Wilbur "Weeb" Ewbank (May 6,
1907 – November 17, 1998) was an American
professional
football coach.
Early years
Ewbank was
born in Richmond,
Indiana
, and lived there through high school.
He then
attended Miami
University
in Oxford, Ohio
, where he played quarterback under head coach
Chester Pittser and was a member of
Phi Delta Theta
Fraternity.
Ewbank's
first football coaching job was in 1928 at Van Wert High School in Van Wert, Ohio
. He soon moved back to Oxford, Ohio, and
took a position to coach all sports at McGuffey High School.
McGuffey
was a school run by Miami University, separate from Oxford's public high school.
In 1939,
Ewbank agreed to coach both the McGuffey High School and the
Miami
University basketball
team when Miami’s basketball coach left for another
job.
During
World War II Ewbank joined the Navy and
was assigned to Naval Station Great Lakes
where he was reunited with his Miami teammate
Paul Brown who was the base football
coach. At Great Lakes, he assisted Brown with the football
team and coach the basketball team
From 1947
through 1948 Ewbank was head coach of Washington
University
in St. Louis, Missouri
, where he compiled a 14–4 record. Ewbank
started the 1947 team from scratch since the Bears did not have a
football team from 1943 though 1946 due to World War II.
His first
team started off with 2 losses but rebounded with 5 straight wins
before losing the final game to the University of
Louisville
. The 1948 squad won a school-record nine
games while allowing just 77 points while posting a record of 9-1.
Baltimore Colts
Ewbank came to the Colts at the recommendation of
Cleveland Browns coach
Paul Brown. Colts owner Carroll Rosenbloom had
called Brown asking for a coaching tip. He was interested in Browns
assistant
Blanton Collier. Brown
suggested Ewbank instead and Rosenbloom took the offer.
As coach of the
Baltimore Colts,
Ewbank won the 1958 and 1959
NFL championships.
The 1958 game is often referred to as "
The Greatest Game Ever Played".
By the end of the
1962 NFL season,
Colts owner
Carroll Rosenbloom
thought that the Colts had slipped enough and Ewbank was fired.
Rosenbloom hired in his place the then-youngest head coach in NFL
history,
Don Shula.
New York Jets
When
Sonny Werblin bought the
New York Titans franchise of the
American Football League in 1963,
he changed both the team's name (to the
New York Jets) and its coach. Ewbank took over
a team that had not had a winning record in its first three years,
and made them into a force to be reckoned with.
Werblin signed
Matt Snell away from the
NFL in 1964, and in 1965, the Jets' signing of
Joe Namath added to the arsenal which would
eventually pit Ewbank against his former team in the third AFL-NFL
World
Championship game (
Super Bowl
III).
Ewbank's Jets won the American Football League Championship in 1968
with a victory over the
Oakland
Raiders. In the third
World
Championship Game, the Colts (proclaimed by some to be "the
greatest pro football team of all time") were heavily favored over
the AFL's "overmatched" Jets. But with Ewbank's confident planning
the Jets ran a game plan that mystified the Colts and came out with
a 16-7 victory.
After the 1972 season, Ewbank announced that at the end of the 1973
season he would retire as head coach in favor of his son-in-law,
Charley Winner, though he would
continue as general manager. The 1973 Jets season is the subject of
the book
The Last Season of Weeb Ewbank by
Paul Zimmerman.
Hall of Fame
Ewbank is the only man ever to coach two different American pro
pootball teams to victory in a championship game, and the only man
to coach winners of NFL, AFL, and World Championships: (
NFL championships in 1958 and 1959 with the Colts, an
AFL championship in 1968
with the Jets, and a World Championship in
Super Bowl III in 1969 with the Jets]. Weeb's
record in the AFL was 50-42-6 (71-77-6 all-time with the Jets) and
his career regular season record in the NFL and AFL was 130-129-7
and his playoff record was 4-1. Ewbank was selected as the Head
Coach of the
AFL
All-Time Team.
He was
inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame
in 1978.
He is a member of the
Indiana Football Hall of Fame
and the Miami University Athletic Hall of Fame.
Notes
- Kurz, Bob (1983) "Miami of Ohio, the Cradle of Coaches" p. 37
Library of Congress Catalog Card number 83-50645
- Washington University Football 2006 media guide p.
86
See also
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