Rutsch and his boys have a time together
From left, Don Rutschman, Jay Locey, Mike Riley, Ad Rutschman
McMINNVILLE — At a large table at Golden Valley Brewery and Restaurant sits Linfield athletics royalty, swapping stories and laughs over two hours of a long lunch.
Ad and Don Rutschman. Mike Riley. Jay Locey.
Winners all.
Ad Rutschman, certainly the most with-it 92-year-old in the Willamette Valley, has been a legend at Linfield for nearly 75 years. Ad was a four-year starter in football, basketball and baseball from 1950-54 at Linfield, earning 12 letters while playing for legends such as Paul Durham and Roy Helser. Rutschman served as the Wildcats’ head football coach from 1968-91, amassing a record of 183-49-3 while winning three NAIA national championships to go with about a million Northwest Conference crowns. Ad was also Linfield’s head baseball coach from 1971-83, claiming an NAIA national title the first year. From 1996 to the present, he has coached the Wildcats’ kickoff return unit in football.
Rutschman is the only coach at any level to have won national titles in both sports. He is a member of the NAIA Hall of Fame, Oregon Sports Hall of Fame, the Linfield Athletics Hall of Fame and College Football Hall of Fame.
And yes, Adley Rutschman is his grandson (and Don’s nephew).
Don Rutschman, who turns 71 on April 11, is the oldest of Ad’s five children. He was a two-sport star at Linfield, All-Northwest Conference as a senior receiver in football in 1975, and a pitcher who was three times all-conference, and in 1974 District Pitcher of the Year and an honorable mention All-American. Don would go on to coach 44 years in football and 32 in baseball — mostly at the high school level — and retired after a long teaching career in 2020.
Mike Riley, 70, had the shortest stint at Linfield of the quartet. He arrived in 1977, at 24 accepting his first full-time position in what would be an illustrious 45-year coaching career. For the first three seasons, Riley coached the secondary. For the next three he was defensive coordinator. In the last season, 1982, the Wildcats went undefeated and won the NAIA Division II title. Then Riley was off to the CFL, where he won two Grey Cups as a head coach at Winnipeg. His longest stint came in his hometown of Corvallis, where he was 93-80 in 14 seasons at Oregon State, winning six of eight bowl games over his final dozen seasons. Riley later served three years as head coach of the San Diego Chargers and coached continuously with stops at Nebraska and in various pro leagues, earning USFL Coach of the Year as recently as 2022. For now, Riley is retired and back at home in Corvallis.
At 24, Mike Riley got his first paid coaching gig working for Ad Rutschman at Linfield. It was “defensive coordinator” by name only, however (courtesy Don Rutschman)
Locey, 69, has a connection that runs deep with both Riley and Ad Rutschman. He played high school ball with Riley and coached 11 seasons with him at Oregon State and in the USFL. Locey succeeded Riley as defensive coordinator at Linfield from 1983-95 as an assistant and was hired by Rutschman — in his final year as athletic director — as head coach. In 10 seasons in that position, Locey was 84-18, finishing with six straight conference titles and going 13-0 in 2004 to win an NCAA Division III title. Locey later served as head coach at Lewis & Clark from 2015-21. Last season, he helped out on the coaching staff at Tigard High. Like Riley, he is retired for now and is living in Lake Oswego.
Following Riley as defensive coordinator at Linfield was Jay Locey (courtesy Don Rutschman)
Riley, Locey and the Rutschmans hadn’t been together for a while. I served as fly on the wall as they told stories on each other — most of them told before — and had a ball in making two hours fly by.
(The subject first turns to Don Rutschman’s brief coaching career under his father at Linfield. It is established it probably lasted three years, coinciding with Riley’s early years with the program.)
RILEY: Donny and I were real close. He helped with the offense and we coached JV baseball together. I was head coach and he was pitching coach. Off the field, he was hard to keep up with. We were both single. He was something. Everybody in town knew him. We hung out at the Blue Moon Tavern. We’d go to their cabin at Pacific City. We had a blast together.
