by Brian Schmitz
Orlando Sentinel
Obviously, the “Big C” just doesn’t understand what it’s up against.
Cancer wants to pick another fight with Charlie McClendon? Didn’t it learn a lesson the first time?
McClendon, 76, has survived a malignant tumor, Bear Bryant, radical lymph surgery and booster vigilantes. He has survived a hazardous birth, a glass eye, recruiting wars and naysayers who doubted he could turn Orlando’s off-Broadway college football bowl game into the marquee attraction it is today.
Yeah, this time it’s bad, the cancer having attached itself to Cholly Mac’s rear end like some cruel joke. It may have crashed the party, but it can’t break this old football coach/ambassador’s impossibly infectious spirit. The disease had better brace itself when attacked by a double dose of chemo and McClendon’s irresistible charm.
After leading Louisiana State to a victory in the then-Tangerine Bowl in 1979, Cholly Mac liked Orlando so much he decided to stay the next 20 years. He liked the bowl so much he became its executive director, then took over the Orlando-based American Football Coaches Association, fighting for assistant coaches and better retirement plans.
Two years ago, McClendon returned to Baton Rouge, La., to the house he lived in during his 18 years as LSU’s coach. Either a former player or a relative occupied the home while he was gone. Now he’s back, receiving a hero’s welcome and a legend’s goodbye. So many former players had gathered around the beloved coach’s hospital bed that a doctor sternly ordered McClendon to limit the crowd to just family.
“I said, ‘No, sir. I want my players next to my family,’ ” he says. “I told my wife that I knew why the Lord was keeping me around. I think it’s for my players. They see everything I’ve been through and say, ‘If Coach Mac can do it, I can do it.’
“They see a guy who’s constantly getting his tail whipped, but he keeps coming back. That’s the attitude I’ve always had.”
It was an attitude that McClendon used to place Orlando’s bowl game on the tracks to the big leagues.
If there is one stable force in our ever-shifting, shrinking sports landscape, it is the Capital One Florida Citrus Bowl.
The game has grown into a happy New Year’s Day consolation prize to heavyweights jilted by the Rose, Sugar, Orange and Fiesta, and will pay out $11 million to teams through 2006.
Such prosperity would not have been possible without McClendon, who realized the game’s big-time potential and marriage between teams and tourism. He drummed up unprecedented community support and sponsorship during his two-year stint, beginning in 1980, when the bowl paid out a mere $500,000. It was the first of 11 consecutive sellouts.
“Charlie Mac set the table for me,” said the bowl’s executive director, Chuck Rohe, who succeeded McClendon and will be retiring to a golf course near you after next January’s game, Rohe’s 20th. “It was a little dire when he took over, but Charlie breathed life into it.”
The aw-shucks McClendon deflects the credit, but laughs about his decision to have the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders perform at halftime instead of after one particular Citrus Bowl. “It got real cold that day and nobody dressed for it. They saw the cowgirls’ bellybuttons and went home,” he says. “I should have put ’em on last.”
Typically, Cholly Mac leaves you feeling better than when you first dialed. Cancer had better tighten its chinstrap.
Brian Schmitz can be reached at bschmitz@orlandosentinel.com.
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