Memory Lane is a busy boulevard at Peabody Stadium, the football playground for Santa Barbara High School for the last 98 years.
Those memories have turned bittersweet the past year with a seemingly endless funeral procession. Former Dons’ football greats Sam Cunningham, Booker Brown and Alton Hayes died within 10 months of each other.
Nearly lost amid the mournful gridlock was the joyous victory lap of another prodigy of Peabody.
Ernie Zampese, arguably the greatest combination of body and mind to ever don the Olive and Gold, was among four former NFL assistant coaches honored this summer with the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s Award of Excellence.
The Great Zampese ran the football for both Santa Barbara High and USC 16 years before Cunningham followed that same path. He joined the funeral procession when he passed away in San Diego on Aug. 29.
Sam Bam was seven inches taller and 70 pounds heavier than his predecessor. Cunningham cut a figure that has overshadowed all Don football players except his own brother, Randall. The two former NFL stars were among 100 players recently selected for induction into the California High School Football Hall of Fame.
Zampese’s own playing career — and fame — was stunted by a college scandal not of his making. And when he did get to the NFL as a coach, he sidestepped every head coaching offer as though it were a bloodthirsty linebacker.
“I’ve always been a background guy,” he explained after rejecting an offer to lead the Los Angeles Rams in 1995. “I like to be in the back with the tapes rolling. That’s what I like to do.”
Little Big Man
He stood just 5-foot-8 and weighed only 160 pounds in full body armor, but he carried a big load on the field. During his senior season of high school in 1953, he ran for 19 touchdowns and 869 yards — nearly 10 per carry — and passed for another 14 TDs and 1,008 yards.
The Helms Athletic Foundation honored him as Southern California’s CIF Player of the Year.
Zampese was the Big Man on Campus in a time and place that worshiped its high school football stars like no other.
“We had a great tradition at Santa Barbara,” he once said. “The stadium was on the school grounds in a little bowl. The town was much smaller then, and everyone watched the Santa Barbara Dons on Friday nights.
“The epitome of success was to play for the Santa Barbara Dons. That was as high as you could go.”
He had to clear a much higher bar at USC with a backfield that included such future NFL stars as Jon Arnett and C.R. Robinson. The Trojans, however, found him to be as handy as a Swiss Army Knife.
During his junior season of 1956, he nabbed a team-high six pass interceptions and led both punting teams, averaging 9.1 yards per return and 41.2 yards per kick.
Zampese’s 85-yard punt against Wisconsin remains USC’s all-time record.
His prowess as a running back became crucial after the Pacific Coast Conference suspended Arnett and six other Trojans for the last half of the 1956 season. An investigation that began at the University of Washington showed that Husky players — as well as those at USC, UCLA and Cal — were being paid by alumni to perform simple jobs.
But Zampese picked up the ball for Arnett and ran with it. In the season finale against Notre Dame, he gained 125 yards and broke off a long, dramatic touchdown that clinched a 28-20 victory.
“Clutch? You bet!” wrote the Los Angeles Times. “It was fourth and 1 on the Notre Dame 38 when Ernie decided to be a hero.”
Although the win capped an 8-2 regular season for the Trojans, the PCC — the forerunner of the Pac-12 — banned them from playing in a bowl game. And when the expanding investigation snared Zampese and his classmates in its net, they were all suspended for their entire senior season of 1957.
His crime was accepting $1.50 an hour to sweep leaves.
“We did that to get extra money because you could hardly survive on what the Pacific Coast Conference allowed for scholarships,” Zampese said. “I had to report to a groundskeeper and do whatever he did.”
He stopped going to class midway through his senior year. He was soon driving a truck in Bakersfield, hauling sugar beets instead of footballs. He later took a job in Santa Barbara with the U.S. Postal Service delivering the mail … and eventually a proposal.
“I ended up getting lucky and married some gal that sort of straightened me out,” Zampese said.
Back in the Game
Joyce Zampese convinced him to return to college and pursue a career as a football coach. He earned a degree in physical education at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. A few years later, in 1962, John Madden launched Zampese’s 43-year coaching career by bringing him onto his staff at Allan Hancock College in Santa Maria.
The future Pro Football Hall of Fame coach said he had no idea of Zampese’s impending genius.
“I just wanted a coach, and Ernie was a good guy,” he once explained.
Zampese took over as Hancock’s head coach in 1964 when Madden left to join Don Coryell’s staff at San Diego State. He quickly realized, however, that news conferences and booster meetings — and especially cutting players — wasn’t for him.
He quit the job after just one season to become an assistant at Cal Poly.
“I did it once, and I wasn’t good at it,” Zampese said. “Why? I don’t know. I don’t like to be the out-front guy. I’m not comfortable in that position.”
