​Please pardon the sentimentality of this column, written, as it was, while my laptop gently weeps. Jim Walden died on Thursday at age 88. He was head football coach at Washington State University from 1978 to 1986. The sense of loss is sharpened by the plain truth that coaches like Walden aren’t being made anymore. He was the perfect coach for a time of great need in Pullman. The fourth head coach in four seasons at WSU, he promised to stay, and he did. Getting the Cougs to the 1981 Holiday Bowl ended a 51-year postseason drought, and it not only quieted some tired quips about WSU’s competitiveness, it also laid the groundwork for bigger things to come for the program. He did it with a homespun humor that often drew more notice than his toughness, his discipline, and his strong affection for his players. If Pullman had the charm of a televised rural Mayberry, Walden was Sheriff Andy—respected and admired, a folksy sage with a whistle and a plug of Red Man tobacco bulging in his cheek. Thousands of former players and colleagues will share stories of the many ways Walden touched—and likely improved—their lives. I’ll try to add a few that reveal how his warm public persona was only part of who he was.
Somehow I became involved in a book project with Walden in 2004, writing up his tales from the WSU sidelines. For several months, I enjoyed the great privilege of long phone conversations as he recalled his time in Pullman. The interviews always began with him answering the phone: “Hey, boyyyyy.” Two stretched-out words in his Mississippi drawl set a tone of guaranteed entertainment. Many of his stories never appeared in the sports pages, and in my mind they painted a portrait of a man with depth far beyond the humble, self-deprecating public persona.
Walden grew up in Aberdeen, Mississippi. His father, who had an eighth-grade education, ran a gas station, and his mother worked in a garment factory. Both of his sets of grandparents influenced him greatly. “I learned to say ‘yes, sir’ and ‘no, sir,’” Walden said. “I learned to go to church and be reverent. I was a rambunctious, wild-horse kid, and did I get spanked? Man, oh man, did I need it. I’ll tell you, those ‘time-out’ things wouldn’t have worked on me.” After two years in junior college, he became a two-year quarterback at Wyoming (Skyline Conference MVP) and was drafted by the AFL’s Denver Broncos and by the Cleveland Browns of the NFL, but he chose a better offer from the BC Lions in the CFL, where he played three seasons in Canada.
Back in Mississippi, he began coaching high school football, learning that “driving the bus, doing the team’s laundry after games, and lining the fields” taught him the value of doing the dirty work. “I can’t prove that going through all those things makes you a better college coach, but I can testify to the impact they had on my life.”