Creator: George Perles, Jeff Charnley, Fred Honhart

Subjects: Anniversaries, Sesquicentennial

Description:

George Perles began playing football for MSU when he came to campus in the fall of 1956. Although his career as a player ended with a knee injury, he still went on to earn an MS in administration while coaching the freshman football team.

Perles spent several years off campus coaching college and national football teams before returning to MSU where he served as an assistant and then head coach of the football team, eventually becoming athletic director over all the campus sports teams. Perles was also a trustee on the MSU Board of Directors.

Topics/People Covered in the Interview include: Rick Audis; Larry Belot; Bobby Bopp; Dan, Tom Boyster; Jack Breslin; Ed Buckley; Shane Bulla; Henry Bullock; Joe Carruthers; Milt Coleman; Dan Curry; Duffy Daugherty; Detroit Free Press; Detroit News; John DiBiaggio; Al Dorr; Danny Enos; Joe Farrell; Hayden Fry; Steve Furness; Curt Gibson; Sonny Grandelius; Allen Haller; John Hannah; Judd Heathcote; Mark Ingram; Jenison Fieldhouse; Dick Kahn; Frank Kelley; Chuck, John Knowle; Mary Lee; Cecil Mackey; Ron Mason; John McVeigh; Jim, John Miller; Bobby Morris; Jim Morrissey; Clarence "Biggie" Munn; Larry Owen; Joe Pendry; John, Pat Perles; Carl Peterson; Andre Risen; Daryl Rogers; Ed Rutherford; Nick Sabine; John Sandusky;
Pat Schermer; David Scott; Forrest Sheveresky; Lou Ann Simon; Steve Smith; Percy Snow; Steve Smith Academic Center; Denny Stoltz; Gordie Surrick; Miles Tannenbaum; Dino Trabelli; USA Football League; University of Tennessee; Varsity Club; Morris Watts; Doug Weaver; Kathy Wilber; Bud, Roger Wilkinson; Father Wisner; Bill Yeoman; Ralph Young

Date: February 7, 2002

Format: Text/pdf

Original Format: Word Document

Resource Identifier: Perles, George.pdf

Collection Number: UA 3

Language: English

Rights Management: Educational use only, no other permissions given. Copyright to this resource is held by Michigan State University and is provided here for educational purposes only. It may not be reproduced or distributed in any format without written permission of the University Archives & Historical Collections, Michigan State University.

Contributing Institution: University Archives & Historical Collections, MATRIX, Office of the Provost

Relation: Sesquicentennial Oral History Project

Contributor: MSU Archives and Historical Collections

Text File: Download

Transcript:

Charnley: Today is Wednesday, February 7, the year 2001. We’re in East Lansing, Michigan. I’m Jeff Charnley, along with Fred Honhart, interviewing Coach George Perles for the MSU Oral History Project for the university’s sesquicentennial to be commemorated in the year 2005.
Coach Perles, you can see that we’d like to tape-record this interview. Do you give us permission to tape?

Perles: Certainly. Everything’s fine.

Charnley: I’d like to start with some general description of your growing-up years and family life. Where were you born and raised, and where did you go to school before college?

Perles: I was born and raised on the west side of Detroit, Vernon Central, and lived in an apartment, 7728 Pitt. It’s hard to forget. It was a one-bedroom apartment. I didn’t have any brothers or sisters. My bedroom was the living room in the Murphy bed. We always had enough to eat. My father worked at the Ford Rusch [phonetic] plant, and was a badge checker and then later on became a clerk in the office.
I went to Detroit Western High School, which is located on Scotten [phonetic] and Verner [phonetic] Highway, very close to the Cadillac Motorcar Company at that time. When I was a junior, my parents moved to Allen Park, Michigan, but I continued to go to Detroit Western High School and finished up there.
ad a good life as a child, always had the basics, food, clothes, and my dad always worked. My mother stayed at home and raised me.

Charnley: Did you have any extended family, important influences in your life, besides your parents?

Perles: I had an uncle by the name of Ben that was a big influence, probably motivated me to play sports, all kinds of sports, football, hockey, baseball, and a cousin named Joe Romaine [phonetic] that was also somewhat of an influence. My father wasn’t much of an athlete, but he did enjoy watching sports. He took me to Tiger baseball games. He took me to see the Detroit Redwings play and took me to see boxing matches. He was a fan more than an athlete, and we enjoyed those things together.

Charnley: You mentioned some of the sports that you played in high school. Which one did you like best?

Perles: I thought I was going to be a professional baseball player. Baseball was the leading sport, the national pastime. Football was just starting. Professional football wasn’t much. College football was very, very good, but professional football was not very successful. It was in the starting years. I always did tell my mother, “Some day I’m going to play professional baseball and make 50,000 a year and drive a black Cadillac.” Those were the things that I thought were material-wise very important. In those days, $50,000 was as much or more than any baseball player was making, and a black Cadillac was the premier car at that time.

Charnley: What position did you play in baseball?

Perles: Baseball, I was a catcher. But I could pitch. I could play third base. Had played high school baseball, American Legion baseball, Detroit Firemen midget’s baseball. Then in the summer, with the different teams, I might play on three different teams, playing all the time. My whole interest as a youngster was sports and math. Not very interested in English, but more of a math major, and athletics, especially athletics. Whatever the season was, I was in for it. Probably the worst sport was basketball, so instead of the winter playing basketball, I was a hockey player. Hockey took up the winter, summer was baseball, and the fall was football.

Charnley: So you played all those sports during high school?

Perles: Yes, yes.

Charnley: Were any of your coaches influential on you at that time?

Perles: Yes, my high school football coach was Ed Rutherford. Eddie came to our school, Western High School, when I was a junior, and he was only about ten years older than we were. After I finished college and got into coaching, he was instrumental in getting me one of my positions, head coaching job at St. Ambrose, which was located in Grosse Point Park. Then Eddie came up here to Michigan State as an assistant coach for [Hugh] Duffy Daugherty.
When I came back as assistant coach, I inherited Eddie as my administrative assistant. Eddie still lives down in Florida, and I’ll see him in a couple of weeks. But he had a big, big influence on my life, and it was unique to play for him and then work with him.
I forgot to mention, I came back here at Michigan State as assistant coach and worked for Duffy and Eddie and I were assistants together. Then when I came back as head coach, he worked for me. So we went the whole 360 with your high school coach. It was very unusual and very close.

Charnley: Was there any characteristic about him as a coach that--you mentioned his youth, being not much older than you. Was there anything that you ultimately emulated?

Perles: He was a stern person that probably irritated a few people because he didn’t have the capacity to exaggerate or lie. He told the truth. He was straight-up with people. He didn’t try to flower it up. He was a straightforward, honest guy, and you had to respect that. There was no gray area with Eddie, and there still isn’t. He said it the way it is. He lived by the rules. He used to have an old saying. “Just tell me what the rules are.” Whatever the rules are, he’d abide by them.

