George Perles - RIP

[BitterYoungMatador2]

Awaiting official Starman statement.

Michigan State fixture George Perles dies at 85

 

[Liut]

Awaiting official Starman statement.

Michigan State fixture George Perles dies at 85

For some reason I thought he was already dead. RIP

 

[playthrough]

Perles, Fry, Bruce, Mallory ... been a run of 1980s-era Big Ten football coaches leaving us in the last two years.

 

[cyclingwriter2]

I forgot he had spent almost a decade coaching with the Steelers.

 

[Jake from State Farm]

He won a Rose Bowl and helped Michigan State rebound from the Muddy Waters disaster but in the end he stayed too long

 

[Scout]

The man got Bubba Smith in college and Joe Greene in the pros.

RIP

 

[Starman]

He won a Rose Bowl and helped Michigan State rebound from the Muddy Waters disaster but in the end he stayed too long

Well yeah but there was even a cluster**** of controversy surrounding his arrival from the USFL when he lied a couple different times regarding his contract status trying to squeeze more money out of MSU. Essentially MSU ended up having to buy Perles out of his Philly Stars contract plus also buy out his assistants as well (very uncommon at the time) IIRC these 37-38 years later.
(Of course this worked out great for the Stars, who used the money to replace Perles with Jim Mora.)

Also the Muddy Waters "disaster" was in significant part the result of active sabotage and sandbagging on the part of disgruntled Perles boosters on the board of trustees who were bitter Perles had not gotten the job in 1980 and set out to cut Waters' throat from day one.
Waters was put on a nickel and dime shoestring budget guaranteed for failure; his assistant salaries ranked no. 9 in the Big Ten (just ahead of Northwestern which was not operating a D1 program at the time).
Every day of his tenure, Waters begged and pleaded with tears in his eyes for a dedicated football practice building, as Darryl Rogers had before him. The trustees told him to go play in the freeway.
The minute Perles' ticket was punched, the football building started going up.
In fact as I recall the lack of a football building and other budget constraints were the major factor in 1980 when Perles was supposedly a top contender for the job when Rogers bolted for Arizona State a couple weeks before national signing day.
Supposedly Perles had "informally" agreed to the job -- to the point a presser was scheduled, and called off with less than 90 minutes notice -- then proceeded to make several or-else ultimatums, leaving MSU in a panic situation with no coach and in desperation they grabbed loyal alumnus Waters as a last-ditch option.
The pro Perles contingent sat back and said, "sit tight George, you can keep collecting those NFL assistant checks, in the meantime we'll tighten the noose around the football program budget until in two or three years it reaches utter disaster, then we can convince the rest of the board it's time to go big time in football again, open up the checkbook, then you can come riding in on a white horse just as Santa Claus slides down the chimney with everything you want."

The pro-Perles contingent also pushed along this game plan by continually planting preposterously transparent "insider leaks" in the media recounting episodes of the feeble senile doddering Waters supposedly nodding off during games and calling out the names of his college teammates from the 1940s to go in at tailback. At the time the supposedly ancient doddering Waters was 56-58 years old.

 

[Jake from State Farm]

I blame the Waters situation on Daryl Rogers and Joe Kearney leaving like thieves in the night for Arizona State more than anything else
There also was Perles’ stint as a MSU trustee and his failed reach to take the AD job
But considering some of the characters in that job before and since there were a lot worse than George

 

[Starman]

Kearney and Rogers' sudden departure was the match that set it all off for sure, but probably the deep down root cause was the trustees/administration's failure to capitalize on Rogers' good seasons in 1977-78 as well as the Magic Johnson basketball championship, by cutting the athletic budget.
When that happened Kearney and Rogers were ripe to be picked and the seeds were planted for a situation of desperation Perles could use to leverage the trustees to meet his every demand, which he did, time and again and again, over a time span of 25+ years.

 

[LanceyHoward]

The obituary says that he just resigned as a member of the Board of Trustees, after the board wiped out a $200,000 debt Perles owed the school. What is that about?

 

[Batman]

The obituary says that he just resigned as a member of the Board of Trustees, after the board wiped out a $200,000 debt Perles owed the school. What is that about?

Student loans are a *****?

 

[Starman]

QUOTE] obituary says that he just resigned as a member of the Board of Trustees, after the board wiped out a $200,000 debt Perles owed the school. What is that about?

(Shakes head wearily)

Tell you the truth, I really quit paying real close attention to it the past several years, but as nearly as I remember the deal (which was pretty hazy from the beginning), Perles had made a hefty donation (I believe reported to be about a million to be spread out in payments over several years) to the football program to build an addition to his beloved football building. In exchange the addition was to be named after Perles and his wife.
That in itself is not unusual in college athletics.
Anyway the accounts I have heard generally say Perles suffered considerable losses in the great economic meltdown, and the six figure payments which previously had been chicken change for him, became too much to handle. It wasn't that he was living in a box eating ramen noodles, it was just that he didn't have hundreds of thousands in spare cash sitting around any more.
The normal sequence in an event like this might be to go to court to try to get the payments, renegotiate the payments over a longer period (probably not a real feasible option for a subject in their 70s-80s) or failing that, to strip the names off the football building and sell them off to somebody else.
All the options were considered unacceptably embarrassing to a beloved university icon, so it was decided to just leave the names alone and write off the final $200,000.

I don't think that really had much or anything to do with his resignation from the board of trustees; basically he was just physically unable to do much anymore. He had been visibly physically declining for five years and more. Plus the continuing Larry Nassar disaster made trustee service a lot less enjoyable for pretty much everybody.

 

[Jake from State Farm]

Henning: George Perles adored life, and those who made his so full

My George Perles story: At the inaugural news conference for the Motor City Bowl, I interviewed Perles, who was the front man. I asked him if he had a couple of minutes. He said: “Sure, but can we move over here?” He took a couple of steps and arrived at the Swedish meatballs, took a few, and started the interview.

 

[Starman]

He had the job by virtual acclamation in January of 1980, after Darryl Rogers left. It was the easiest coaching call MSU could have made this side of anointing Nick Saban, ironically, as Perles follow-up act in 1994.

But the Spartan execs botched it, cruelly, with a blindside choice: Muddy Waters. The moment Perles got the news was devastating — for him, for a weeping wife, Sally, and for MSU’s fan base that knew, absolutely knew, a man with Perles’ ardor for MSU, and with his recruiting knack and savvy in Detroit, could effectively bring his Steelers luster to East Lansing.

And he did. Three years later.

Oh, the cruel twists and turns of heartless fate. There was the apple-cheeked little lamb George Perles all set to take the job, when all of a sudden out of a cold and gray East Lansing morn, some idiots in administration decided to hire Muddy Waters!!!!

Perhaps if George wanted the job so bad, he should've stopped trying to renegotiate his deal on the fly, demanding more and more with each phone call right up to the scheduled press conference and demanding stuff (like the new football building) the trustees were simply not going to approve at that time. When word came back MSU was not going to give him everything he wanted, he said, "no thanks, I'll stay in Pittsburgh." Again, some 60 minutes before the scheduled PC.

Nobody -- at all -- in the MSU administration gave five seconds thought to Muddy Waters until Perles had screeched his tires and peeled outta town.

As they waved their arms trying to clear the smoke of burnt rubber, they said, "holy ****!! National signing week is zooming up fast and we ain't got no football coach!!"

And THAT's when somebody said, "what about Muddy Waters?"