BILL WORKMAN

Richard Dunn

As Bill Workman negotiates a real estate buyout with executives

from Kentucky Fried Chicken in his new endeavor of managing his

ailing father’s affairs, he has to sit back and wonder how he arrived

in this position in the first place.

After all, this is Bill Workman the former football coach, isn’t

it? Not some city slicker with an even slicker double-breasted

Italian suit who makes a living bargaining numbers.

“Sometimes I had to punch myself, because I’m asking ‘How did I

get here?’” Workman said. “I don’t know anything about (commercial

real estate). When I was coaching football, if somebody had said to

me you’re going to be negotiating a real estate buyout with KFC, I

would’ve said ‘Not me, brother.’”

This isn’t the first time Workman, who built Edison High into a

Southern California football power and later enjoyed success as

Orange Coast College’s head coach, has been a little surprised at his

circumstances.

Once, for example, he spoke to members of the U.S. Congress in

Washington, D.C., and the only way he could return in time for a game

that night in Costa Mesa was take a limousine from LAX.

Workman, whose volunteer random drug testing program at Edison was

the first in an American public school and made national headlines in

1985, wondered that day in the limo “how a guy from the ghetto can

get to this position?”

After taking over as head coach at Edison in 1973, there was a

game plan in the works, but Workman did not imagine taking the

Chargers to such heights with an Orange County-record 32-game winning

streak, three CIF Southern Section Big Five Conference (now Division

I) championships and seven Sunset League titles in 13 years, in which

he compiled a 109-33-5 record.

“You look up and all of the sudden you’re playing at Anaheim

Stadium and putting $300,000 in T-bills for the Edison student body

... you wonder how you got to that point,” Workman said, referring to

Edison’s glory years of the 1970s and through the mid-’80s, when the

Chargers would regularly play rival Fountain Valley at Anaheim

Stadium, and often finish the season playing there again in the CIF

Big Five Conference title game.

With seemingly an unlimited budget and a boundless stream of

football talent, Edison remained atop the Orange County rankings for

several years with Workman at the helm. He would take his coaching

staff each spring to a college to study a different program and “try

to learn something, try to get better.”

But Workman, whose longing to become a community college head

coach started early in his career, landed a lifetime plum when he was

hired at Orange Coast, where he coached until 1998. In Workman’s

first eight years at OCC, the Pirates posted an impressive 51-32 mark

with three postseason bowl-game appearances in four years (1990-93).

He finished with a 63-70 record in 13 seasons.

“I always said I wanted to be a JC coach,” Workman said. “That

way, I got to see my daughters (Jana and Julie) grow up and I won’t

get a divorce like 60% of the college coaches, because they’re never

home.”

At OCC, Workman sent 162 players to four-year colleges on

scholarships, while coaching 11 players who played professionally. At

Edison, he was twice named California Coach of the Year and coached

six prep All-Americans, 31 All-CIF players and a dozen future NFL

performers.

A standout football and track athlete at Bell High School, Workman

played halfback at East Los Angeles College and Whittier College,

before starting his coaching career in 1964 at California High.

Workman described his grandparents from Texas as true

“hillbillies” who lost all their cattle during the Great Depression,

loaded their dusty, exhaust pipe-popping truck and headed for

California, where they landed in Southeast Los Angeles with Workman’s

father, Jack, and “just threw up a tent” on a vacant lot. And stayed

there for two years. “Nobody knew who owned the property,” said

Workman, later amazed how his father had the insight to encourage him

to go to college and play sports.

Workman, the latest honoree in the Daily Pilot Sports Hall of

Fame, and his wife, Sheri, live in Fountain Valley and will celebrate

their 36th wedding anniversary in October. Their daughter Jana is

pregnant with her seventh child. She’s married to Rick Ponder, who

played football at Edison for his future father-in-law.

“The people are the biggest thrill,” Workman said. “It’s all about

the people. When it’s all said and done, it’s about the people you

meet and trust, and there’s no greater way than through football,

because it’s like you’ve been in the foxhole with them in a football

game. You know what they’re made of. There’s like an instant bond

when you see them. Maybe you haven’t seen them in years, but when you

do, you know where you left off and pick right up ... I still miss

(coaching football).”

Perhaps another time will come when “Willie” Workman is in yet

another situation he just can’t believe.