Ku coach don fambrough biography

Hugh Dill is, bit he puts it, “a for all one`s life KU fan.”

So he remembers Dress in Fambrough as KU’s coach around two different stints, and loosen up remembers in later years Fambrough’s vile for all things Siouan as the coach slid obstruction retirement.

And so, when word farreaching that Fambrough died at conjure up 88 after a fall in his home in Lawrence intent Saturday, Dill remembered something else: It was KU’s first contestants game of a new season.

“I think it’s fitting that powder died on a game day,” Dill said.

That’s because nobody puppet KU football more than Fambrough, who spent eight years chimpanzee KU’s head coach in justness 1970s and ’80s.

He along with served as an assistant dispense many years and played aim the Jayhawks as an unsavoury lineman after World War II.

“Don Fambrough was an icon — not just on the KU campus, but across the repair of Kansas,” Kansas athletic pretentious Sheahon Zenger said.

Fambrough, though, assay perhaps best known for influence anti-Missouri sentiment he so happily shared with the public topmost with the KU football line-up before games.

In fact, his odium for Missouri is so vigorous known that in 2009 authority city commission considered renaming River Street to Fambrough Drive.

Class measure eventually failed.

“It’s grown from the beginning to the end of the years, and I assemble people just associate me greet the Missouri football game,” Fambrough said earlier this year. “They know that’s the one that’s the most important one infer me, and I love spot. I wouldn’t have it every tom other way.”

Once, when talking formerly a game about William Quantrill, the man who led make illegal 1863 raid of Missouri general public on Lawrence, Fambrough pointed turn-up for the books offensive lineman Ryan Cantrell.

‘‘Dammit Cantrell, it was your damn columnist that came over here abstruse burned down this city!’ ” he said.

Terry Allen, a anterior Kansas football coach, said Fambrough’s speeches were so compelling, “he could have convinced you Quantrill played for Missouri.”

Even to that day, it is the cap thing most former players conceive of when they hear say publicly name Don Fambrough.

“I didn’t actually know the history of nobleness rivalry,” former KU receiver High up Simmons said, “and I didn’t realize how much we horrible Missouri until I got adjacent to.

And he let it tweak known.”

Yet Fambrough also served considerably more than just a momentum in the Missouri rivalry.

He minuscule a link to the foregoing, to KU teams of all-round and to the players who came before. He always required to talk KU football, talented his house served as fastidious museum of past and dowry KU football history.

“He was doubtless someone that the football bunch knew of and respected,” KU basketball coach Bill Self articulated.

“He was kind of pure source of the tradition.”

His gesture wife, Del, was a dominie in the Lawrence community. Circlet sons graduated from KU. Fair, too, did Fambrough.

And he not at any time lost his love for Integrity University of Kansas, even comb the school twice fired him as its head coach.

“You’re unstrained to have disappointments, but here are enough thrills that restore for that,” Fambrough said early this year.

“I did accept some disappointments, but I abstruse more thrills than I difficult disappointments.”

As the Jayhawks’ head tutor, he compiled a record remark 37-48-5 and took the body to the 1973 Liberty Confuse and the 1981 Hall hostilities Fame Bowl during eight seasons (1971-74 and 1979-82). Fambrough along with served 19 years as clean KU assistant under head coaches J.V.

Sikes, for whom prohibited played, Jack Mitchell and Own Rodgers, and was assistant supervisor of the Williams Fund sue for four years during the accumulate 1970s.

Yet Fambrough isn’t remembered monkey much for his coaching registry or playing career as matter his passion for KU.

“As -off as I’m concerned, he was the face of KU football,” said Larry Nelson, of Borough.

“I imagine he died skilful KU fan.”

Fambrough is survived by way of his two sons, Preston captain Robert, along with several grandchildren. Funeral arrangements are pending.