(Ad Rutschman coached many seasons from the press box instead of on the field.)
DON: (Peering at his father) There would be times when this certain coach was up in the press box. There was a 30-second play clock, but he would forget and take a five-yard penalty because he took too much time getting the play in. One of the defensive coaches said, “Does he have dementia?” I think the phones were hooked up, but …
RILEY: (Laughs) I deny saying that totally. All I cared about was that we were doing well enough where Ad didn’t come down out of the press box after me.
LOCEY: After I came on (in 1983), I remember (linebackers coach) Dean Pade on the headphones on the field, and things aren’t going real well on defense. All of a sudden Dean takes his headphones off and walks away. I’m saying, “Dean, what’s going on. Dean!” The next thing I know, Rutsch is in my ear. That’s when you know things aren’t going well.
RILEY: Ad, when we played at PLU, I think there wasn’t a press box. Wouldn’t they put you on the roof?
AD: They had a press box, but they sat us up on the roof. One year, PLU had a fake punt play, where they would snap the ball to an up back. They would pretend it would be a reverse, and the guy would keep the ball and look for an opening. I was on the roof. The wind was blowing that game. They had a canvas for us to hold over our heads. (Everyone laughs). I smelled the doggone fake punt coming. I’m trying to get the word to the coaches down on the field. They don’t have the headphones on. I’m yelling, “Watch the fake punt!” They snapped the ball and I’m trying to alert our defense and I’m leaning over and all of a sudden my chair goes over and I start rolling down the roof. I’ve got the cord for the headphones wrapped around my neck. (Assistant coaches) Bob Walker and Gary Stautz go running after me and catch me before disaster happens.
(The conversation swings back to the junior Rutschman.)
AD: Don was on an eight-year plan in college. He enjoyed it a lot.
DON: It was five or six. I think I got my Masters plus 107 hours. I had several majors and minors and was getting good grades and having a good time. There was no big pressure. You could shake off a loss in two hours.
AD: Joan (Ad’s wife and Don’s mother) finally laid down the law.
DON: She got me in the dining room at Christmas.
AD: She says, “You’re done. It’s time for you to get a job.”
DON: She says, “You’re done at the end of May. You need to get a real job and join the real world.”
MIKE: You and I coached together there after that.
DON: Yes, for a few years after I was done playing. I had been working at St. Helens High for five years but I came back (to coach at Linfield) because I had a guy in town take care of my salary. Dad told them he really needed help so he brought in these young guys — they call them the Gen-Zers now. I coached both football and baseball.
MIKE: Everybody at that time had to coach at least two sports. Don was pitching coach for both varsity and JV.
AD: I’ll never forget the story about a pitcher we had at the time. Mike’s JV team went into Civic Stadium to play Portland State.
DON: It was early in the season before we made the final cuts.
AD: His two brothers had both been very good pitchers for me at Hillsboro and at Linfield. This kid was also a pitcher but not the same caliber. He has been on Mike because he hasn’t been getting a chance to pitch. They get the bases loaded late in the game, and Mike decides here’s the kid’s chance to go in and do a job. Mike puts him in. Don goes out to the mound to watch the kid warm up.
DON: Another example of Mike delegating the assistant to do the tough job.
MIKE (laughing): “Hey Donny, go out there and talk to him.”
AD: The kid finishes his warmup and says to Don, “Do you want me to go stretch, windup or regular?”
(After a pause, I observe there are only two options.)
DON: Right — stretch or windup. That’s the point. (Everybody laughs.)
AD: So Don says, “Regular.”
MIKE: “Let’s just go regular.” Which is the greatest answer in the world. (Laughs again.)
AD: The kid takes his stretch. With the bases loaded, we’re not holding the runner on first base. He tries to pick the runner off. He wheels and fires. I’ll bet that ball is still ricocheting around that ballpark today.
DON: All three runs score, and I think those were the winning runs. I don’t believe he even threw a pitch in the game.
MIKE: Don and I looked at each other and we just broke out laughing.
