Once in a while, Tammy Walker drops by for a leisurely walk with her husband back to his office after practice.
It all seems so peaceful now, so unlike five years ago, when it appeared Northwestern coach Randy Walker’s tenure in Evanston might not last much longer.
The Wildcats shared the Big Ten title in 2000 but fell to a combined 7-16 in 2001-02 after the controversy surrounding the death of defensive back Rashidi Wheeler.
Now the Wildcats are headed to their second bowl game in three years and their third in Walker’s seven seasons.
He has two more seasons left on his contract, and Northwestern hasn’t had a losing Big Ten record since 2002, a sign of competitiveness the program had lacked for at least a generation.
On Friday, Northwestern will take a 7-4 record into the Sun Bowl against UCLA (9-2) in El Paso, Texas.
“He has been able to change the perception of our program,” said athletic director Mark Murphy, who has worked with Walker the last three seasons. “Obviously, there was success in 1995-96, but he has given us a level of consistency in the performance of the program we haven’t seen at Northwestern in the modern era.”
In 1995-96, coach Gary Barnett surprised the college football world when he took Northwestern to the Rose and Citrus Bowls. But his last team didn’t win a Big Ten game in 1998. The momentum he had built was slipping away.
Northwestern’s success in 2000 quickly was eclipsed with Wheeler’s death in a preseason workout in 2001 and two losing seasons.
“It was really tough,” Tammy Walker said. “With all the things that happened, the tragedy, he had a different perspective on life. Football wasn’t the foremost thing on [Randy’s] mind all the time. Mostly it was worrying about the [players] and keeping them together because that’s a hard thing to go through.
“It was something to battle through. And then 2002 happened to be a tough year football-wise.”
Walker’s fourth season at Northwestern got off to a bad start with a 52-3 loss at Air Force.
“Their fans clapped when we kicked a field goal,” recalled wide receiver Mark Philmore, then a freshman. “I said to myself, `This cannot be college football.’ We took lump after lump that year.”
The Wildcats hit bottom with a 49-0 loss at Penn State. But Walker’s postgame speech after that defeat stuck in his players’ minds.
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“That was a depressing day–humiliating, it seemed,” Walker said. “I felt like we were in a quagmire, with no sign of the destination. I told them I still see the destination, and I know how to get there. Sometimes you can be so overwhelmed by defeat that you can’t see it. We worked hard in presenting the destination.”
For Walker, the period was a time of questioning. Linda Will, Wheeler’s mother, called for his firing. He had to fight off negative recruiting.
“There were question marks put in kids’ heads about my ability to continue as head coach at Northwestern, and I’m not sure that wasn’t a fair possibility,” he said. “I was questioning it.”
The experience got him thinking.
“I never let go of this job and what I’m trying to do,” he said. “I did put it in better perspective. I’m doing a better job of finding time for myself. I’ve always said I don’t take it personally and I don’t let this game define me, but that’s not true–it’s not entirely true. I’m better at living that than I used to be.”
When things were at their worst, the Walkers decided to go ahead with plans to buy a Florida condominium as a retreat.
They make four or five trips a year–including a Thanksgiving trip right after the regular season–and football work is kept to a minimum.
It’s all part of a different outlook on life.
“He started to take more time, to take walks, take better care of his health, not that he was that bad before,” Tammy Walker said. “Some coaches work constantly on the phone, watching films, and he never has been that extreme anyway.”
He has mellowed some.
“He doesn’t yell as much as he used to,” senior offensive tackle Zach Strief said.
But any coach yells. It’s how and when you do it that matters. Players say Walker got them through the tough times by laying out a plan and executing it.
“When things are good, he’s paranoid,” Strief said. “When things are bad, he’s upbeat. He’s never too high or too low. In 2002, a tough year, it was never, `We’re bad.’ It was, `We’re not working hard enough.'”
Walker says he noticed a difference in attitude when off-season workouts began in the winter of 2003.
By the end of the year, the Wildcats were in the Motor City Bowl. Then in 2004 they finished 6-6, one victory short of bowl eligibility.
This season, when a bowl berth seemed unlikely before the season, Walker has solidified his position in Evanston.
“In August, it seemed every time you looked around someone was leaving the team or was out for the season,” Murphy said. “But he stayed positive and believed in the team.”
Walker says he sees Northwestern as a good fit and tries to persuade recruits of the same. A native of Troy, Ohio, he was a 5-foot-8-inch, 220-pound running back.
He tells them he could have gone to Ohio State, but he would have been a classmate of one Archie Griffin, who turned out to be a two-time Heisman Trophy winner.
“I thought it would be a matter of days before I would become a strong safety,” said Walker, who went to Miami (Ohio) instead.
The message to recruits: “I belonged at Miami. You belong at Northwestern.”
He returned to Miami as head coach from 1990-98 after two years as an assistant at Northwestern. Then he came back to Evanston as Barnett’s successor.
The Walkers have talked about Northwestern being their last coaching stop. He’s second on the school’s all-time coaching victory list with a 37-45 record. Pappy Waldorf’s school record of 49 victories is within reach.
This season he became the first Northwestern coach since Dick Hanley in 1929-31 to post three straight six-victory seasons.
“I like it here, and I think it’s a good fit–how I coach, the kind of kids I want to coach, all those things are in the right place,” Walker said.
“But I always find it suspicious when coaches make those statements to kids because they don’t control it, and we all have a price tag, don’t we?”
Walker was sold on taking the Northwestern job when university President Henry Bienen and former athletic director Rick Taylor reaffirmed a commitment to doing the things necessary to compete in the Big Ten, including building an indoor practice facility.
“This place wasn’t where it needed to be in the early 1990s,” Walker said. “You could look at a kid and say we’ll give you a chance to have a great degree from a great school, but we couldn’t say we can do everything we can to help make you a National Football League player. We can say that now.”
Philmore, a senior, can see it in the young Wildcats such as freshman running back Tyrell Sutton, who rushed for 1,390 yards and 16 touchdowns.
“It’s fascinating, in the last three or four years, to see the caliber of athlete we’ve been able to recruit,” Philmore said.
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With the program in good shape, Walker is at ease. He’s comfortable in Evanston, and even gets to walk home for lunch sometimes.
“I was at North Carolina for 10 years as an assistant,” Walker said. “People called me then, but I put a value on things that I think a lot of coaches don’t. I value where I live, I value the kids I get to coach, the people I work for.
“That’s why I made a commitment to this school and that’s why I’ve made a choice about staying.”
Evidently, the feeling is mutual.
“I think most people know he’s going to be here for the long term,” Murphy said. “We’re very happy with him and supportive of him. He has done an excellent job.”
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