Charnley: How was it that you ended up choosing Michigan State?

Perles: Well, I got out of high school, and I had some success in high school. I was an All-State football player for two years, junior and senior year, and had a chance to go to any school I wanted in the country. I decided on going to University of Tennessee, which is something that’s not very well known. I went to the University of Tennessee for six months and felt out of place, a long way from home. I’d never been far away from home.
I left there and came back home and went into the Army with fourteen other friends. We all moved our draft number up and went in with what at that time they called the buddy system, 1954. So fifteen of us went in together. They guaranteed that all fifteen of you would stay together in basic training. After basic training, the last year of my two-year commitment, I was stationed in Hawaii, Scofield Barracks.
I played football for the Army over in Hawaii. Duffy Daugherty, along with Bear Bryant and—I forget his name, but the old coach from Maryland, were on their way to Japan, doing a clinic. He stopped over in Honolulu and saw me, and knew about my playing days there in the Army and wanted me to come to Michigan State after I was discharged. So because of Duffy approaching me, because I still had my eligibility left, after finishing my two years in the service, the Army, I came to Michigan State on a football scholarship, and that was my connection, probably where I should have gone to start with, but Tennessee at that time had just come off eight years of Bowl games. It was a football factory, and I thought that I would enjoy that. I missed this environment.

Charnley: Were you surprised when you found out the Army had--that people could play football in the military?

Perles: No, I knew that they played, but I didn’t know how about going out for it. When I got to Hawaii, they approached me and actually cut orders and directed me to play football. They knew your record. They had the record of your high school and being a scholarship player at Tennessee. So they cut orders on me. I didn’t have a choice, really, which I was thankful for. I went and played football over in Hawaii, and we had some success over there. It was probably a big help to go to Michigan State, although Duffy knew about me in high school. They had recruited me, but I decided to go to Tennessee.

Charnley: When did you get out of the service then?

Perles: I got out in March of ’56. I went in in April ’54. I got out three weeks early because I was in Hawaii. In those days, Hawaii was considered overseas, and so they couldn’t time that perfectly. But I got out with three weeks early.

Charnley: Did you start in the fall?

Perles: Then I started Michigan State in ’56, the fall of ’56.

Charnley: How would you describe that first year?

Perles: I’d now been to Tennessee, which was the first break from home, and then I’d been in the Army for two years. So coming to Michigan State and only being an hour and a half, hour and forty-five minutes from home, that was easy.
Some of my friends had gone to Michigan State right out of high school, and so there were juniors and seniors on the team here that I played high school with. One of my friends, Joe Carruthers [phonetic], him and I were teammates at Western High School, and he was playing here and just came off a Rose Bowl. Dan Curry [phonetic], a guy that was from the city of Detroit that I played against, was here. So coming here, playing football, was pretty easy because I’d been used to being away from home now. I knew our freshmen players because we were all in the same boat, but I knew a lot of varsity players or knew about them and they knew about me. So I had a lot of friends right off the bat.

Charnley: What was your position you played?

Perles: In those days, we went both ways. There was a single platoon, so I was an offensive tackle and a defensive tackle. My freshman coach was Doug Weaver, who later became athletic director here and who later hired me as head football coach.

Charnley: What do you remember about some of the early years in your own experience here at Michigan State?

Perles: I remember we had a freshman team with about two hundred players on it. This was a real football factory. You just don’t start with hiring “Biggie” [Clarence] Munn in ’47 and win a national championship in ’52 without having super support from your president, your board of trustees, and spending a lot of scholarship money to get the best group of people together. That’s exactly what Biggie Munn did from ’47 to ’52, he won the national championship. Then he gave up football after the ’53 season because of a bleeding ulcer, and handed the position over to Duffy.
The schedule was, you came in as a freshman, played freshman football because the varsity, you weren’t eligible. Then in the winter we had what we called a football class, a lab class where you put the full uniform on. We went over to Jenison Fieldhouse. It was a dirt floor and they turned it up. We had a five-credit class there where we went two hours, twice a week, and we got five credits. I was a Phys Ed major. We went in there and just like you would during fall practice, just knocked the heck out of each other.
Then after that, it was spring practice. I started on the freshman team. When I went up to the varsity, the first day I was thirteenth team. That’s how many people we had. There were a lot of them behind me. By the end of spring practice, I had worked my way up to second team and broke a hand, and came back in the fall and started off on the third team. It took about three or four games before I started. Then near the end of the season then I had my knee injured, and that was the end of my football-playing career at Michigan State.
But this was great competition here. We had a lot of players and we had a lot of coaches and we had a lot of emphasis on it. President [John A.] Hannah had an idea that he could take a university, a college, ag school and a college, and have a great football team, get the publicity he needed and turn it into a university and a powerful school, which he did. I don’t think you could do that anymore these days. But in those days, you could. The rules were different. They were a lot more lenient. You could do a lot more things than you can do now. You could have as many scholarships as you wanted, and Hannah wanted a great football team. He wanted the publicity from it. I’ve always felt that the foundation of the school, this particular school, is agriculture and football, in my opinion which isn’t worth a hoot, but I know quite a bit about the school, being around here since ’56 as a player, as a student, as an assistant coach, as a head coach, and as an athletic director.
So the few gaps in the history of our Michigan State football—when I call it history, I’m talking about since 1947 when President Hannah hired Biggie--I’ve asked questions and I’ve found out some of the things that I really didn’t know from sources like when I first came back as head coach, President Hannah had me out at his farm. We had lunch and he explained how he hired Duffy and who the other people were and filled in some spots that I didn’t really know about.
I’ve gotten a lot of information from Doug Weaver, who was here. Doug came here, I think probably in ’49, so he knew a lot about the few years before me that I didn’t know about. I’ve gotten a lot of information from Sonny Grandelius, another player here, who’s a close friend that was here before me.
Then after I came here, there was only a few years that I didn’t know exactly what was going on in football, and that was mostly the years I was with the Pittsburgh Steelers. There’s about ten years there that Denny Stoltz [phonetic] coached for three years and Darrell Rogers for four years and Muddy for three. Well, out of Denny’s three years, I knew most of those years because those kids were here when I left and they were young kids and finally gone.
But probably the four years Darrell Rogers was here and the three years Muddy was here, when Muddy left I knew a lot about the program from the kids that he’d left. But that Darrell Rogers era, about four years in there, is kind of a gray area. I learned a lot about those years from Curt Gibson, who was here then, and Rick Audis [phonetic], who’s my insurance man or my investor. I invest with him now.
I felt that this is a school different than any other Big Ten school because of one thing, because of the youth of the school, modern football. Our heroes are President Hannah--I’m talking about athletics--Biggie Munn, Jack Breslin, Duffy Daugherty. Well, I knew all those people. I could touch them all. Jack Breslin and I were very, very close. He worked very hard to get me back here as head football coach. I always wanted to feel that I was somewhat of a historian of Michigan State football, because I could cover so many years and had so many positions within the football program. Very, very few things about the Michigan State modern football that I don’t know, because I wanted to know, for no other reason than to maybe tell you or anybody else who was interested.