DON: Another part to that story. We get to the park that day and realized we had forgotten the catching gear. Mike says, “Hey, Don. You want to go over and ask their coach if we can use their gear?” This delegation of duty thing got out of hand sometimes.
(Talk turns to the search for a head football coach at Corvallis High. Riley is on the search committee, but says the problem is compounded by the fact that there is no teaching job available.)
AD: That’s the way it is with many high school coaching jobs in Oregon these days. Many administrators don’t understand the importance of athletics with our youth.
(Riley tells a story of contrast during a visit late last summer to his vacation home in New Braunfels, Texas, near San Antonio. The local high school was playing its first football game on Friday night. Mike saunters over to watch some of the game.
RILEY: At halftime, the gate to the field was open, so I walked behind the bench and started watching. I stood on about the 15-yard line and was going to watch the third quarter. This guy walked up to me and asked if I had a sideline pass. I said, “No, I’m just an old ball coach. I wanted to watch the game from a little closer vantage point.” He happened to be the school principal. I started quizzing him about their program. I asked, “How many coaches do you have?” He said they have varsity, JV and freshman squads, and 16 coaches to work with them. How many of them teach in the school? He said, “Well, all of them.” How many of them coach multiple sports? He said, “All of them.”
Ad tells a story all the guys have probably heard before, about how he wound up at Linfield as a student-athlete.
AD: I had a football scholarship offer from Oregon State. Kip Taylor was the coach. My senior year, I took an aptitude test to find out what my interests were going to college. The result was “outdoors.” There were two things that caught my attention: Coaching and teaching and wildlife management. Oregon State had wildlife management. But the requirement was you had to have chemistry. I hadn’t had chemistry in high school and I figured this wasn’t a good time to start. Then I looked at requirements for coaching and teaching, and all of my high school coaches coached more than one sport. I wanted to play baseball and football because I thought it would help me get a coaching job out of college. I talked to Kip about that and he said he wanted me to play spring football, but he would give me a release on baseball game days. I’m not the smartest guy on the block, but I thought, “That’s not going to work. If I start, I’m not going to have any friends on the baseball team. And if I don’t practice, I’m probably not going to have success.” I ended up at Linfield, where I could play more than one sport. Everything worked out.
(Don mentions enjoying watching Scott Rueck coach the Oregon State women’s basketball team.)
DON: Who would have thought he would have an undefeated national champion at George Fox and take Oregon State to the Final Four? I coached him in baseball (at Glencoe High) as an outfielder. I taught next to his dad, Marv, for nine years. Scott played for Barry Adams in basketball. He was skilled, but he was pretty darn small.
AD: I coached Marv in football and baseball at Hillsboro. He was a really a good shortstop. Before his senior season, Marv didn’t show up for football practice one day. They had a farm. I called his home and his mother answered. I said, “Is Marv there?” She said, “No, he’s out on the tractor.” I said, “This is Coach Rutschman. I’ll try later.” She said, “No, I’ll go out and get him.” All I told him was, “Marv, get your fanny out here for football.” And he did. He was a good running back/defensive back. He ended up being a good athlete at Pacific and went into teaching and coaching.
(Last fall, Locey served as offensive coordinator at Tigard High to help his brother-in-law Ken Feist, the Tigers’ interim head coach. They made the second round of the 6A playoffs.)
LOCEY: They had a hard time finding a quality coach and Ken had been head coach of the seniors when they were a youth group. When I was in Canton, Ohio, coaching the USFL with Mike, Ken called me up and asked if I would help out. I had fun, but I had to put more hours into it than I wanted. It was like I was back at Oregon State or Linfield or Lewis and Clark with the time commitment. Next season, Ken will be an assistant under Todd Crist, a Linfield guy who will do a good job.
(Talk turns to Riley, Locey and Ed Langsdorf, who served a four-year reign as Linfield’s head coach. Rutschman, Langsdorf and Locey accounted for 41 of the national record 67 straight winning seasons for the Wildcats that is ongoing. None of three played at Linfield, however. Riley played at Alabama, Langsdorf at Concordia of Minnesota and Locey at OSU.)
