Nothing is surprising about Monday’s news that Ron McBride will coach the Utah Blaze’s offensive line, three months after supposedly retiring.
Mac is a football lifer. And at age 72 — even if he recognized in November that Weber State’s program needed the jolt that only a new voice could deliver — McBride is becoming a better coach all the time.
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The latest evidence comes from the University of Utah. The school that once fired McBride is now inducting him into the Crimson Club Hall of Fame.
That’s a weird sentence to have written. Ordinarily, "fired" and "indicted" go together, not "fired" and "inducted." In this case, some of the same people who wanted McBride out of his office in 2002 are putting him in the Hall in 2012.
The honor reflects an enlightened selection by Ute administrators — including athletic director Chris Hill, who fired him — and the Crimson Club board. McBride deserves the school’s ultimate recognition for elevating Utah’s football program to a position that enabled successors Urban Meyer and Kyle Whittingham to follow through with bigger achievements.
The best part is that McBride is thankful, not spiteful.
Asked if the honor surprised him, McBride said, "I didn’t know what they were going to do. I appreciate it, believe me. I have a lot of respect for the University of Utah and all they did for me for a lot of years."
There’s actually a precedent to Mac’s comeback with the Utes. Indiana similarly honored basketball coach Bobby Knight nine years after firing him, but Knight chose not to attend the ceremony.
In April, McBride eagerly will join the other inductees — former coach and administrator Norma Carr, skier Bente Dahlum and basketball star Keith Van Horn. If you know Mac, you know he’ll be telling the longest and best stories, so they’d better save him for last.
He offered some clues Monday morning, pausing from his film study of the Blaze’s offense.
"I’ve always been proud of what we did there," McBride said. "We created respect, that we could play with anybody … that BYU doesn’t rule the state anymore. We established ourselves as being a good, solid program. Utah was going to be a football power."
Hill had to fire Mac when he did, and the Utes would not be where they are today without his work for 13 seasons. That’s not a contradiction. In 2002, attendance was dropping, McBride was losing winnable games, and the Utes just seemed stale. But what Meyer, and then Whittingham, proceeded to do at Utah has reflected positively on McBride’s foundation, as opposed to making him look like an underachiever.
Any list of influential figures in Utah’s becoming a Pac-12 member absolutely must include Ron McBride. Several factors converged to accelerate the Utes’ growth after he left, including Meyer’s dynamic approach. Mac did the heavy lifting, as Meyer and Whittingham have credited him for doing.
Let’s be honest: McBride could have exited more gracefully by resigning in November 2002 with three games remaining, rather than forcing Hill to fire him. Of course, the Utes’ finish was vintage Mac. They won those last three games for a coach who always demonstrated a knack for salvaging a season.
His firing became a blessing for Weber State. Two years later, the Wildcats hired McBride, who took them to new heights of their own, including the quarterfinals of the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs.
Someday, McBride should enter Weber State’s Athletics Hall of Fame. When that honor comes, he can thank the University of Utah for making another induction possible.
kkragthorpe@sltrib.comTwitter: @tribkurt
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