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Remembering Devany [Northern Wyo Daily News]

MrTitleist

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Staff member
http://www.wyodaily.com/sports.htm
Not the whole article, just a partial in the online news.
Devaney-Bob.jpg

Ties that bind:
Remembering Bob Devaney

By Cody Tucker
Sports Writer

WORLAND — The college football landscape was changed forever when a competitive, motivated coach looking to make his mark walked off the sidelines of War Memorial Stadium in the winter of 1961.

Bob Devaney, who in the previous five seasons led the Wyoming Cowboys to an overall record of 35-10-5, including four consecutive Skyline Conference championships and a win in the 1958 Sun Bowl over Hardin-Simmons, was gone.

A man who brought winning to Laramie all the way from the bay of Saginaw, Michigan, left to take over a team that had two winning seasons in two decades, for $19,000 a year and he wasn’t even their first or second choice.

A coach, a man that meant so much to the Cowboy State left for a team that settled to have him as its coach.

That team, the Nebraska Cornhuskers, would never be the same.

Neither would the Cowboys.

In his first year in Lincoln, Devaney took a perennial loser to new heights in a matter of months. He literally changed the culture of Nebraska football overnight.

That was the magic and charm of Robert S. Devaney.

After seven consecutive losing seasons prior to his hire, Nebraska would go on to have 40 consecutive winning seasons including nine bowl appearances, an overall record of 101-20-2 and back-to-back national titles in 1970-71 in Devaney’s 11 years as head Husker. He would remain the Athletic Director at Nebraska until 1993 and remain in Lincoln up to his death in 1997.

The Cowboys were left in good hands after the sudden departure of Devaney, with the promotion of a hard-nosed, no nonsense assistant Lloyd Eaton.

UW would go on to have success in the post-Devaney era as Eaton became one of the most successful coaches in Cowboy’s history, compiling a record of 57–33–2 in his nine years in Laramie. Eaton also led the Pokes to a Sun Bowl victory in 1966 and UW’s most prestigious bowl appearance in the 1968 Sugar Bowl where the Pokes were edged out by Louisiana State University in the Tigers backyard in New Orleans, 20-13.

Eaton was also in charge for what some Wyoming fans believe is the darkest day in the history of the Cowboy program and the turning point in which Wyoming had taken itself out of national contention.

In Wyoming, it is simply referred to as the “Black 14.”

Just a year before Devaney would lead the Huskers to its first National Championship in school history, Eaton was busy with his disciplinary ways throwing 14 players off the team for a proposed protest of the Mormon Church’s racial policies in which the 14 African-American athletes would don black armbands during a game against Brigham Young University.
 
Cody is a friend of mine. He just started working on Worland a month and a half ago. This is the first article he's had picked up by the AP. He's the only guy I know with more Wyoming ink than I have.
 

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