AD: With those three guys, I knew before they showed up for an interview that’s who I wanted to hire. I had done my research. The only way that could change is if they screwed up bad in the interview. I had a rule that I would talk to a minimum of three but hopefully five or six people who knew them well. I wanted to find out what kind of people they are. My belief is, you hire people, you don’t hire paper. I’m not necessarily interested in their high school or college grades, their SAT scores or whatever. I want to find out if I can trust them, if they have a work ethic. Once they got on campus, it confirmed they were the people I wanted to hire.
MIKE: I was coaching (as a grad assistant) at Whitworth under Hugh Campbell. He left to take a job as head coach of the Edmonton Eskimos. The lucky part of it was I had just finished my Masters degree. I saw the job opening at Linfield that required a Masters. It was a teaching and coaching position. I pulled out all the stops. One of them was getting Coach (Bear) Bryant to call Coach Rutschman.
(Ad recalls when former Linfield player and assistant coach Chris Casey, now the head coach at George Fox, applied for the defensive coordinator position at Whitworth after the 1993 season.)
AD: The Whitworth athletic director (Kevin Bryant) called me for a recommendation on Chris, who was coaching linebackers and D-linemen at Linfield at the time. The very first thing I said to Kevin was, “Be aware that he’s going to make people feel uncomfortable.” He asked why. I wanted to let it sink in a little bit. I said, “Chris is going to be the first guy to work every day and the last to leave. He is going to work harder than anybody you’ve got. He is going to expect things out of athletes that they haven’t been used to. I want you to know that.” They hired Chris. The next year, I attended an athletic directors meeting and Kevin was there. He said, “You were right about Chris Casey. Boy, did you hit that nail on the head. He improved the work ethic of everybody in the department. It even impacted our president.”
DON: When Mike was hired, it was out of the Linfield ordinary. He wasn’t a Linfield guy. He is coming from a rival (Whitworth). He had been a GA at Cal. That was a big jump, to go with a guy with new ideas, new recruiting thoughts. The guy was relentless. He would go to the Quarterback Club meetings on Mondays. He went out of his way to be the JV baseball coach.
AD: He didn’t go out of his way. That was part of the deal (everybody laughs).
(When Riley left Linfield after the 1982 season, he recommended Locey as his successor as the Wildcats’ defensive coordinator.)
1977 Linfield football coaching staff. From left front row, Don Rutschman, Dan Paulino, Sam Adams, Howard Aster, Mike Riley. From left back row, Ad Rutschman, Jim Massey, Bob Walker, Joe Salta, Ted Henry. (courtesy Don Rutschman)
RILEY: Jay and I had always talked football. We went to clinics together, and would get together and talk. It felt natural ... an easy recommendation to Coach Rutschman to make sure he gave Jay an opportunity to talk to him. I thought he would be a perfect fit. We were like-minded even back then with all we were doing in coaching.
DON: Jay was much the same way as Mike. When we hired him, we didn’t skip a beat. It continued on. It was impressive to the recruits. It was good that Dad had open mind enough to go outside the box. Our recruiting success jumped up a level.
LOCEY: When I came, they had just won a national championship. It was a good scheme. Helping me was J.P. Meng, who was a Linfield guy that Mike had coached. He coordinated the run and I coordinated the pass. Our first year, Rutsch was more hands off than when Mike started. We threw some stuff in there, and in the second and third year we did a much better job.
RILEY: For three years, I was just a DBs coach. Ad is one of the two people I’ve ever known who could coach every position on the field. John Robinson would be the other. A lot of people can draw up plays and defenses. The key to Linfield was Ad taught you how to play the game. That’s the key to success — teach the technique of every position. That’s how we did it. The foundation for all of us in coaching was learning how to teach from him. The summer heading into my second season, he told me to break down all of our opponents. I had hardly broken down film before. I hand-wrote every play each of our opponents used the previous season. Ad would come up to the room and say, “Aren’t you done yet?” Finally, the summer after my third year after hopefully earning my stripes, I wrote a defensive notebook. Scared to death, I went and approached him with it. He looked at it and said, “If you think it’s the right thing to do, go ahead.” He was going to bring you up into coaching, and give you a little more responsibility as you went.
