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SOU football coach Craig Howard dies Coach Howard talks to his team. File photo by Al Case Friday Jan 20, 2017 at 1:50 PM Jan 23, 2017 at 7:10 PM Joe Zavala Ashland Daily Tidings @Joe_Zavala99 Southern Oregon University football coach Craig Howard, who took over what had been a struggling program in 2011 and quickly turned it into a national powerhouse, died Thursday night in his Ashland home. He was 64. The school announced his death on its athletics website at 12:39 p.m, shortly after staff and players were notified. Howard’s cause of death was not immediately known, but he died in his sleep. “He is with God now,” said his wife, Valerie. Howard, who led SOU to its only NAIA national championship in 2014, is survived by Valerie Howard, daughters Amy and Emily, sons Bo, Jordan and Ryan, and 11 grandchildren. According to a story posted on souraiders.com, the date and time of his service will be announced in the coming days and student group grief counseling was made available Friday. Assistant head coach Nathan Chin will lead the program on an interim basis, said athletic director Matt Sayre. How long Chin, whose two stints at SOU total 12 seasons, keeps that title has not been determined. “In the next few days,” Sayre said, “we’ll really kind of sit down and figure out what that looks like, for how long, and when we’ll do a search. All those things will be worked out in the next few days.” Sayre said he learned of Howard’s death from SOU campus public safety director Frederick Creek on Friday morning. He broke the news to Chin by phone, and told the rest of the football staff in an office inside Raider Stadium at about 11 a.m. When asked how the coaches took the news, Sayre said, “Hard. Disbelief and very hard. Coach Howard is a father figure, not just to the players but to a lot of the coaches and a mentor to all of us, me included. So his inspiration and what he brought to our athletic department — not just our football program but our athletic department — is going to be pretty hard to replace, if that can ever be done.” Shortly after the coaches learned of Howard’s death, the players were called in. “Some folks had already put the word out a little bit but it was OK,” Sayre said. “We wanted to tell the players in person.” Word spread quickly, and by noon, current and former players, others associated with the program and fans began posting about the news on social media. SOU President Linda Schott praised Howard’s legacy in a 500-word Facebook post, and former Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow, who played for Howard at Nease High School in Florida and whose phone call to Sayre helped Howard land the SOU job, also paid his respects in a post on Twitter. “Heartbreaking to lose my coach Craig Howard today,” wrote Tebow, whose post included a black and white photo of the two when they teamed up to bring Nease a state title. “More than a coach, he was a mentor & father figure. He changed my life & I will miss him!” Tweeted former Raider receiver Ryan Retzlaff: “RIP Coach Howard. You will be forever missed and never be forgotten. Thank you for everything.” Though Howard made a huge impact in a relatively short time in Ashland, he was considered an underdog when he was named one of four finalists for the SOU head coaching job in January of 2011. Indeed, two candidates, Ashland High coach Charlie Hall and former NFL quarterback Chris Miller, were named in the headline that appeared in the Daily Tidings when the finalists were announced, but not Howard. Sayre said then that it came down to Howard and Hall, and that it was Howard’s meeting with the team during his visit to SOU that won him the job. SOU had averaged three wins in the eight seasons prior to Howard’s arrival, but he walked onto campus with a swagger, boasting, in a southern drawl picked up from eight years in Florida, of playoff possibilities that the Raiders hadn’t sniffed in a decade. The promises may have seemed delusional to fans who had watched SOU get pummeled week after week for years, but Sayre said Howard’s enthusiasm was so charged and sincere, it was hard to resist. “When I first met him,” Sayre said, “he came in and sat down in my office and he was in a three-piece suit and was sweating and the first thing out of his mouth was ‘national championship,’ and I thought to myself, I love this guy. He’s crazy but I love him. And he ended up being crazy like a fox. He knew how to do it. He electrified every group he spoke to and inspired so many people, not just here at SOU but nationally.” Reached by a Tidings reporter after earning the job, Howard, a Grants Pass native, invoked legendary football coach Bear Bryant: “When Mama calls, then you just have to come running.” He did, and the wins soon followed. Employing a pedal-to-the-metal approach he dubbed the “Ricky Bobby Offense,” Southern Oregon took some positive but small steps in Howard’s first season at SOU before then-sophomore quarterback Austin Dodge began breaking records in 2012. The Raiders steamrolled their way back into the NAIA playoffs that season before finally stumbling in the national quarterfinals. Two years later, Howard made good on his promise to deliver a national championship when the Raiders beat Marian, 55-31, in Daytona Beach, Florida, in a game that was televised nationally on ESPNU. They did it Howard’s way, averaging 51.5 points in four playoff games, an NAIA postseason record, and afterward Howard kept a promise by stripping down with the team and plunging into the Atlantic Ocean. Dodge was named the Offensive Player of the Year and Howard the Coach of the Year. The Raiders made it back to the national championship game the following season, losing to Marian 31-14. Last fall, in what turned out to be Howard’s last season — a year marked by injuries to several key players, including starting quarterback Tanner Trosin — the Raiders finished 5-6, losing the final game of the Howard era to Montana Tech, 38-27, in Ashland on Nov. 12. In Howard’s six seasons at SOU the Raiders went 50-23 — that’s the best win percentage (.685) in program history — and made the playoffs three times. Asked about Howard’s impact, Sayre said it goes far beyond wins and losses. “He obviously brought us a national championship and put us on the map and gave us national recognition as an athletic department, a football team and an institution,” Sayre said. “But his legacy is going to be that he mentored these young men and had a mantra of character, strength and honor that he lived by and he taught every day to his coaches and his student-athletes. And he valued that and the love he had for his family and his team above winning football games. That will be his legacy.” Joe Zavala is a reporter for the Ashland Daily Tidings. Reach him at 541-821-0829 or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @Joe_Zavala99.