Simply Devine (Missouri Cover): Memoirs of a Hall of Fame Coach

I picked up this book because I'm a Notre Dame fan and wanted some insight into the six season tenure of Coach Dan Devine. Not knowing much about his accomplishments in life I found his story to be an inspiring tale involving youthful hardships and exciting success due to hard work. At the college level, wherever he went, great things happened. Then when the NFL came calling he found himself struggling. This reminded me of his successor at Notre Dame, Gerry Faust, who himself had great success at one level (in his case, high school) only to find that success out of reach at the next level. But Coach Devine takes us on his jounrey into the Army Air Corps, college, and his years at Arizona State, Missouri, and Notre Dame. He talks too briefly for my taste on decisions such as switching the Fighting Irish to green jerseys in 1977. Nevertheless, I breezed through the book in no time because it was an enjoyable account of his life, which was certainly worthy of being published.

Devine finally confesses that he leaked a untrue story to Time Magazine and SI about how a crazed Packer fan had killed his dog. The real story was that he lived in rural Wisconsin and allowed his dog run loose. The dog was known to have been killing farm neighbor's ducks. He was warned several times and then one morning when the dog was attempting to kill more ducks the farmer shot the dog (not hanged, not skewered). In his confession he admits it was HIS FAULT for allowing the dog to continue to roam unsupervised. You can't doubt his coaching success, but to allow this story to continue on for decades before coming clean sure leaves plenty of doubt about his character. As a former Notre Dame Alum and born and raised Packer fan, I still think he was one hell of a college coach. This is a very good book and I recommend it to anyone who is a fan of college football. I am glad that he ultimately came clean on that ugly story that tarnished the residents of Green Bay and the neighboring farm communities.

This is a great book of a great man who managed to coach and raise a wonderful family with the help of a wonderful wife. There should be more families like this.