Even at 89, Chuck Mather remembers the glory days – more than 50 years ago – as if they were yesterday.
When you are the head football coach at one of the most recognized schools in the country, and you’ve won 57 of 60 games, you don’t forget those times.
You file them away in a vault.
From 1948-53, perhaps no high school football team in the nation was as dominant as Mather’s Massillon Tigers. His teams won six straight Associated Press poll titles and three national championships. They outscored opponents 2,225 to 438.
Mather played 17 teams during those six seasons, and only Warren Harding, Alliance and Mansfield beat him. And each did it just once.
After Mather won his final 23 games in Massillon, the University of Kansas hired him as its head coach. He lasted four years before being fired with just one winning season and a 11-25-3 record. But Mather went out the way he came in. He won his final four games at Kansas in 1957 and finished 5-4-1 that year.
“Paul Brown said this many, many times, and I am a believer of this: The happiest times I had coaching football in my life was coaching high school football in Massillon,” Mather said. “It was the greatest time. When you go to college ball, those guys didn’t have the training we had in junior high. At Massillon, Paul Brown started the junior high system. They ran the same plays as we did.
“Guys in college come from different schools. When I coached, you couldn’t play freshmen. By the time a kid is a sophomore or junior, he’s a big wheel on campus. He’s more interested in fraternities and girls than football. In pro football, the players all know the game or they wouldn’t be there. But they think they know more than you.”
Mather is just happy to be alive to receive the honor of being inducted into the Stark County High School Football Hall of Fame.
“I just hope I’m still around in July,” he said with a laugh.
After four seasons in Kansas, Mather was hired by George Halas as an assistant coach with the Bears, playing an instrumental part in Chicago’s 1963 championship. Halas hired Mather because he was an innovator. Mather is credited with being among the first coaches to use punch-card machines to grade his players and chart opponents’ tendencies. His use of film to scout his team is another reason Halas brought him aboard.
“In the ’63 game, we knew Y.A. Tittle’s tendencies so well we intercepted him five times,” Mather said.
Linebacker Larry Morris picked off a Tittle screen pass and returned it to the New York 5. Defensive end Ed O’Bradovich picked off another screen pass and returned it to the Giants 14. Both set up touchdowns on an icy field as Chicago won 14-10, the last NFL title for Halas.
“I give a lot of the credit to a guy in Canton named Jeff Davis with IBM,” Mather said. “Before computers, there were punch cards. Sam Williams, a guy in Massillon, has the machines, and he helped us develop a system to grade players and scout tendencies. … We had five areas to grade our guys, and we could see which areas the fellas weren’t grading well in.”
Mather thought outside the box as well as he did inside it. His approach at Massillon wasn’t intimidation.
Two former Tigers and fellow 2005 inductees agreed on that.
“Chuck created an attitude of a strong will to win, perhaps an attitude that anything less than winning was unacceptable,” said Jim Reichenbach, a standout guard on Mather’s first three teams. “A lot of coaches get very loud. Chuck was not that way. He pressed into you the importance of winning, to strive for excellence. That carries over into other areas of your life.”
It was the kind of approach that stayed with John McVay well after his playing days at Massillon. The former 49ers front-office chief played his senior season, Mather’s first, under the legendary head coach.
“Chuck was not a screamer,” McVay said. “He was very thorough but very demanding as far as exactness was concerned.”
Football, however, wasn’t Mather’s life. It didn’t define him. After coaching for Halas, he moved to the Bears scouting department, then had a successful career in the insurance industry.
He left coaching after his NFL experience because he wanted to watch his children grow up.
“I never felt football was that complicated,” Mather said. “I never slept in the office or the things you hear about guys doing these days. I always thought that was ridiculous. … We’d go to camp in July, and between then and September I got home about two nights. My children were in high school. That was ridiculous. My wonderful wife (Mildred) raised the kids. I wanted to be with them more.
“If guys are sleeping in their office these days, they’re working too hard.”
Had Mather not left Massillon in 1953, who knows how long he could have stayed? He was nearly hired by Ohio State as its head coach in 1951. Last-minute politicking by a former Naval commander named Wayne Woodrow Hayes pushed Mather aside.
“The Board of Trustees did not want another Paul Brown there, and they thought I was just like Paul,” Mather said. “The best thing I can say about it is Woody got the job because of politics. I lost by two votes in the trustee meeting on Saturday morning.”
When he left Massillon, Mather didn’t leave because he wanted to. He left because it was time. Six straight state titles, three national titles and 57 wins in 60 games … what more was there to accomplish?
“I did not think with the people we had we would lose another game for a long time,” Mather said. “As a result of that, I thought people would get tired of winning to some degree, particularly in Massillon. … As my father said, coaching is like being a minister. After you’ve been there for five years, half the people want to build a new church, and the other half don’t want to. Coaching is the same way.”
Mildred Mather died about a month ago. Her husband still plays tennis three times a week and golfs in the summer. He lives in suburban Chicago.
Chuck Mather isn’t sure how many more days he has left on earth. He cherished the ones he spent in Massillon, though.
Mather can’t wait to return to the place he loved coaching more than anywhere. During Mather’s rookie season in Massillon (1948), his team beat McKinley, 21-12. He had a similar win as Kansas’ head coach when his team snapped a four-game losing streak to rival Missouri in 1955.
The difference?
“In 1948 when we beat McKinley, the booster club gave me a brand new Buick Road Master,” Mather said. “In Kansas when we beat Missouri, the Quarterback Club gave me a pen and pencil set.”
