College Football Hall of Fame Got it Right

The Hall of Fame does not exist for people like Joe Paterno and Doug Flutie.

Yes, these people are great and outstanding and should be in the College Football Hall of Fame, but that isn’t the purpose.

I would know of Babe Ruth and Red Grange if I hadn’t seen their plaques at Cooperstown and Canton respectively. They don’t need to be memorialized.No, the Hall of Fame exists for people who would otherwise be forgotten.

Quick, name the only player in Major League history to win 150 games as a pitcher and accumulate 2000 hits. No, not the Bambino. Ruth didn’t even win 100.

Alright, who pitched the second perfect game in the history of baseball? Still clueless?

Well, who, along with Ned Hanlon, co-founded the first baseball player’s union?

The answer to all these questions is John Montgomery Ward, and I would never have known that had I not seen him on a list of baseball hall-of-famers and decided to look into him.

That is why I am ecstatic that Herb Deromedi was among those selected for the College Football Hall of Fame Class of 2007, that he will be recognized on the same level as Paterno and Flutie and Ahmad Rashad.

Deromedi was a true-blooded Michigander.

He grew up in urban Detroit. When he was filing out papers in seventh grade to enter the eight grade, he had to check either “manual trades” or “college prep,” which would dictate the rest of his education.

“I just checked manual trades because all of my friends had,” he said years later.

But the form that was handed in had “college prep” checked.

Deromedi was not a stereotypical jock. He had already skipped two grades and his teacher realized that he could have a white collar future in a blue collar city.

Thus his teacher changed the course of Deromedi’s life.

“I’d grown up in a bona fide blue-collar neighborhood in Detroit and very few people considered going to college,” said Deromedi. “But, we moved to Royal Oak during my eighth grade year and things changed.

“My parents had always stressed the importance of academics. They also encouraged me to be as good as possible in anything I did.”

He would letter in football and baseball in Royal Oak, graduating in 1956. He then went to the University of Michigan, completing his bachelors in 1960.

Deromedi then finished a masters degree in one year.

While a senior in college, he began his long coaching career in football.

In 1961, he coached the 7th and 8th graders at University High in Ann Arbor Michigan. The following year, he became head football and basketball coach at Byron High School, losing one game in football and winning newcomer of the year in basketball.

In 1963, he returned to University High as head varsity coach, where he would be for two years.

While on his way to a coaching convention, he met Roy Kramer, who was then a high school coach in East Lansing. Kramer gave Deromedi his big break when, in 1967, Kramer was named head coach at Central Michigan.

He offered Deromedi a position on his coaching staff, and Deromedi accepted. Deromedi had spent the previous two years back in Royal Oak as an assistant coach.

“I often kid Roy that I was the one guy he could afford,” Deromedi said. “I did take a 33 percent cut in pay but it was an opportunity to learn more football and position myself to become a head high school football coach.”

Deromedi would never be a head high school coach again, and that wasn’t because he wasn’t good enough.

He had become defensive coordinator in 1974, the Chippewas last season in Division II before moving up in 1975 and joining the Mid-American Conference. And in 1974, they won the Division II national title.

Deromedi had many opportunities to leave and become a high school coach or an assistant at a more prestigious school, but he stayed.

After the 1977 season, Kramer left CMU to become the athletic director at Vanderbilt, a position he would hold until he became commissioner of the Southeastern Conference in 1990. Deromedi was his hand-picked successor.

But he entered 1978 with an interim tag attached to his title of “head coach.”

“Roy and I were playing golf in the spring and there was a hold up,” Deromedi said. “I asked Roy what kind of team he thought we would have that fall. He told me that we’d be lucky to win three games. I told him I thought the defense would be good enough to win five games but he didn’t agree.”

It was unknown if even five wins would be enough to remove the “interim.”

However, the Chippewas beat all expectations, finishing the season 9-2.

Then the following year, CMU won its first MAC title. The school would repeat in 1980, and Deromedi would win his first MAC Coach of the Year award.

Over his 16 years as head coach, he would win three conference titles and two coach of the year awards, retiring after the 1993 season with the 15th-highest winning percentage among active coaches. Additionally, he had set MAC records for wins and conference wins, with 110 and 90 respectively.

In 1991, he upset Michigan State, who was ranked at the time. To prove it was not a fluke, they beat the Spartans again in 1992.

Michigan State had not lost to MAC school before and has not lost to one since.

Deromedi would step down in 1993 to become Athletic Director, a position he would hold until January 2006 when he retired for good.

Over his 12 and a half years as athletic director, the Chippewas won 34 conference titles, including a school record for most over a 10 year period during his final 10 seasons.

At his retirement banquet, CMU Associate Athletic Director Brett Hyble, who played football under Deromedi, could barely control his emotions.

“You walked into my high school in 1977 and changed my life forever,” Hyble said to his old coach and boss.

Nobody was truly ready to let Deromedi leave.

“The accolades that CMU’s athletic programs have earned do not just ‘happen,’ CMU president Michael Rao said. “They can only come about under the leadership of a capable individual who is focused on leading his team to the highest level of success.”

And for 38 years, Herb Deromedi led Central Michigan with dignity and pride, from just a low paid assistant on Roy Kramer’s staff, to defensive coordinator on a national championship team, to winningest coach in Mid-American Conference history, and finally to athletic director during the greatest run in school history.

“Since Herb Deromedi became head coach at CMU, there have been 64 other head coaches in the MAC,” conference commissioner Rick Chryst said. “None of them have surpassed the records that Herb set.”

But it doesn’t matter if anyone ever does. The Hall of Fame exists to remember people like Herb Deromedi, and that is why I’m glad Deromedi will be inducted this fall.

Alongside Joe Paterno and Doug Flutie and the other 11 legends who will be enshrined.

Deromedi is the definition of a hall-of-famer and the reason we have the Hall of Fame.

All the stories and interviews will be about Paterno and Flutie and even Ahmad Rashad, but at least now there will be one about Herb Deromedi.

And that’s enough, considering the lucrative obscurity Derodemi spent most of his career in, considering there are thousands of people living today who have had their lives shaped in part by him.