Charnley: The importance of maintaining that tradition.

Perles: Because we do have it, see. Field and Yost, they don’t know him, they didn’t touch him, they didn’t see him. Ours is unique. I never wanted the flame to burn out.
When I was head football coach, I always promoted Biggie and Duffy, for a lot of reasons. One main reason was that they both had camps, and I wanted both camps on my side. They had a little bit of squabbles. I figured if I could talk about both of them and have both of their camps in my corner, it was healthy. The other reason was to keep the flame going about Biggie, Duffy, Biggie, Duffy, I thought it was healthy for our program.

Charnley: When you spoke with Hannah at the farm that you mentioned, was there anything there that you were surprised at finding out about Biggie or Duffy that you hadn’t learned or didn’t know before?

Perles: Yes, that he interviewed Bud Wilkinson [phonetic] and Forrest Sheveresky [phonetic] and some prominent people, but Biggie pushed Duffy. President Hannah had a suspicion that Biggie pushed Duffy in some ways because he didn’t want his record beaten. Biggie had a tremendous record, and Biggie had a big ego. So do a lot of coaches.
After his first year, Duffy’s first year was 1954, it was a lousy year. President Hannah said that Biggie wanted to let him go, and Hannah wouldn’t let him. Well, the next year, 1955, Duffy won the championship and went to the Rose Bowl and won the Rose Bowl. Biggie got out of football too early because he had to, because of his health, because of a bleeding ulcer. When he was at the Rose Bowl, supposedly they had called Ralph Young and told him that he was no longer the athletic director, Biggie was going to come back and take over the athletic department.
When Biggie was athletic director, it was different than now. He was responsible for Phys Ed. He was responsible for athletics. He was responsible for intramurals. He was responsible for the golf course. He had it all. He definitely was in charge.
Biggie loved the Varsity Club. I ended up, my senior year, being president of the Varsity Club, and so, consequently, I could do no wrong. Oh, he loved the Varsity Club. He had a big sign up in the Varsity Club room. “The difference between good and great is a little extra effort.” That was a big saying.
He had me in his office one time and said, “Come on with me.” We went down the hall, and he went into every coach’s office and ripped them all. I was embarrassed. Then we went back to the office, and he said, “Once a month you’ve got to show them who’s running this goddamned joint.” He would just, at random, go down there and rip them. They’d just listen and let him ramble on.
He was really in charge, and he was a strong guy. The story is that his mother was a janitor. He would go around Jenison Fieldhouse and shut lights off in the rooms, pick up paper, wake up kids that was on the couches out in the lobby, sleeping. If you really want to get in a jam with Biggie, give one of the towel people or one of the people that worked down in the cage a hard time. He’d be all over you. He had a great spot in his heart for the working man and the poor people. So we all knew, don’t be monkeying around with Dick Kahn [phonetic] or any of the people that worked handing out towels, because you’d really get yourself in a jam.
When he exploded, he got all over them good. He was masculine. He was huge. He’s not very tall, but he was thick and he was quite an athlete. He was an All-American fullback at Minnesota, and then when Brocklin Nagurski [phonetic] came in, he moved to guard and became an All-American guard. He was some kind of a tough football player. He was crude in a lot of ways. Oh, boy, He was a tough guy.

Charnley: How would you characterize his relationship with Duffy?

Perles: “Duffy’s Toughies” was the nickname when Duffy coached the offensive line. They were called Duffy’s Toughies. But Biggie had an ego, and I think it bothered him when Duffy had so much success and got so much recognition. That was somewhat of a bother. They were having words when I was assistant football coach for Duffy. Duffy would have to submit the people traveling to games, and Biggie would not agree, and scratch people off. Then Duffy would go to Jack Breslin, who would go to President Hannah.
At the end, Duffy had success and had an opportunity in 1958, I think it was, to go to Texas and to go to Notre Dame. I don’t know what exact year that was. He turned down Texas and recommended Darrell Royal, who got the job. He turned down Notre Dame. So, part of the deal then was that Duffy did not report to Biggie, he reported to the president, to eliminate Biggie trying to grind on him somewhat.
Jack Breslin told me one time, he said that President Hannah called him in. Jack Breslin was like a son to Hannah. He had been a great athlete here in basketball, baseball, and football. He was his right-hand man, secretary of the board of trustees. This comes from Jack Breslin. He told me that Hannah called him in and said, “You go over there and you straighten Biggie out, or one of you are going to be gone.”
He went over there, he said, and Biggie started yelling and then Jack started yelling and said, “I’ll tell you what. He just sent me over here to straighten you out, and if one of us is going to be gone, it’s going to be you.” I mean, that was just a humorous story that Breslin told me. And that’s why I’m so close to the athletic department. All these stories from Breslin, from Hannah, from Biggie, from Duffy, it was just a natural to want to even know more.

Charnley: What was it about coaching that you—

Perles: I got hurt, and I had another year of eligibility. A couple of things I never found out. One was, I never found out why Duffy took a liking to me, because I was just a starter, I was just a player, I wasn’t an All-American. I wasn’t a great player. For some reason, he took a liking to me. When I got hurt, he asked me to stay on as a student assistant and work with the freshmen. In those days, you didn’t get anything for that. All you did was get a hat and a sweatshirt and a pair of sneakers, and you went out there and coached.
Our freshmen coaches were Henry Bullock and Gordy Surrick [phonetic], two guys that were coaching when I played. So as a senior, I went out and coached the freshmen, helping the freshmen coaches. After the one year of that, Duffy thought it would be a good idea to stay and get your master’s and work with the freshmen another year. So I wanted to get in coaching, and my key was always going to be Duffy, so I did what he said. I went and got a master’s in administration, thinking someday I might want to be a principal or superintendent or something in education. So I got my master’s and coached the freshmen.
Well, after my fifth year, after my master’s, he wanted me to go to Chicago and coach in the Catholic League. In those days, that was before the state championship started, the best league in the Midwest was the Chicago Catholic League. That’s where Terry Brennan came from. It was just a great, great league. They had an opening at St. Rita’s in Chicago on 63rd and Western on the south side where they had two thousand boys, all-boys’ school. They were Augustinian priests that ran the school. He had a friend there, Ed Buckley, and he got me an assistant football job there.
While I was in school here, I was married. Sally and I had two children. So the four of us packed up and left Spartan Village, where we were living, and went on to Chicago on the South Side, got a house in a--we used to call them flats, one house here and then upstairs. This was a Polish family, Kohler. Mr. Kohler, we rented from, he basically had a kitchen down in the basement, and that’s where he spent most of his time, and we had the first floor.
I taught at St. Rita’s, and I was there a year. We won. We had a championship team. I called Duffy and said, “I don’t know what I’m doing here in Chicago, Duffy, there’s jobs in Michigan. I really miss home.” I never did want to go far from Detroit or home. So he had an assistant by the name of Bill Yeoman [phonetic], who he got the head job for at the University of Houston. In those days, Houston was just a so-so job. He told Bill Yeoman, after he got the job, “I want you to hire—“ Dan Boyster [phonetic] was on Duffy’s staff. “I want you to hire Dan Boyster’s brother, who’s the head coach at St. Ambrose, and I want Tom Boyster to recommend George for the head coaching job at St. Ambrose.”
Well, that happened. Bill Yeoman hired Tom Boyster. Tom Boyster recommended me to St. Ambrose. Duffy recommended me to St. Ambrose. I found out later the reason I got the job at St. Ambrose from Father Wisner [phonetic], who was the athletic director there, is because Eddie Rutherford recommended me. He liked the recommendations from Duffy and Tommy Boyster, but Eddie Rutherford was coaching at Denby High School and was the dean of high school coaches in the metropolitan Detroit area. That’s what really impressed Father Wisner. Anyhow, I got that job.
Then being there at St. Rita’s one year and being at St. Ambrose in Grosse Point Park there three years, another one of Duffy’s assistants, John McVeigh, became the head football coach of Duffy’s staff at the University of Dayton. What happened there is Dan Boyster, who I talked about earlier on Duffy’s staff, wanted the Dayton job, and Duffy recommended him, and he went and interviewed.
John McVeigh was originally from Nassau, Ohio, and coached at Canton, Ohio, knew how pretty well. Went back-doored and—

