A Life of Legend

On June 11, thousands of his fans awoke to the page-one Los Angeles Times headline: “Legendary Coach John McKay Dies.” The 77-year-old Trojan general who had led USC to four national championships and eight Rose Bowl appearances died June 10, in Tampa, of diabetes complications.
Sportswriters across the country took up their pens to eulogize him. “This was the best football coach, college or pro, of the past 50 years in Los Angeles, and one of the three or four finest in America,” wrote the Orange County Register’s Steve Bisheff.
“McKay redefined USC football, raised the bar so high not even Trojan great Bob Seagren could vault it,” wrote the Los Angeles Times’s Chris Dufresne. “McKay was so good … he left the program in a perpetual state of unattainable expectations. There was USC football tradition before McKay, but you’d have to remember how to do the Charleston to recall it. McKay gave USC football the attitude UCLA and Notre Dame fans came to hate, but grudgingly admire. McKay turned USC into a power to be feared nationally.”
As much as they admired his skill, sportswriters also loved him for his acerbic wit. “If a writer couldn’t get a good quote from McKay, it was time to consider going into another line of work,” wrote Jim Donaldson for the Providence Journal. “He was the football equivalent of George Burns, as quick with a quip as he was at drawing up some innovative new play,” said Bisheff. “Covering him was like being part football beat man and part comedy writer. Often, you found yourself laughing too hard to scribble down his last quote.”