By day he’ll be developing game plans, Walt Harris told Bay Area reporters when he was named head football coach on December 13. And by night, he said, he’ll be devising staffing plans.
“I have a great teacher [in former coach Bill Walsh], and I’m going to pick his brain as much as I can to help me understand the short passing game that everyone calls the West Coast offense,” Harris said. But the former quarterbacks coach for the New York Jets didn’t promise to rely on it. “The offense will be based on the kinds of players we have, and I can’t say we’re going to throw or run the ball,” he said. “I do see a lot of linemen, and no seniors, which makes it very exciting.”
Harris comes to the Farm after eight years as head coach at the University of Pittsburgh, where he led a turnaround that resulted in five consecutive bowl appearances, including a January Fiesta Bowl berth. Last season, the Sporting News ranked the Pittsburgh coaching staff third nationally, and Harris was named Big East Conference Coach of the Year for the second time.
Stanford signed Harris to a five-year contract. By the end of January, he had selected nine of 10 assistants, including Cardinal veterans Nathaniel Hackett, Wayne Moses (who spent the 2004 season at Pittsburgh), Tom Quinn and Dave Tipton, ’71. Harris will serve as quarterbacks coach.
“What set Coach Harris aside was a combination of factors,” athletics director Ted Leland said in announcing the new Bradford M. Freeman Director of Football Head Coach. “First, there’s his experience. I think we could argue, with the exception of Bill Walsh coming back the second time, [Harris] is the most experienced and successful football coach Stanford has hired in seven or eight decades.”
Leland, PhD ’83, also cited Harris’s reputation as a creative offensive coach and his “sense of intensity.” Lastly, said Leland, “Walt brings a sense of honesty, a sense of fairness, a sense of what’s right and wrong, and a sense of the right way to do things.”
Walsh, who coached the Cardinal from 1977 to 1978 and 1992 to 1994 and now serves as a special assistant to Leland, added that Harris has “one of the biggest minds in football.”
The 58-year-old Harris is a native of South San Francisco who has a 63-67 overall record in 11 seasons as a collegiate head coach. He has served as an assistant coach at Cal, Air Force, Michigan State, Illinois, Tennessee and Ohio State, and has mentored the likes of Boomer Esiason, Rickey Dudley, Eddie George and Terry Glenn. Leland gave him his first head-coaching opportunity in 1989 at University of the Pacific, Harris’s alma mater.