[Begin Tape 1, Side 2]

Perles: In those days, you could bring kids up. As a high school coach at St. Ambrose, I was bringing players up here from all over Detroit to help Michigan State. I got to know John McVeigh fairly well, not that well, but fairly well. So when he got the job, I went to the national convention in Chicago, and he interviewed me and offered me a job. I called Duffy, and he said, “Don’t take it. It’s a lousy job,” because he was tee’d off at John. I took it anyhow. I went to Dayton. Duffy was upset over that, that I didn’t listen to him.
Shortly after, he had an opening on his staff. I always thought I’d be the next coach hired here, and he hired someone else, Al Dorr [phonetic], one of our ex-players.
So I was at Dayton two years. It was one of the poorer programs in the country, poor school, Catholic school, trying to compete with the mid-American schools. Our first year, we won one game and lost eight games and tied one. So we used to say, “How’d you do? One, eight, and one.” “Oh, you won eight?” [Laughter]

Charnley: It’s like who’s on first.

Perles: The second year, we had a tremendous turnaround and went eight and two. That was a big deal. Then that same Dan Boyster left Michigan State to go to the head-coaching job at Eastern Michigan. By that time, time healed and Duffy brought me back, and I was his assistant for five years, from ‘67 to ’71. He called me and said that’s he’s in the twilight of his career, he’s not going to be doing this much longer, and I ought to think about getting in professional football. He thought I’d be good for that.
So what happened, what really happened before that, though, was we were in spring practice, and we had an assistant coach with us, Tank Bullock [phonetic] that left for Baltimore. He was in Baltimore in 1970. They won the Super Bowl. Then in ’71 he was there. He called me in ’71 in the spring and said that Chuck Knowle [phonetic], the head coach at Pittsburgh Steelers, was looking for a defensive line coach, and he had just called Baltimore and talked to one of the other assistants, John Sandusky [phonetic], and asked him if he knew of anybody. Then he hung up and then Sandusky, Henry Bullock being on the same staff, told him, he said, “Why didn’t you recommend George?”
He said, “I didn’t think of it,” because I knew Sandusky slightly because he’d been watching practices, out scouting.
So Henry called me, and he said, “Call Chuck Knowle and tell him that John Sandusky told you to call and maybe he’s interested in you.”
So I did. Chuck took the call, invited me in for an interview. I had an interview, got there on a Thursday, stayed overnight, interviewed Friday, and I got a plane back home Friday about five o’clock. I went to the old armory place here and met my wife, my friend owned it, Bobby Bopp. I thought I had this job. It was a lock. We went through film, he asked me a lot of questions, we had lunch, he showed me some techniques that he’d like taught. On the way to the airport, he showed me where the other coaches lived and so on and so forth. So he said that he would call me Monday morning, nine o’clock, which he did. He said, “I’m going to coach the linebackers one more year.” He was head coach, but he was coaching a position. He says, “I’m hearing another guy to coach the defensive line, after a year I’m moving him to linebackers, I’m bringing you in.”
Well, I didn’t know Chuck Knowle. I figured that’s a good way of letting a guy off. So I asked him, I said, “Is there any corrective criticism you want me to work on next year?”
“No, stay the way you are.”
Well, a year later, it happened that he called and offered me the job. Duffy was very supportive and called him and recommended me. But some of the preliminary things were done before that. So I went off to Pittsburgh Steelers, and Duffy stayed one more year, then he retired.
So I was there ten years, and then there’s a whole other story. After I was there seven years and Darrell Rogers left to go to Arizona State, and we had just come off a Super Bowl, our fourth, and I was a hot number because I was associated with the four Super Bowls. So the speculation was by everyone that I was coming back as the head football coach. The Detroit News sent photographers out to Pittsburgh to take pictures, and everybody was ready for it.
Well, what happened is that I didn’t get it. I remember I got a call from the Detroit Free Press asking what I thought about being so close and not getting it. I didn’t know anything. That’s how I found out. Well, what happened is it started to leak, so they had to [unclear] to the sports information director and the people had to get stuff going quick, and they didn’t have enough time to call me. They did shortly after, but they didn’t have enough time to get me before the newspaper guy did.
I found out about that, and I probably said the right thing. I said, “Well, you know, I’m sure they know what they’re doing, and whatever’s best for Michigan State. I’ll always be positioned, if they need my help, I’ll help,” which was a good thing to say. People expected me to have sour grapes and to criticize, but I didn’t. I never found out why I wasn’t hired then for sure. One board member was using “No head coaching experience.”
But anyhow, in July of 1982, shortly before that, the U.S.A. Football League, USFL, U.S.A. Football League started, and I got hired as the head football coach at Philadelphia Stars. I went there in July, and right after our season here, Muddy’s third season, he got let go. He was let go before the season, and I knew the job was open. I was interested. I had just taken the Philadelphia Stars job. I was making at the Steelers like sixty-nine five. I was going to the Philadelphia Stars for 115, 125, and 160. Anyhow, together it was 400,000 over three years, whatever that is. I think it’s 115, 125, that’s 40, yes, 160.
It was a contract with the owners, a personal contract, not with the club, in case they defaulted. I figured I’d go there, I could make almost twice as much money as I’m making. If it doesn’t work, I always can get a job in the NFL because we had so much success with the Steelers’ four Super Bowls. So I went there.
Well, then the Michigan State job opened. I sat and waited and no one called, no one called. Finally, I talked to a good friend of mine, Joe Farrell. He said, “Why don’t you call Doug Weaver,” one Sunday night when my wife had gone out to the store. So I did. He wasn’t home. His wife answered.
I was commuting back and forth to Philly on the weekends, and this was a Sunday night. So, Monday, I was getting ready to catch a plane and go to Philly and the phone rang. I answered it and it was Doug Weaver. He asked me a couple of questions, “Can you leave? Would you leave? Are you interested?” and so on and so on. I told him how interested I was.
She came out of the bed, “What’s going on? Where are you going?” because we knew when I didn’t get the job before, when Muddy got it, it paid 50,000. She thought that was—“You’re going to go there?”