AD: I remember our Monday meetings. I’d say to both Mike and Jay, “How many ways does (the opponent) have of getting outside? How many ways do they have of getting off tackle? How are you going to defend this?” Some place along in there I would probably say, “We need to talk about this a little bit more.” (Riley laughs).
LOCEY: It would be midnight. They would be done with meetings and J.P. and I would be up on the board trying to figure things out. Rutsch would ask, “How you gonna stop this?” I would fumble and stumble around and he would say, “You know, sometimes it’s best to go home and sleep on it. Let’s talk in the morning.” The beautiful thing about that is, you never felt belittled. You always felt valued, like you wanted to work for the guy.
RILEY: I had done all this research about zone defense and had gone to clinics and learned all the stuff. Ad had taught us that you play zone by protecting the inside and being close enough so you could undercut to the outside and have your head on a swivel. (Defensive backs) know where the receiver is and what the quarterback is doing. I had come up with these zone drops. We were going to react to the quarterback. In 1979, we played Oregon Tech and they were good that year. Don Read was their coach. They picked us apart. (The Owls won 15-14). I was absolutely sick. I dreaded Ad’s reaction. The next morning, I got the phone call. “Come over to the house.” I tried to explain all this stuff, and he could have been so mad. But he nicely said, “This is how you play zone defense.” He was a teacher. He taught you how to do it and gave you more freedom as you went. But you had to earn that.
(Talk turns to Riley’s time at Oregon State and the Beavers’ unforgettable 44-41 double-overtime Civil War win at Parker Stadium in 1998.)
AD: It seemed like the Oregon defense never adjusted to your unbalanced offensive line.
RILEY: We had a bye week the week before. I was in the Bay Area recruiting. I remember exactly where I was. I was crossing the Bay Bridge and I called (offensive coordinator) Paul Chryst and said, “Let’s put in the unbalanced line next week.” We put it in and had a counter ready for when they adjusted, but they never did. The unbalanced line outside sweep play was the very last play, the one that Ken Simonton scored on to win the game.
(Silence for a few seconds. Then Ad laughs.)
AD: How many times did you ever come up with something in your sleep at the middle of the night?
RILEY: Absolutely. I keep a notepad by my bed.
AD: Can’t figure out why that happens so often.
RILEY: When I was coaching, sometimes that helped put me to sleep. I’d be thinking about a play before I went to sleep. It was the very last thing I would think about.
(Don mentions that he accompanied his father to the recent Oregon Athletics Coaches Association/Nike Coach of the Year football clinic, where Ad sold copies of his biography, “Winning with Class.” Ad tells Riley and Locey about some of the people he met. Then the topic swings back to Don.)
AD: They have a cocktail hour for coaches after the banquet. Last year, I didn’t go to it, but Don did. The next day, I get the story. People coming by to say, “What a fantastic time that was last night,” and “that son of yours is a kick.” Seems Don had hatched a plan to build a new retirement home for all the coaches. He wanted everyone to kick in $100,000 for the project.
DON (speaking in jest): After the clinic was over, (association president) Chris Knudsen had a social hour in his suite. There were coaches there from all across the Northwest. After awhile we begin thinking about ourselves and that we need to invest in a retirement home. The association named me the CEO of the project. The idea was popular. People were fighting for spots to be in this club. We were only going to have 10 condo spaces. We had 18 people who wanted to get in. We were going to pay tuition for members of the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority and the Theta Chi fraternity at Linfield to provide services at the retirement home. We were going to have a shooting range, a river to fish in and two gates of entry. Every woman who would enter would have to leave before dark. We had a bus lined up that would shuttle the people to and from Spirit Mountain Casino. We were going to do a holdup there to provide some additional funding. We were working out who was going to drive the bus, who was going to do the holdup and so on. Keep in mind, this ended about 2 in the morning.
(I mention that some adult beverages might have spawned such ingenuity.)
