KOCH: Tom Rossley Returns To Campus For Lettermen's Weekend

KOCH: Tom Rossley Returns To Campus For Lettermen's WeekendKOCH: Tom Rossley Returns To Campus For Lettermen's Weekend
April 11, 2015

By Bill Koch
GoBEARCATS.com

CINCINNATI -- When Greg Cook first arrived on the University of Cincinnati campus from Chillicothe, Ohio, Tom Rossley had a message for him.

"I can remember telling Greg Cook, `You're going to have to change positions because we've got good quarterbacks here,' " Rossley said.

Rossley, from Painesville, Ohio, was a quarterback, too, and a very confident one. He was big and fast and had a strong arm. But he was no Greg Cook, who cut a dashing figure with his long, blonde hair and who is still considered the greatest quarterback in UC history even though most of his passing records have been broken.
             
As Rossley looks back on a 40-year coaching career in college and the NFL, he says he  hasn't seen Cook's equal, even though he has coached Brett Favre, Warren Moon, Ryan Tannehill and 2012 Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Manziel.

Rossley, 68, is in Cincinnati this weekend as the featured letterman at UC's annual Lettermen's Weekend. It's his first time back on campus since he left in 1969. As he toured the Lindner Center football facilities Thursday afternoon, he had a hard time believing it was the same place where he played so many years ago.

"It is unreal, the changes," he said. "I mean our little locker room was down there in the bowels of the stadium and the equipment room was in there as well. And we were proud of it. The Bengals played there (in 1968 and 1969) and they used our locker room. We'd come in and there would be like (Fred) Biletnikoff's name tag still taped over your locker."

Storied football names roll off Rossley's tongue as he recounts his days at UC and a coaching career that took him to Arkansas, Rice, UC, Montreal, San Antonio, Holy Cross, Denver, SMU, the Atlanta Falcons, Chicago Bears, Kansas City Chiefs, Green Bay Packers, and Texas A&M.

In the course of a 20-minute interview, he casually mentioned Chuck Studley, Homer Rice, Bo Schembechler, Dick MacPherson, Leeman Bennett, Frank Broyles, Joe Gibbs and Raymond Berry as coaches he had either coached against, played against, or coached with during his career. But even with all he has seen and accomplished during his long and fruitful career in football, his senior year at UC in 1968 brings back fond memories for him.

By then he had shifted to receiver to make room for Cook and his powerful arm.

"I had big hands and I had pretty good speed and I wanted to play bad," Rossley said. "It worked out. Pretty soon I quit thinking that I was a quarterback. We had a great offensive coordinator in Leeman Bennett and I had a great position coach. I had Jim Kelly. Jim Kelly (for whom UC's Athletics Hall of Fame is named) mentored me and brought me along and really helped me get where I am today in coaching."
 
In Rice's second year as head coach, Cook and Rossley combined to help produce one of the most powerful offenses in UC history.

Rossley caught 80 passes for 1,072 yards and four touchdowns. He still holds the school record for most receiving yards in a game with 254 vs. Louisville and the longest reception in school history, a 95-yard touchdown catch, also against Louisville. His 80 catches stood as the school record until Dominick Goodman broke it with 84 receptions in 2008. Mardy Gilyard then broke Goodman's record the following season with 87 catches. Rossley's 1,072 receiving yards  in 1968 -- in only 10 games -- was the UC record for a season until Gilyard passed him with 1,191 yards in 2009 in 13 games.

"My most memorable game was my last game in Nippert Stadium," Rossley said. "We were playing Miami of Ohio and Bo Schembechler was the coach at Miami. It was his last game. He had already taken the job at Michigan and they were up on us 21-20 because we had scored the last touchdown, went for two and didn't get it. We got the ball back with right about a minute to go. We had to go 80 yards and Cook picked them apart. I caught my last pass on the 30-yard line, went out of bounds with two seconds left. Jim O'Brien came in and kicked a 47-yard field goal and we beat Miami and it was the end of Schembechler at Miami."

Against Ohio University that year, the UC offense was at its peak in a 60-48 UC loss. Cook completed 36 passes in that game, still the school record for completions in a game, and threw for 584 yards, also still a school record.

When the season was over, Rossley expected to continue his career in the NFL.

"I didn't even think about coaching," he said. "I was with the Eagles for a little bit and when I got cut I realized I needed to be a coach because (football) was just in my blood. That's what I do. That's what I love. That was my passion.

"Coach Rice got me on at the University of Arkansas with Coach Broyles and Joe Gibbs was the line coach and Raymond Berry was the receivers coach. We just had a fabulous staff and I really learned how to coach there."

Rossley was the head coach at SMU from 1991 to 1996 and spent six years at Green Bay from 2000 to 2006 as offensive coordinator. The Packers made four playoff appearances during his stay.

Cook, the fifth player taken in the 1969 draft, won the American Football League passing title as a rookie with the Cincinnati Bengals and was poised for stardom until he tore his rotator cuff as he was sacked in a game against the Chiefs. After the 1969 season, he underwent three surgeries on his shoulder in an attempt to restart his career, but threw only one more pass in his pro career, in 1973.

When he died in 2012 of pneumonia at the age of 65, Bengals president Mike Brown told Bengals.com that Cook was "John Elway before John Elway."

"After he was rehabbing his shoulder, he was playing basketball and he got up on the rim and he tore it and had to redo the surgery," Rossley said. "This time it was too tight. His motion wasn't there. They had to do it a third time. I can remember coming back and running routes and catching balls for him here in Cincinnati and he just wasn't the same. He never was the same. He didn't have the zip. You could feel it and see it."

Cook's light shone brightly for only a few years, but Cincinnati fans of a certain age will always have those two magical seasons to remember him by -- the 1968 season at UC and the 1969 season with the Bengals. Rossley cherishes the memories of what it was like to be on the receiving end of passes from the man he said wasn't good enough to play quarterback at UC.

"With Greg, I tell people that a lot of the passes that he threw me I was really just kind of defending myself because they were hard bullets right at you," Rossley said. "You had to protect yourself because he was so good.

"It was fun playing with him. I have fond memories of us scoring a lot of points and really being exciting and I think we kind of got people interested in football at UC again. After we won that Miami game, the students poured onto the field and we hadn't seen that for a long time."

Rossley retired from coaching in the spring of 2012 and lives in Horseshoe Bay, Texas, with his wife Kristine, who accompanied him on the trip to Cincinnati. He was clearly delighted as he walked around the Lindner Center and saw reminders of his playing days, including a picture of Cook on a pillar outside the Bearcats' team meeting room.  

"I just am tickled to be back here in Cincinnati because this is a part of my football life that I have not revisited," Rossley said.

Bill Koch covered UC Athletics for 27 years - 15 at The Cincinnati Post and 12 at The Cincinnati Enquirer - before joining the staff of GoBEARCATS.com in January, 2015 as featured columnist. Follow him on Twitter @bkoch..