I said, “Oh, no, just relax.” I said, “If I don’t take it, at least I can recommend the job and maybe I’ll get one of my friends a job.”
Well, Doug came to Philadelphia. We went into the Stadium Hilton, right by the stadium there in Philadelphia, called the Stadium Hilton. Doug registered us under Fred Good and Tony Schwartz or something like that. We went up to the room, and he proceeded to tell me all about how good a job it was and all this and this for about an hour. Then he said, “Do you want this damn job or don’t you?”
I said, “Yes.”
He said, “All right. Order a pot of coffee.” He took his coat off, I took mine off, and he said, “I’m going to give you $95,000 and a car. President [M. Cecil] Mackey’s only making 85,000.”
I said, “Hey, I don’t want 95, make me 80.”
“No, that’s the way he wants it. We’ll give you a country club, and we’ll do this, we’ll do that, we’ll do that.” So Doug then was really like an agent then, trying to get me everything he could. I remember we were in the room, and it was a nice room that was kind of a suite. It had an archway in the middle. It was two rooms with an archway. So he says, “Go stand over there.” So I was standing here looking at him ten feet away, and he’s on the phone. “No, he’s in the other room. Now, we’ve got to get him the country club, we’ve got to do this, we’ve got to do that.” He was negotiating for me. He was my freshman coach. He was a close friend, and so they worked that out.
Then he said, “Do you want me to go down with you and tell the Stars, Miles Tannenbaum [phonetic], that you’re going, or do you want to handle it?”
I said, “No, I’ll handle it.”
So I went back to King of Prussia, and I called Miles, the owner’s home. He was gone, I’ll never forget it, to a dinner for the University of Pennsylvania, which is his alma mater. They were at some kind of alumni dinner.
So I waited, waited. He got home about ten at night, and told him what happened. I was offered this job, I’d like to go.
And “I know, George, we hate to see you go, but I know you always wanted to go back to Michigan State and so on and so forth.”
So we hung up, and I went back to my room. I had Larry Belot [phonetic], one of my assistants, living with me there, because we’d only been there five months waiting until school’s out. I had Steve Furness [phonetic] with me, another assistant coach, Joe Pendry [phonetic], another assistant coach, and an equipment guy. We had a big apartment there that they got for me.
I told the coaches, “Now I’m going to go to Michigan State. You’ve got two-year contracts here. You can stay or come with me.” Well, Pendry, I had just hired him from Michigan State, so he had been here. He wanted to stay with them. Belot and Furness wanted to come back with me.
About midnight, the phone rang, and it was Miles Tannenbaum. Now it was different attitude. He was yelling and screaming, “We’re going to sue, we’re going to do this, we’re going to do that, and I’ll see you tomorrow for brunch.” So I stayed up all night. Boy, I was scared to death he was going to queer this deal.
So, next morning, Carl Petersen, he was our general manager of the Stars, who now is the president and G.M. of the Kansas City Chiefs, Carl came over and tried to--“What do you need? What can we give you?”
I said, “Carl, there’s nothing material you can give me. I don’t care what it is. I’m going back home. I want to go home.” I’d been in Pittsburgh all those years and we had great success, but I missed home somewhat. Now I’m in Philadelphia. [Whistles] That was a long ways.
I remember I used to tell Chuck Knowle when we were flying to Denver or wherever we were going on the trips, he used to like to kid me. He’d say, “Hey, isn’t it beautiful in Denver with all the mountains?”
I said, “Chuck, first of all, I’m not going any further south than Cincinnati Bengals. I’m not going any further north than the Minnesota Vikings. I’m not going any further west than the Chicago Bears, and I’m as far east as I’m going.”
Because when I was at Michigan State as assistant, I was offered defensive coordinator’s job at Colorado. I was assistant freshman coach here, actually working for Eddie Rutherford. I turned it down. When I was at Dayton, I was offered assistant’s job at Arizona and Arizona State and turned them both down. Just like I was offered the Green Bay Packers job when I was here, and I was offered the New York Jets job when I was here, and I turned them both down. Something with my personality, I just can’t live anywhere. I knew when I came to school here, my goal in life was to be assistant football coach at Michigan State. I knew when I was assistant here that no matter where I went in my career, we were going to live here in East Lansing. This was always going to be home base.
So when I was at Dayton, I couldn’t think about living out in Arizona. I accepted Green Bay and then the next morning, I got cold feet. The Jets, I was there with the media next door for a press conference, and they slipped me out the back. That’s when they gave me A.D., and so I came back to be A.D. I didn’t have the courage to go with the Jets. I didn’t want to be in New York, and I rationalized it, think how much the cost of living, and this and that. I had a chance to make millions.
Where did I leave off before that?

Honhart: Well, I’ve got a question for you. Going back just a little bit, what was it like being an assistant for Duffy?

Perles: Oh, it was great. My first high school job, Ed Buckley, he wasn’t much fun to work for. But then after that, working for John McVeigh, Duffy Daugherty, and Chuck Knowle was great. Working for Duffy was great.
Duffy was an interesting guy. He’d get up in the morning. In his house there’s a glass table here. He’d get his robe on. He was funny. He’d get his robe on. He’d have coffee and oatmeal and visit with Francine and keep her company until about eleven. Then he’d come to the office. All you had to do is get to the office at ten to eleven, and you’d beat him in. Then he’d come in, “Sylvia (his secretary), cheeseburger.” Now he could relax and have a nice big cheeseburger, work the afternoon. If it wasn’t football season, I used to drive him. I used to drive him a lot. He played gin over at Mitch Otey’s [phonetic]. Mitch Otey had the--right by Kalamazoo, that party store there?

Charnley: Otey’s Party Store?

Perles: Yes. Is it still called Otey’s?

Charnley: Yes.

Perles: Mitch Otey owned it.

Charnley: That tradition is still there.

Perles: Then if you go in the front door--I haven’t been there in years--you go in the front door, there’s an office there with one-way glass. Duffy and Otey would play gin there, and then Otey could see through the one-way glass what was going on. They played in there. Duffy drank seven-ounce splits of champagne. He loved champagne, and he liked the seven-ounce ones so they’d stay chilled. They’d play gin.
During the season, we met. We used to have a hotel room at the Holiday Inn, the old Holiday Inn by Frandar [phonetic], and then we used to have the University Inn, room 800, and then we had a room over by the golf course, that hotel up there.

Honhart: Harley’s [phonetic]?