The guy whose last name begins with Z would never again be the first in line on a coaching staff.
Coryell hired Zampese at San Diego State in 1967 after Madden began his meteoric rise with the Oakland Raiders. He rehired him after he became the San Diego Chargers’ head coach.
Zampese’s innovative flair as the designer of passing routes turned him into the architect of the fabled “Air Coryell” offense.
The Chargers ranked first in passing offense six times in seven years from 1979 to 1985, and first or second in total offense four times in the same span. Their 1982 average of 335.7 passing yards per game set an NFL record.
Coryell considered Zampese to be “the perfect assistant”: prideful in his work but unbridled of ego.
“He’s the best offensive coach I know,” he said.
Madden echoed that sentiment a few years later as a CBS Sports analyst while broadcasting a game in which Zampese was coordinating the Rams’ offense.
“He very well may be the top offensive mind in the game,” he gushed, noting how Zampese had turned one of the NFL’s lowest-scoring teams to No. 3 in the league.
“Some guys can argue,” Madden continued, “but if you had a contest, I’d put him in there.”
A Ring of Success
Zampese’s NFL coaching career ran from 1976 to 2004, and included stints with five NFL teams. He was the offensive coordinator of the Dallas Cowboys team that beat the Pittsburgh Steelers on Jan. 28, 1996, in Super Bowl XXX.
On the eve of that game, Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman oozed with the confidence that Zampese had inspired.
“He’s just tremendous the way he prepares for a game,” he said. “Not very often do we go into a game when a team throws something at us that Ernie hasn’t anticipated.”
Aikman continued that praise a decade later while being inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, calling Zampese “one of the best offensive minds and greatest people that this game has ever known.”
Zampese was unable to travel to Canton, Ohio, from his San Diego home this summer for his own Hall of Fame ceremony. His son, Ken, who is now an assistant coach for the Washington Commanders, accepted the plaque on his behalf.
The younger Zampese learned his craft as a Charger ball boy, watching his dad work — as always — behind the scenes.
“He was so engaged with guys, enjoying their different personalities, taking them through their reads, explaining route techniques and why they’re different,” he said. “It was fun to watch … Time of my life.”
Farewell to Don Greats
Santa Barbara High’s second All-Dons Reunion, set for 11 a.m. Oct. 1, will be a time to celebrate the former Dons who died this year. They were members of three successive classes at the school and actually played one season together in the fall of 1968.
Booker Brown (Class of 1970) and Alton Hayes (Class of 1971) died within 11 days of each other last month. Sam Cunningham (Class of 1969), a USC All-American who set a career rushing record for the New England Patriots, died in September of last year.
Brown, an offensive lineman, won consensus All-America honors at USC before playing for the San Diego Chargers. A memorial service will be held at 10 a.m. Sept. 2 at Santa Barbara City College’s La Playa Stadium, where he earned Junior College All-America honors in 1971.
“We’ve got quite a line-up of speakers in the works, like (former SBHS classmate and NBA star Jamaal) Keith Wilkes,” said Mike Fryer, who played with Brown at both Santa Barbara High and SBCC.
Rod McNeill and Anthony Davis, both of whom played with Brown at USC, are also expected to attend, along with former and current SBCC coaches Bob Dinaberg and Craig Moropoulos.
“We’ve also got a host of his local teammates and classmates coming, like Tim Tremblay, Bobby Thompson and myself, to name a few,” said Fryer, who played against Brown as a defensive back at UCLA.
Hayes, who received All-CIF 4A First Team honors as a running back in 1970, died on July 29. A “home going celebration” of his life was held earlier this month at Santa Barbara’s Friendship Missionary Baptist Church. The Lompoc resident spent much of his 70 years as a carpenter.
“Alton was very gifted with his hands,” said his sister, Marie Hayes Richardson. “He could build, create and fix anything.”
Hayes could also run and jump with the best of the Dons. He made varsity football as a sophomore, playing alongside both Cunningham and Brown. The next year, he joined future NBA stars Wilkes and Don Ford in leading Santa Barbara to the CIF 4A basketball semifinals.
Hayes set the school’s single-game rushing record when he gained more than 300 yards against Thousand Oaks during the fall of 1970.
“He had a 90-plus-yard TD run from scrimmage in the second half,” recalled Scott Cathcart, a junior receiver on that team. “He had another of at least 75 yards, and it was in a game that was supposed to be close.
“He was our single-wing tailback, and he had it all … Size, speed, skill.”
He also has a permanent spot now in the hearts and minds of all Dons.
— Noozhawk sports columnist Mark Patton is a longtime local sports writer. Contact him at sports@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk Sports on Twitter: @NoozhawkSports. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook. The opinions expressed are his own.
