Mike Moropoulos, the former football coach and athletic director at Santa Barbara High and a legendary figure in the local sports community, died Sunday at the age of 90 after a long illness.
A member of the Santa Barbara High and Santa Barbara Athletic Round Table Halls of Fame, Moropoulos had a 35-year career as a teacher, coach and administrator at Santa Barbara High.
As head coach of the the Dons football team, he reached the CIF Finals in 1980, with future NFL star Randall Cunningham as his quarterback. The Dons won a school-record 13 victories before losing to Long Beach Poly in the title game, 35-7.
Moropoulos had the opportunity to coach his sons, Chris and Craig. Craig was the quarterback for the Dons on their Channel League championship team in 1977.
Craig Moropoulos followed his father into coaching football and education. He has been a coach and teacher for 35 years, the last 13 at Santa Barbara City College.
He calls his father one of the greatest influences of his life.
“He’s my idol, and when you can say your idol is your father, that’s a very special person,” Moropoulos said in an interview a few years ago. “He was a great leader for me. I learned a lot and I’m still learning a lot from him.”
Craig Moropoulos announced his father’s passing in a Facebook post, saying: “I lost my father Mike Moropoulos this morning. I am saddened beyond words but I feel so blessed to have been led by my dad, my mentor, my coach and my best friend. He was as true a Santa Barbara “Don” as there ever was!
“You will be missed by so many because you have touched so many lives! I love you dad. RIP Coach “Morop.”
Retired Carpinteria football coach Ben Hallock, who played for Mike Moropoulos at Santa Barbara High in 1971-73, said of his former coach:
“He was just a first-class man, a wonderful guy, and I’m sorry to hear that he’s passed. But I’ll always be thankful for the time I spent as an athlete under him and also a coach.”
Hallock said Moropoulos was very fair and treated everybody right. And, he loved telling stories.
“He had lots of great experience, and would often times share that for things that would happen and how they’d fix it or what they did to make it better,” he said of stories.
Hallock also said Moropoulos was incredibly giving.
“My first teaching and coaching job was at Bishop Diego in 1979, and I’d call him every Saturday morning during football season, that first football season, especially. I’d ask him what would you do against this, what would you do against that. He’d share all kinds of information. It was like he was coaching two teams. He was so gracious with me with his time.
“I’d call him on Mondays or Wednesdays, and he’d explain all kinds of fundamental football stuff to me, in terms of how to coach it and how to get it across to the kids, things like that. It was invaluable information and it really shaped my entire career.
“I’ll be really thankful for all that. He definitely took me under his wing. He was always available to me. I will always be grateful for that.”
Retired coach Bill Oliphant was attending Santa Barbara High when Moropoulos was coaching.
“I always admired him because of the way carried himself,” Oliphant said. “I watched him coach. He was a controlled man who could instruct by talking, not yelling and screaming. He had large numbers, but seemed to care so much for everyone. He was a father figure to many.”
When Oliphant became a coach at the school years later, he said, Moropoulos possessed that same demeanor.
“He had so much pride in SBHS,” he said. “I was very lucky to coach is grandson in frosh baseball and, at the end of the year after a terrible experience Trevor had with frosh football, Mike sent me a note telling how much he appreciated what I had done as a coach for the young man.
“It was easy, I told him. I tried to mold my style after him: be a good teacher, be a good example and remember they are kids learning new things. Patience was a word I’ll never forget.”
Bill Lannan, who played played two years of football under Moropoulos in the 1960s and later became his dentist and a fishing buddy, said the coach was very important to a lot of young people, including himself.
“Universally respected, a finer person there could never be,” Lannan said. “He loved coaching and he loved his players. He saw potential in everyone. We are so fortunate to have walked in his shadow.
As an assistant under Sam Cathcart at SBHS in the late 1960s, Moropoulos coached a defensive line that received nationwide attention for its massive size. The line included Bob “Big Man” Porter, who was 6-foot-1 1/2 and weighed 447 pounds, Danny Herring (320 pounds), Al Reginato (240) and Cyril Gavin (250). At the time, the Dons line outweighed every line in the NFL.
After stepping down as football coach, Moropoulos took on the role as athletic director at SBHS. He retired from the Santa Barbara Unified School District in 1989.
Moropoulos also coached club football at UCSB from 1985 to 1987. He and former San Marcos High football coach Sut Puailoa, who both played football for the Gauchos in the 1950s, ran the club team before it was granted NCAA Division 3 status in 1987.
Among the many activities Moropoulos did during his retirement was become a respected outdoors writer. He wrote a popular weekly column for the Santa Barbara News-Press in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and later for Noozhawk.
He also co-hosted a radio program on fishing, and was a member of the Outdoors Writers Association of California.
One of his best friends was local naturalist and renowned fly fisherman Neal Taylor, who helped found the Lake Cachuma Nature Center.
His columns were incredibly informative, wide ranging and, sometimes funny. One he wrote about how fishing convinced him to get hearing aids.
“OK, OK, I give up. As of today I’m shopping for hearing aids,” he wrote. “I’m tired of my family saying: ‘Can’t you hear that?’ “No, I can’t hear that,” he started the column. “Noise that hurts their ears is silent in my world. But it’s been that way for years. I never could hear an official’s whistle… So what does that have to do with fishing?”
He explained he was fishing alone for calico bass when a small sailboat cruised by with what he thought was a funny sounding outboard motor. It turned out it was his reel.
“Spooled,” he said. “That did it. I can get by TV by turning the volume up, my wife patiently keeps me posted on what mumbling actors are saying, I can fake it, and I’ve gotten pretty good at watching lips when sounds are tough.
“But when I can’t hear my reel going off — that’s it.”
Santa Barbara girls basketball coach Andrew Butcher, whom Moropoulos hired in 1983, said it was “phenomenal how good he was” as an athletic director. “He was so on top of his job and so good at it that it made our lives so much easier.
“And, he was so positive. He was so supportive all of the time. He made me feel like I was the only coach of the program.”
Butcher noted that Moropoulos had a way of getting his point across without brow-beating the individual.
“If you were being a pain in the ass in a coaches’ meeting, he wouldn’t rip you, but he’d make a remark that put you in your place. It reminded you that wasn’t how we’re supposed to do things around here,” Butcher said.
Butcher loved Moropoulos’ loyalty to Santa Barbara High.
“He bled Olive and Gold,” Butcher said. “He’d wear these crazy olive and gold socks, one on each foot. The joke was he’d wear gold underwear. It wouldn’t surprise me if he did.
“The colors, no one dreamed back then of having the off-color uniform like gray or off-white or black. It it wasn’t forest green, he went nuts. It was kind of like a veteran with the American flag. If you didn’t have the colors right, if you didn’t have the right uniform, or it was a half-shade off, that was one of the times he’d scold you.
Butcher added: “He was so into school spirit and representing himself the right way in the community and in the sports field. I learned a lot of lessons from him that hopefully I can pass on to a percentage of the kids I coach.”
Mike Moropoulos is survived by his wife, Pat, and sons Chris and Craig.
— Noozhawk sports editor Barry Punzal can be reached at bpunzal@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk Sports on Twitter: @NoozhawkSports. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.