Perles: Whatever that is. We’d go to the different ones, and we would talk football. Then we’d have some champagne or drinks, we never met in the office, and watch film and then watch the eleven o’clock news. He’d go home. Next morning, he’d get up again, put his robe on, take care of Francie, pass by her, and then come to the office.
Duffy didn’t have a mean bone in him. The best thing that could happen to you over at Duffy’s is get him upset and him get after you, then he’d work all week just trying to make up. He didn’t have a mean bone in him. He laughed every day. He was a great guy to work for. So was Chuck Knowle and so was John McVeigh. I never had a tough guy to work for.

Charnley: What do you think you learned in the pros that you were able to bring back to Michigan State in your coaching career?

Perles: Well, the self-discipline that Chuck Knowle had. Chuck Knowle was like an arrow. There was no stopping for a drink. There was no having a celebration after a championship game. The only thing that counted was the Super Bowl, nothing else. He was always organized. He had a unique thing about him, he never criticized the players, the starters, only the stars. He went after Bradshaw. He went after Franco. He went after Joe Green. He went after the Jack Kemps. The better you were, the more he got after you. The other guys just fell in line. A lot of people are scared of the big-timers and they go after the easy guys and make examples of them. Not Chuck. The better you were, the more he wanted a piece of you.
Now, the other guys, boy, they shaped up fast because they saw that. Chuck was honest, straight, brilliant. Probably, in my opinion, the two guys that were the most brainy in professional sports were Shula and Knowle. Chuck could have been a surgeon. He had great gray matter. He was a pilot. He had a huge boat that he had all the apparatuses on it for sailing, for cruising. Chuck’s a brilliant guy, hard, tough. Boy, tough German. Bite the bullet, anything. He wouldn’t back down on anything. He could correct the officials. They’d come over and he’d correct them. One official put his finger in and he said, “I’ll break that finger off. Get that out of my face,” and he was tough. The players, Bradshaw, he’d walk by the office on his tippy-toes so Chuck wouldn’t hear him, because if he did, he’d call him in and make him look at film. Chuck would work, work, work. But he came in at a reasonable time and left at a reasonable time. He got more done in regular time than most people.
But a real religious guy. I mean, he didn’t overdo it, but he was clean cut, a sharp, sharp guy. So, a lot of things you learn from him. Distractions, no distractions. He’d limit them. And he never fined a player. I remember a guy came in late, and he said, “I’m not fining you. One more time and you’ll be in your life’s work.” Boy, I’ll tell you. We had Bay Pearly [phonetic], who was All-World quarterback coach. He unloaded him. Chuck Sumner, he unloaded him. Bob Fry, I mean he unloaded their ass, boy, if they didn’t work hard.
I never saw anybody fired. Duffy never fired anybody. No one ever fired anybody, hardly, in those days. My first guy I saw fired was Charlie Sumner. Christ, I was shocked, so I waited in the hallway there until he came to his office. I said, “How am I? Are you going to fire me?”
“No, you’re all right. What gives you that--?”
When you worked for Chuck, you didn’t go in and negotiate. He would come around. I had eleven one-year contracts, so we only had one year. He’d say, “Got a minute?” You’d go in his office. Never have enough time to sit down. He’d stand in the middle of the office. “You did a good job. I’m going to give you a $10,000 raise.” Gone.
I was sitting at my camera looking at film one time. I knew it was the day, though. We all knew what day he was doing this, because whoever got caught first, the word spread in the office. I knew he was coming around, so I’m watching film. I don’t even know what the hell I was watching. Dark room. He come in and shut the film off. Now it’s dark in there. He’s sitting next to you. He said, “You did a good job, and we’d like to give you so much raise.”
Now, one time I was in my office, and I must have been first because I wasn’t aware that he was coming. I was working. Well, I had a defensive office with three guys in it, and those two were out of it. He sat in the other coach’s chair, and he said, “You know, it’s not easy for me to say good things.” He said, “It’s just not easy for me to say those things, but you’ve done a good job so we’re going to give you this much raise.” I never interviewed for any other job, never thought about leaving, only had a one-year contract, and got a raise every year.
But between him and Mr. Rooney and Dan Rooney, his son, it was probably the best situation in professional sports, because a lot depends on the owner. Mr. Rooney was top shelf, and they treated us real good. Mr. Rooney liked me because, two things, because he used to say, “You’re the best knife-and-fork man I know,” because he liked to eat, too. I had three sons, he had five sons, and he liked seeing those kids.

Honhart: When you left Philadelphia to come here and you took over a program that was not doing very well at that time, what did you do to start to turn it around?

Perles: Discipline was going to be the first thing. I had one thing different than most people. I got John, my son, sitting out in front of me. My son John was a scholarship athlete here. He was in his junior year. Pat is at Kent State on scholarship. So he transfers over to Michigan State, and now I’ve got two sons and I’m coaching at Michigan State. You’re not going to try to fool kids, anyhow, you’re going to be what you are, but you know you got your two kids there.
So I was tough on them. I told them that “There’s probably 20 percent of you are going to really like this program. There’s going to be about 20 percent that don’t. But you guys in the middle, I’m going to get you on one side or the other. You’re either going to be in this program and want to go or get in the other program and I’ll run your ass out of here. Take your hats off. No earrings.” I had some things that weren’t popular that they don’t demand a lot of those things at most places right now. I wouldn’t let them.
I said, “Earrings.” I’d tell them, “You want to wear an earring, I’ll get you a dress, some long socks, you go stand on the corner down on Lansing.” They’d laugh. I said, “If my mother ever caught me coaching a guy with earrings, she’d be disappointed. You’re not wearing that shit around here. Not in my building.”
Before a meal, they had to wait outside. The rumor came, and I heard it, they used to go in there early and eat all the rolls up. The last guy in, the rolls were gone. Funny guys. “You wait outside until my ass is in there, and then you all come in at the same time.” Then if they were late, I’d get after them so. I had them so disciplined at times, they’d be fifteen, twenty minutes early waiting outside so they weren’t late.
It was a great challenge to me to make them do things they didn’t want to do that were for their benefit. I loved it. It wears on you. It’s not easy, because it’s not one or two. I had sometimes up to 150 kids on the team. But they all knew when they did something, I took care of it. I disciplined. I wouldn’t tell the press anything. That irritated the press, but I always felt they were my kids and I’m going to treat them like my sons. And I had two sons on the team. When they did something, they were going to get a pat on the back for good and they were going to catch holy hell for bad, but it wasn’t going to be any of the media’s business or anybody else’s. I kept it private. They appreciated that.

Charnley: How would you say your coaching philosophy has evolved from your experience as an assistant under Duffy and then as assistant under Chuck Knowle? What were some of those principles that you started with? Obviously, discipline is one of them.

