped in and led the program to a 18-4-1 record in 1977 and 1978.

By the time Pell left Clemson, he had built a machine for successor Danny Ford. The new Tigers head coach debuted in the infamous Gator Bowl victory over Ohio State, a game best known for Woody Hayes punching Tigers nose guard Charlie Bauman. Ford would ride the wave that Pell started to Clemson’s first national championship in 1981.

Pell played as an undersized guard and defensive tackle for Bear Bryant’s first national championship team at Alabama in 1961 and finished the last two years of his collegiate career playing alongside another Crimson Tide legend: Joe Namath.

Upon graduation, Pell took a position under Bryant as a graduate assistant for one year before moving on to Kentucky to become the defensive line coach. He had an opportunity to land a head coaching gig at Jacksonville State when he was only 27 years old, but Pell first had to quell concerns over his bachelor status. His wife, Ward, can tell you the story.

Pell led the Jacksonville State Gamecocks to four winning seasons in five years, including an unbeaten 10-0 season in 1970. He then jumped to Virginia Tech and spent two years in Blacksburg as the defensive coordinator before being hired into the same position with the added title of assistant head coach at Clemson in 1976.

When Tigers head coach Red Parker was fired after the 1976 season, Clemson President Dr. Robert Edwards released a statement saying, “Coach Parker’s comments and his own personal concerns regarding the impact which future adversities and external pressures could have on his role as head coach did not, in my opinion, reflect the degree of self-assurance needed in that position.”

Edwards continued, “It is an absolute necessity that the word ‘confidence’ characterize our program and everyone connected with it.”

As Ward Pell said, Charley “exuded all sorts of self-confidence.” The same confidence that landed Pell his shot at Clemson also brought him to the attention of the Gators. He came to Gainesville with one mandate: Win the SEC.

“He is a fine young man of proven ability,” UF President Marston said, “In our discussion, he has convinced me that he insists on proper emphasis on proper academic progress for his players and in having coaches and players [who are] appropriate representatives of the university.”

“What I see is tremendous ambition,” the 37 year old Pell said of the Florida program, “What I see is tremendous potential and people out there anxious to help. We want that help.”

“We want you to feel for it and pull for it,” Pell told an audience at the Jacksonville Beach Quarterback Club, “because Florida is capable of winning a heckuva lot more than the SEC.”

Pell saw in Florida the same potential that his mentor, Bear Bryant, once spoke of when he referred to Florida’s football program as “a sleeping giant.”

Between fertile recruiting grounds, a growing population, and the ever-increasing desire to win, the Florida football program was bound to take off and compete with the best. It just needed the right man for the job, and in Charley Pell, UF finally had its guy.

NEXT UP: GIVE ‘EM HELL, PELL, PART II: 0-10-1 out of the gate

Featured image used under Creative Commons license courtesy Karl Holland