New San Jose State Football Coach Dick Tomey '60 Profiled in Newspaper

January 10, 2005

Dick Tomey.jpg January 10, 2005, Greencastle, Ind. - "When the situation called for it, Dick Tomey, a man in his 60s playing city league baseball against guys half his age, would crowd the plate and lean into a pitch to get on base," begins a profile of Tomey, the new head football coach at San Jose State University and 1960 graduate of DePauw University. The article in the San Jose Mercury News continues, "Whatever the endeavor, San Jose State's new football coach plays to win.... Tomey, 66... shoulders the responsibility of rejuvenating an SJSU program that has had one winning season since 1992 and had an average home attendance of 6,468 last year."

Mark Gomez writes, "Tomey got his first coaching job after graduating from DePauw University in 1960. It was at a junior high, and he was in charge of football, baseball and track. A year later, he found himself at Miami (Ohio), a graduate assistant working under the legendary Bo Schembechler, whom Tomey said he still owes a debt of gratitude. 'I had the idea major college football was way above my capability, and Bo convinced me that was not the case,' Tomey said."

The veteran coach "said he believes his third head-coaching stint will be his best. He hopes to combine a lifetime of experiences -- he is the all-time winningest coach at Hawaii and Arizona -- with his love of coaching to turn San Jose State into a winner. 'No question, I'm a better coach today than when I left Arizona,' said Tomey, who resigned under fire in 2000 at the end of two mediocre seasons and after 14 years at the school. 'I'll do a better job here at San Jose than I've ever done.'" Tomey adds, "The magic of coaching, for me, is the relationship with the players,'' Tomey said. ``We had a family. Whether it was Hawaii or Arizona, we had a very emotional connection. You can't get that in a lot of other walks of life."