Perles: Well, discipline and a great philosophy and an old philosophy on running the football and not being able to have it run against you. Playing a conservative pass defense where you gave up some yardage, you gave up some first downs, but you tried to eliminate the big plays. Eliminate big plays, not have turnovers, be able to run the football, and not let them run the football.
Probably didn’t emphasize enough special teams. If I was going back to criticize myself, I would say that. Probably should have put more emphasis on special teams than I did.
We won the Rose Bowl. I don’t know offhand, though, I think we only threw seven or so passes. We pounded that son of a gun. We used to talk about pound Green pound [?]. I wanted to play a physical game. I wanted our players to be known as tough guys. Michigan State guys always had that reputation of being guys that could really hand it out and take it if they had to. I used to tell them before they walked out the door going to a game, I said, “I don’t give a shit about the Xs and Os. You go out there and knock their ass off, you come in here, I’ll hug you, win, lose, or die.” Just tried to emphasize the toughness part of the game. We were pretty, pretty physical, but we had a lot of work to do.
I always said, “Don’t judge my program until the fifth year.” Well, some of the media interpreted that to say we were going to win the Rose Bowl in five years, which we did. They said, “Well, you’re a prophet.” I said, “I’m not a prophet. I didn’t say I was going to win the Rose Bowl. I said, don’t judge the program till five years.” We happened to go in five years and win it. We kept it going for a while.
When I turned down Green Bay after five years here, I was recruiting after the Rose Bowl. I got a call from the general manager of the Green Bay Packers, Tom Bratz, B-R-A-T-Z, something like that. He wanted to talk to me. So I’m in the office recruiting on a Sunday, and my wife calls me and says, “Tom Bratz is at the airport. He needs a ride.”
I says, “I’m here with recruits. I can’t leave. Would you go get him?” She’s kind of shy. She isn’t big on going picking up strangers and bringing them home, but she did. So I come home, she got out of the house and went shopping, Sunday, get the hell out of there.
So, we talked and we talked and we talked. No offer. Showed me the roster, showed me this, showed me that. Nothing big deal. So he leaves. I take him to the airport.
I get home, and, Christ, Jack _____ is calling, people are calling, and it’s screwing up my recruiting, so I search him down. I knew he was going to go to the Senior Bowl in Mobile, Alabama. I search him out, I know what hotels, because I’ve been there so many times, where the different coaches stay. So I got him, and I said, “Tom,” I said, “this is screwing up my recruiting. I’m not interested.”
“Oh, I know, I know. Okay, okay.” He wasn’t shocked, nothing. Well, he didn’t accept that. So--

[Begin Tape 2, Side 1]

Perles: --Chicago, at the O’Hare Inn, the Hilton, whatever that hotel is right at the airport. So I went over there and we went in a regular room that had a double bed and it had a little cocktail table, two chairs. So the president of the Green Bay Packers sat in one chair and I sat here and the bed was there and Tom Bratz, the G.M., sat on the bed. We talked and we talked and we talked. They offered me the job.
I accepted the job. I said, “But you can’t say anything till I get back home. I’m not going to call Doug Weaver up and tell him. I’ve got to go see him in person, because I just can’t do that to him on the phone.” So we agreed.
I got up the next morning rather early because I didn’t want to run into these guys. I already had the job. I didn’t want to screw it up. So I went to the airport, O’Hare, and just found out where’s the next plane going to either Detroit, Grand Rapids, or Lansing, any one.
I got out of there. Damned if I don’t have to go to Detroit and I’m getting off the plane, and who do I run into? An old baseball player, Charlie Papa Maxwell. I don’t know Charlie, but he recognizes me, and I’ve got to get back to Lansing, and he wants to talk. We’re talking and talking and talking. I enjoyed talking to him, because I’ve known about him so long.
Get picked up, go back to Lansing, and so I called Doug Weaver. He comes over. Not this house; we had another house. We go down the basement, and we talk and we talk and we talk. This is about five o’clock, so we send my wife and his wife out to get ribs. We started having drinks. Pretty soon he’s got to go home.
Roger Wilkinson comes over and he’s got tears in eyes and he’s hugging me. David Scott’s the provost, he’s calling, and he says, “We’ve got to keep our stars. We have deans around here and professors around here we have to keep. They’re our stars, and you’re a star, and we got to keep you,” and all this.
So I’m down in the basement, and finally, I had to answer the machine on the bar down there so I could screen the calls, and Joe Farrell calls. He’s a close friend. He works for the school. He’s basically a lobbyist for the medical school. I said, “Joe, I’m so sick of this.”
While I’m down there, Frank Kelley [phonetic], he’s a close friend, he’s with the Governor Blanchard, coming back from Detroit. They’re, “You can’t leave. We’ll shoot ourself in the foot. Right after the Rose Bowl, you leave, it will screw everything up,” Blanchard’s saying.
Frank says, “I’ll be over to see you.”
The phone rings, Joe Farrell calls, and I said, “Joe, I am so tired of this telephone. If you want to talk, get your ass over here.” He only lived a mile away, so he came over and we’re talking. I said, “You know what amazes me, I’ve down in this basement since noon.” Now it’s about nine o‘clock. I said, “I’ve talked to everybody, and no one’s offered five cents, not a nickel. I can’t believe that.” I said, “Not that I would take it.”
So now Frank comes in, and so Joe repeats what I said to him to Frank. So Frank goes over to the bar where the phone is, he grabs the phone, and he calls Larry Owen, who’s chairman of the board of trustees. He said, “Larry, I want the votes for George.”
What did I want? Frank’s talking to me before he gets on the phone. I said, “Frank, if I was staying here, I’m going to be sixty-two in eight and a half years. I want an eight-and-a-half-year contract, and I want annuity to make sure that Sally’s taken care of, the same as I would have in the pros.” That was basically a $45,000-a-year annuity in five years.
So Frank calls and says, “I want this and I want those votes and I want them tonight. He’s telling Larry Owen, who is chairman of the board. So Larry calls back at midnight, says, “It’s all done, and we’ll see George tomorrow morning.” Well, as it was, he didn’t have the votes at midnight. He said that, but he got them like two or three in the morning.
So the next morning, Frank, Joe Farrell, and Larry Owen came over to my house. So I called Sally over. They talked to Breslin before they came over. Breslin said, “Are you nuts? Eight and a half years, we’ll look like goofs. Make it ten years.” So they’re offering me a ten-year contract. They’re offering me a $45,000-a-year annuity the rest of my life and her life, and that would take me to about sixty-four years old.
So I said, “Sally?”
She said, “Whatever you want to do.” So I stayed, which was probably a mistake, because then the shit hit the fan because now [John A.] DiBiaggio is in another country, I forget where.

Honhart: Thailand, I think.

