LSU coaching legend Paul Dietzel dies
Paul Dietzel led LSU to its first football national championship in 1958. He died at 89.
PAUL DIETZEL, who led the LSU Tigers to their first football national championship, died early yesterday. He was 89.
LSU sports spokesman Kent Lowe said Dietzel died after a brief illness, but did not provide any other details.
The family posted a notice online saying Dietzel died 19 days after his 89th birthday and 1 day before the 69th anniversary of his wedding to Anne Dietzel.
"Coach died peacefully and is at his heavenly home," the notice said.
Dietzel coached LSU from 1955 until 1961, leaving for Army and South Carolina. He also broadcast Southern Conference football games and helped create Samford University's athletics department before returning to LSU as athletics director from 1978 until 1982.
Dietzel was the last living member of the staff that guided LSU to an undefeated season and national championship in 1958. The Tigers beat Clemson in the 1959 Sugar Bowl.
Dietzel's memoir "Call Me Coach: A Life in College Football" was published in 2008 by Louisiana State University Press.
Dietzel was a freshman engineering student at Duke when he got a draft notice and left school to enlist in the Army Air Corps, beginning pilot training in January 1944 on a Stearman biplane and that fall on a B-24 bomber. His bomber was among 300 that firebombed Tokyo in May 1945, according to his memoir.
After the war, he enrolled as a pre-med major at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where he played under Sid Gillman, winning first-team All-American honors in 1947.
Noteworthy
* Arizona State assistant athletic director Sherman Morris has resigned, several weeks after being arrested in an alleged domestic-violence incident.
University officials announced that Morris resigned Friday. The assistant AD for football recruiting had been on administrative leave since early September.
Morris was arrested by police in suburban Chandler on one count of aggravated assault-serious physical injury and one count of aggravated assault-strangulation on Aug. 29.
Court documents say Morris allegedly grabbed his wife from behind and lifted her off the ground while choking her at their Chandler home. Police say Morris' wife had bruises on her arm, broken teeth and a laceration that was still bleeding when officers arrived.
* A Cincinnati football player was killed and two were injured in a single-vehicle crash. The driver of the car, Sean VanDyne, also was killed.
Authorities said VanDyne was driving with three freshmen players returning from the Bearcats' 14-0 win Saturday night at Miami University in Oxford, 25 miles north of Cincinnati.
The crash killed offensive lineman Ben Flick and injured receivers Mark Barr and Javon Harrison of Dayton. They are redshirting and didn't dress for the game or travel with the team.