DON (laughing): It was a triple-header that night, starting with beer, then wine, then the harder type. It was all in fun.
(Ad reminisces about some Linfield players who made good later in life.)
AD: Steve Lopes was an offensive tackle from Winnemucca. Nevada wanted him to walk on but his high school coach had coached at Milwaukie High and sent him to us. Steve comes up for a visit with his grandparents. His room isn’t ready. The grandparents are not happy. They call the mother and say, “We can’t leave him here. This is wrong. Not the place for him.” Luckily his mother said, “He will be just fine. Leave him there.” (Lopes was an NAIA All-American at Linfield.) His roommate ends up being Jim Winston, whose dad Don Winston became a chief fundraiser for USC athletics. Don has now endowed every position on the USC football team. The two families become friends and don’t miss a Linfield game. Steve becomes a very successful administrator (COO and CFO) for the USC athletic department. Then Steve’s brother Lance comes on as a tight end, a very good one (and a member of two Linfield national championship teams). After he graduates, he gets his law degree and wants to go into athletic administration. He takes a job as legal counsel with the Green Bay Packers (and gets a 1997 Super Bowl championship ring.) His family eventually wants to get back to the West Coast, so when Mike Holmgren gets the Seahawks coaching job, he brings Lance with him (and gets a second Super Bowl ring). Now he is involved with the (NHL) Seattle Kraken. Where would Steve and Lance be if their mother hadn’t spoken up?
(The conversation swings to former Oregon track and field coach and Nike co-founder Bill Bowerman.)
AD: I went to Bowerman’s place on the McKenzie River. I went there to try to talk him out of some money as we were refurbishing our track. We never got any money, but we had a really interesting conversation. He did not believe in full scholarships. He thought kids needed to learn to work.
LOCEY: Do you think he would be supportive of the NIL? (Everyone laughs).
(Talk turns back to Linfield and the late ‘70s and early ‘80s.)
DON: I remember a spring baseball trip to Arizona when Mike and I were coaching. Ad was gone and when the cat’s away, the mice will play. We took one of the vans with a net and we tried to catch jackrabbits on the desert. I think we got one, but nobody wanted to go get it out of the net.
RILEY: We had a lot of fun. Six good years for me.
LOCEY: I was there 23 years. Nine years under Ad. Four more under Ed. Ten as a head coach. And then I hired Ad to coach kickoff return in 1996. He has done that at Linfield ever since. Mike had me handle the kickoff return with the (USFL New Jersey) Generals. I went to Ad for advice. He has a pretty good feel for it.
(The lunch get-together is winding down, but there is time for one more story. It involved a former Linfield baseball player and assistant baseball coach named Jimmy Ray. Ad plays host to regular parties in his backyard. Former Linfield athletes and coaches are invited, and generally they get a good crowd.
AD: This is a story we should have filmed. Jimmy has a small bladder. We sit around eating and drinking, and the guys go out in the garden to take a pee. Jimmy is always the first one and has to go out at least twice. (Former Linfield football player) Chip Ford shows up one morning before he’s going to school and he has this fake snake. It’s about the size of your arm.
DON: It’s a fake boa constrictor.
AD: Chip is going to play a trick on Jimmy. We go out and cover the fake snake with leaves where Jimmy goes to pee, and we run a piece of fish line back to where I sit. So after an hour or so, there Jimmy goes. I sit in the chair and Chip stands up and says, “I’ll tell you when (to pull the fish line). Then he says, “Now.” The snake comes out and Jimmy jumps three feet in the air, falls into my rhododendron bush, breaks off some limbs (of the bush, not his arms) and screams bloody murder. We should have had a camera, it was so funny.
DON: Pandemonium.
AD: Later that same day, after Jimmy has gone (to pee again), Don puts a fake ice cube with a fly in it in his drink. Jimmy sees it and takes a plastic fork and is trying to chip that plastic piece of ice. His favorite saying after that day has been, “I won’t trust any of you guys ever again.”
(Everyone laughs. People stand and offer handshakes and hugs. Then Riley has an idea: “Hey! Let’s do this again in a month!”
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