Perles: And David Scott is making decisions. When he finds out that I got a ten-year contract that he knew nothing about and that I got an annuity that he didn’t have, he was pissed off and tried to find out if it could be voided.
Well, what happened, Frank knew what he was doing, because I thought that Larry Owen had the power to do this. That made it a legal contract, because I thought Larry was chairman of the board, but he really didn’t. So DiBiaggio couldn’t fight it, but from then on, boy, he took it out on me. So that was the end of that.
Then two years later, Doug Weaver was going to retire, and I wanted to be A.D. for the simple reason--and Judd wanted me to be A.D. and so did Ron Mason, because we didn’t know who they might hire come in and just change everything around, and just the insecurities you have, wanting to keep things going, because Doug was a great A.D. for us. So I wanted the job, and so I had to get my back up and walk over to see DiBiaggio, tell him I wanted an interview, and it was all hokey-pokey.
When we were over at the Hula Bowl, DiBiaggio said, “Go see Roger. He’s the one in charge.” They were passing me around a little bit. Poor Roger, he didn’t know what to do. He was just taking his orders from DiBiaggio. DiBiaggio wanted no part of it.
So when the Jets offered me the position, I went to New York, and I had to negotiate with the general manager on one side, and then behind on this side of the table, him and I and the president from--he was the owner’s main guy. He didn’t keep an office at the football building. He was a tough New York negotiator. He was trying to beat me up, but I wasn’t budging a bit, because I already had something good at home.
So I finally got the deal I wanted. We agreed, and we went over to the table in his office. We were starting to work on some football business. He said, “Before you leave here, this isn’t a contract, but this says everything in it. So in case you get hit with a truck, we got this down. But before you sign it, you better get permission from Michigan State. We don’t want them to sue us.”
So I went down to another office by myself, and I called Doug Weaver. He wasn’t in. He was over at the health center. He was over getting a treadmill test. So I called Roger. Larry Owen was in Roger’s office with Kathy Wilber [phonetic]. They were trying to get that vote to make me A.D. So he says, “I don’t have it yet, but I’m going to get it. Call me back in forty-five minutes.” So I went back down to that office, told them I had to call back in forty-five minutes.
I called back in forty-five minutes, and he said, “We got it. Come on home.”
So I went back and told them, “You’d better call Larry Owen. They’re not going to let me go.” I didn’t want to go then. I wanted to be A.D. and head coach.
So I came home, and they had an emergency meeting that night over at Kellogg, and it was live on T.V.

Charnley: I remember that.

Perles: I slipped out the door and was over at one of my assistant coach’s house down in the basement watching it. The whole staff was there because it’s their livelihood. The vote came where I was A.D. Now, holy Christ, DiBiaggio was furious. Before the year was up, he got the board to make a resolution that one person couldn’t have two positions, so I had to choose. They all assumed I was going to choose A.D. I would have chosen A.D. if they’d let me finish the last season so these coaches could have had a chance to regroup, but I had to make a decision right then, so I decided to be a football coach. Then that’s when DiBiaggio hired Mary Lee [phonetic] and left a day later.
But what happened, that Green Bay thing really wrecked our relationship. We were decent friends before that, but he was tee’d off at that. Had I known all that, who’s running, who’s going to be mad and who isn’t, I’d have got the hell out and gone to Green Bay. I would have said that’s the reason I should have gone to Green Bay. I shouldn’t have gone to Green Bay for money. Or I shouldn’t have gone to Green Bay for any other reason than to eliminate all that controversy, which wasn’t tough on me, because I’d been in the arena for a long time, but it really was tough on my wife. It was tough on her hearing that noise. It’s like watching the game in the stands. It’s tougher than being on the field. Hell, you’re involved. You’ve got things to do. When you’re sitting in the stands, she had to hear all that noise, and it wasn’t fun for her. But, like everything else, time heals.

Charnley: When you were athletic director, what was your attitude toward the non-revenue sports?

Perles: Well, it’s like when I went to St. Ambrose, I followed a coach in there, Tom Boyston, who had championship teams. There was no room for improvement on the field. The only room for improvement was with the principal, the nun, and the relationship with her, because Tom was winning and he didn’t get along with her. So I capitalized on that in making sure we had a good relationship and brought her into the fold.
What was the question?

Charnley: I was asking about non-revenue sports while you were A.D.

Perles: Doug Weaver was a great A.D., but he told them, “I take care of football, I take care of hockey, I take care of basketball.” The rest of them, when he hired them, he’d say, “Just be competitive, try to win half of them, I’m not giving you the full budget, I’m not going to give you that, don’t ask for it.” So non-revenue were struggling financially.
So when I was A.D., the best place for the morale of the athletic department was to give more to the non-revenue sports. I needed nothing in football. Judd needed nothing. Mason needed nothing. We watched the budget pretty close. I think the first year we were plus 1.5 million. The second year we were 1.8, so I had money to give to non-revenue sports.
It was amazing. It wasn’t that much, but the little bit, they appreciated. They have a big voice because they have numbers. They were beating my drums just for the little bit I did for them. You’re a good athletic director. What’s that mean? That means you keep the books in order, that you end up in the black, that you don’t have any violations, and this and that.
But where the drums were really beating were all those non-revenue sports. It was only because when Doug came in, the school’s in the red, he couldn’t take care of them. He had to get this going. He was just about ready to do what he did, but he left so I got credit for taking care of them because he didn’t. But he couldn’t. He could have when I did. That’s really the truth on why I got a good grade as far as A.D., was because of the positive things that the non-revenues said about me.

Charnley: How would you characterize your relationship with Judd Heathcote and Ron Mason?

Perles: Excellent. They loved it because every time I’d see Judd, “What do you need?” “Nothing.” “Ron, what do you need?” “Nothing.” They have everything they need. I’d always try. Judd and I and Ron, we were very good friends to start with, so that was a no-brainer having them as basketball and hockey coach. So everybody was happy. The three main sports were, the non-revenue was, we were making money, so everything was going smoothly.
But before I became A.D., I knew it six months ahead of time, so I spent every extra minute I had over in Doug’s office sitting at a table like this, while he was working, just sitting. When he’d get a call or when he was talking to the NCAA, I’d get on the other line and listen. So I had six months of preparation, and I learned from a good one, Doug.

Charnley: You talked about a typical day for Duffy. How would you describe a typical day when you were head coach?

Perles: I would try to get there maybe 7:15. Give myself forty-five minutes in the morning to get whatever done, get a cup of tea. First, get in there, change from my street clothes to coaching clothes so I was ready for the day. Get a cup of tea, get behind my desk, and I might have a half hour of stuff to do. I might have ten minutes of stuff to do. I might not have much to do. Then I get another cup of tea, and then I’d go into the meeting room. I liked to sit there and look at--we always the board there, the players--and just study it, study it, who’s hurt, who’s going to be back next year.
And always have an eight o’clock meeting. My thinking was if I meet at eight o’clock, I don’t have to hear about going to the dentist, I picked up the kids, I dropped the kids off. Eight o’clock meeting every single day during the season. Now, the meeting might only last two minutes, but they’re there. Everybody’s on the job. If you don’t, you’ve got the red light, the bridge went up, there’s all kinds of shit that happens, you’ve got so many people.
Eight o’clock meeting, trainer there, equipment guy there, everybody accounted for. Maybe five after eigh