Twist of Fate : Holmgren, Ellison Were 0-22, Then Took Different Roads

By T.J. SIMERS

Jan. 21, 1997 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

NEW ORLEANS — The two men at Sacred Heart High in San Francisco stood coaching together on the sideline through 22 consecutive defeats.

They had no practice field, drove five miles to Golden Gate Park for their workouts after teaching five classes a day and went their entire first season without getting the lead in a game.

They had gone to San Francisco Lincoln High together and, just beginning their careers, were young and naive. They knew things would get better.

Sometime during their second season, they jumped in front of the opposition, 6-0, and because of the shock and excitement, only eight players rushed to the field for the extra-point attempt. They called time out, the pandemonium continued and they nearly had to call another to muster 11 players.

In their third season, they passed out “0 and 10, Never Again” T-shirts, and won a game, 13-10 over Piedmont Hills, almost blowing it. The kids cried, the coaches hugged and the party lasted long into the night. There will not be many more lifetime memories like that one.

They went on to triumph one more time, finishing 2-27 in three seasons before going their separate ways and eventually finding overwhelming success elsewhere--Steve Ellison at Petaluma High and Mike Holmgren with the Green Bay Packers.

“I might still be there; it was a wonderful place,” says Holmgren, who went into coaching after playing backup quarterback at USC. “It was my first teaching job and I lost the first 22 games I ever coached, but my wife and I just had twins and the Christian Brothers that run Sacred Heart are a great teaching order. But they believe in paying you in wine and not dollars. So when I left there, it was for economic reasons.”

Ellison, the head coach at Sacred Heart in those early days, the man who gave Mike Holmgren his start, remained behind. He still is very much the high school football coach and history teacher. And while Holmgren frets about the New England Patriots, Ellison’s concern is the lengthy phone call he made from school to a reporter, and the resulting telephone bill.

“I had tried calling Mike and leaving a message: ‘You’re a long way from 0-10,’ but I could never get through to him,” says Ellison, who spent the first day of Super Bowl week correcting papers from the students in his honors history class. “I sent him a picture of my son, Scott, in his football uniform. I think he’ll get a kick out of that.

“I remember a game we coached against the No. 1 team in the area, and we’re losing, 7-0, at halftime and I’m almost in tears because our little midgets are staying right with these monsters. And then Mike comes in the locker room, punches the blackboard and screams, ‘We could be ahead in this game.’ Everyone was just stunned, and the team runs out on the field, and behind me I hear this painful groan. It’s Mike, holding his hand and telling me he thinks he broke it.”

Most everyone who knows Ellison knows he coached with Holmgren. And now most everyone wants to know how someone like Holmgren, who was an obscure assistant approaching 30, could go so far.

“Mike’s got it going pretty good, doesn’t he?” says Ellison. “He was coaching in the Pro Bowl in Hawaii last year, playing golf there and telling me that he took his wife to Paris for their 25th wedding anniversary. He’s done some things I will never do, and seen some places I will never see, and that’s fine.

“I’ll have to admit, I’ve thought what his monthly paycheck must be, and I’ve gotten sick to my stomach. But you know, what we do in teaching is pretty important too. We make a difference, and there’s a lot of satisfaction in that. No regrets.”

Two men walking the same sideline in 1972 through ‘74, dreamers, and yet knowing better, as does almost every other high school coach. But Mike Holmgren stays with it, makes it, makes it all the way to Super Bowl XXXI.

“I owe a lot to Steve Ellison,” he says. “I enjoyed teaching at the high school level, and that’s what I thought I would be doing for the rest of my life. Then all of a sudden, things started happening and here you are.

“I’ve been on a big wave, and you can’t get off the board because you’re going to hold on for dear life. Now I’m in the best place for a coach that I can be.”

Sacred Heart went 6-4 the season before Holmgren’s arrival, with Ellison as head coach, and it won its first two games under Ellison after Holmgren’s departure.

“Looking back, it’s amazing, but I think we both took a path that made us pretty happy,” Ellison says. “I was really envious when he went to the public school because it meant moving out of the city, a new way of life. But Mike took a gamble and moved on, catching a break at San Francisco State and then getting a job at BYU.

