Former Orange Coast coach knows the game

Chris Yemma

Newport Beach resident Ray Rosso, 88, knows football. He has known

the details and intricacies of the game his entire life. More

specifically, though, he knows junior college football.

Rosso was Orange Coast College’s first football coach. He coached

there when the school opened in 1948, through 1955, compiling al

record of 37-38-3.

Through his coaching years and during the years he has been

retired, he has seen the game change and evolve into something that

is immensely different today. From the uniform and helmet styles, to

the coaching and game strategies, Rosso has been there and seen it

all.

“The coaching now is terrific, but there are different pressures

entirely,” he said. “There wasn’t this tremendous tension between

games and seasons back then. The public goes nuts now.”

Before Rosso coached at Orange Coast, he was the head coach at

Chaffey College in Rancho Cucamonga. At Chaffey, Rosso was a part of

television and sports history. In 1947, he coached Chaffey against

Cameron University during the first color television broadcast of a

football game.

During his coaching days at Chaffey, Rosso said the program would

sometimes draw as many as 55,000 people. Nowadays, the Coast or

Chaffey football programs are lucky if they draw 1,000 people.

Rosso thinks the main reason for the decline of junior college

football interest is because fans don’t have to be localized. With

hordes of college, professional, and even high school games being

broadcast every week, people can pick and choose who they want to

watch. When Rosso was a coach, fans more often attended the games

held closest to their homes, he said.

Before his coaching days, Rosso was a player himself. He played

for Cal and, as a sophomore in 1938, he was part of a Rose Bowl

championship team. Cal defeated Alabama, 13-0, that year in Pasadena.

In those days, players were a lot smaller -- Rosso started as an

offensive guard his senior season, weighing 185 pounds. Players also

wore leather helmets without facemasks.

“During one game I was hit in the mouth,” Rosso said. “I knew some

teeth were loose after the game. Toward the end of the week we were

practicing and one of our tall guys [unintentionally] swings around

with his elbow and loosens the rest. I put a bar across my helmet

after that.”

Now that he’s retired, Rosso occasionally attends Orange Coast

football games. And at age 88, he still is active. Despite having

four hip-replacement surgeries -- in 1977, 1984, 2001 and 2002 -- he hikes and bikes throughout Newport Beach.

But his true passion is football. Unfortunately for Rosso, he

didn’t make the cut professionally after college. And, these days, he

acknowledges he wouldn’t have made it as a lineman in college at 185

pounds.

“It’s greatly different now,” he said. “The ability and agility

now are unbelievably advanced, the coaching is much better and the

facilities are better. Everything is much better.”