“I had the chance to take his place at San Francisco State, but I was married with a young daughter. It would have been a $10,000 pay cut and I didn’t do it. I couldn’t do it, and stay married.”

Holmgren left Sacred Heart to coach at the public school, Oak Grove High, outside San Jose, and had been there six seasons when he heard about an opportunity at San Francisco State. Vic Rowen wanted an offensive coach, and he offered Holmgren $23,000 a year, a $3,000 pay cut.

“He said he couldn’t come unless we got him $26,000, so we did,” Rowen says. “He came in and wanted to see the playbook. I told him, ‘Forget the playbook, we have to sell hot dogs on the campus to raise funds.’ ”

While Ellison continued to coach at Sacred Heart, Rowen eventually called Brigham Young’s LaVell Edwards and recommended Holmgren, who went on to work with Steve Young, catch the attention of San Francisco coach Bill Walsh and eventually join the 49ers.

“From the way I was raised, job security was always very important to me,” says Ellison, and although Holmgren has the headlines now, there are other friends not so fortunate. “Do I want to be 30 and unemployed, the kids in school and I don’t know what I’m going to do? I have a friend at Cal who’s a coach, and he doesn’t know what his future is going to be now.

“I have a friend who is a coach at Rutgers who is 50, and he lucked out getting a job there. Here he was, 49 years old and unemployed. Everybody sees the glory side of it. But do you want to be on the road, begging some 17-year-old to go to your school?”

Rowen, in an ironic twist, coaches at Sacred Heart. He led the school to a 9-0-1 record last fall. And while proud to have had something to do with Holmgren’s career, he says, “Steve pursued a dream that didn’t become Green Bay, but became Petaluma and that’s pretty good.”

This season, while the Packers were trying to win the NFC Central Division title, Ellison’s Petaluma team was wrapping up another Sonoma County League crown with a 10-2 record. Holmgren was coaching Brett Favre and Reggie White; Ellison had the thrill of coaching his son.

“I don’t think there’s a high school coach around that doesn’t watch a pro football game on Sunday and dream a little bit,” Ellison says. “I’ve never had the thrill of running out on the field with 80,000 people screaming like Mike has, but there have been nights when I’ve run out and there’s been 3,000 fans, and it looks like 80,000 as far as I’m concerned.

“I get a razzed a lot about how come I’m not coaching with him, and it’s bothered me a little bit: people implying that my buddy didn’t think much of me. When Mike got the job with Green Bay, I have to admit, I was wondering if he would take me. It’s like my wife says all the time, I probably wouldn’t have gone, but I would have loved to be asked.”

When Holmgren steps on a podium today, before 3,000 reporters, photographers and TV camera crews, Ellison will be returning to school after a day off. There are pictures of Holmgren on his classroom wall, and he says he could not be more pleased for his friend.

“He’s probably the most famous person I know,” Ellison says. “I’ll admit, I’m a little star-struck, being around him. He’s been so good to my kids.

“But you know, during that time Mike and I were together, he nearly got out of coaching. He was coaching and teaching mechanical drawing, and money-wise it wasn’t good. He was a business major at USC, and he began to look into things where maybe he could get more money, but I kept telling him to hang in there--he had too much talent.”

Hundreds and hundreds of victories later, and Ellison says there is one shared with Holmgren that remains special to both.

“If you asked him today, he would still tell you that 13-10 win over Piedmont Hills was the best win he’s ever had,” Ellison says. “Of course, that may change in a few days.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Head Coach’s Resumes

MIKE HOLMGREN

NFL regular season record:

1966-69: Quarterback at USC.

1970: Selected by the St. Louis Cardinals in the eighth round of the NFL draft.

1972-4: Assistant coach, Sacred Heart High School in San Francisco, where they went 2-27 in three seasons.

1981: Assistant coach, San Francisco State.

1982-5: Assistant coach, Brigham Young.

10-5-1 1986: Quarterbacks coach for San Francisco 49ers under Bill Walsh.

13-2: 1987

XXIII: 10-6: 1988: 49ers won Super Bowl XXIII over Cincinnati, 20-16