When Northwestern lost 45-38 to Texas Tech on New Year’s Day, it marked the completion of five full seasons since renowned football coach Randy Walker died of a heart attack just months before the 2006 season was set to begin. The last players he brought to Evanston just completed their collegiate careers, but even as they depart, the way Walker lived and died has kept his memory alive.
One of the last remnants of Walker’s tenure as head coach now paces the sidelines for NU. Walker brought Pat Fitzgerald, a standout linebacker for the Cats in the mid-1990s, back to Evanston as his assistant coach in 2001. Fitzgerald said part of NU’s success over the past five years is due to the strong foundation Walker built. More directly, it is also due to the players Walker recruited.
“I think for everybody in our program, Coach touched lives and we think about him daily,” Fitzgerald said. “He’s a guy that influences everybody he had a chance to touch. His influence was just unbelievable.”
When Walker was named the head coach at NU following the 1998 season, he was handed the reins of a program with a very uncertain future. After decades of misery, the Cats made it to the 1996 Rose Bowl and the 1997 Florida Citrus Bowl under coach Gary Barnett. Yet two of the most successful seasons in Cats’ history were followed by two seasons that ended with losing records. By the time Barnett departed, it was doubtful whether NU would ever be able to replicate its success from the mid-1990s, particularly with Fitzgerald no longer on the playing field.
By the time he passed away in 2006, Walker had removed all doubts, transforming the Cats into steady winners. His teams made it to bowl games in three of his seven years at NU.
“(Gary Barnett) made a really big breakthrough with the program and getting it recognized,” said Walker’s wife, Tammy. “Randy’s role was kind of to come in and add some consistency to it.”
According to Brett Basanez, quarterback for the Cats from 2001 to 2005, NU had a message to send to the rest of the football world.
“We proved we could be an offensive powerhouse without a doubt,” Basanez said. “We wanted to be competitive. We wanted to be able to upset people and say this is not the Northwestern of the 70s and 80s. This is a new team.”
A constant winner
The Cats got the consistent wins they sought when they brought Walker to Evanston. From his days as a high school running back through the many years he spent playing and coaching at Miami (Ohio), Walker won wherever he went due in large part to his tremendous work ethic.
When Walker arrived at Miami (Ohio) as a running back, he could lift more than anyone else on the team even though he was just 5-foot-8, according to Tammy, who met her future husband in high school and followed him throughout his career.
Walker led the RedHawks to a 32-1-1 record in his last three years as running back, with three straight Tangerine Bowl victories.
He coached at North Carolina for 10 years before heading back to Miami (Ohio), his alma mater, where he became the winningest head coach in school history. There he surpassed legends like Bo Schembechler, Woody Hayes and Ara Parseghian.
Yet, no matter how successful he was, he was expected to move on, much like the great RedHawks coaches who came before him.
It was a tough choice for Walker, but he ultimately packed his bags and took the coaching job at NU.
Tough love
At NU, Walker got the most out of his teams by demanding maximum effort, former players said in interviews.
Though some described him as a drill sergeant, Basanez said that the coach always made clear where the criticism was coming from.
“When we were outside of the stripes, he’d be the first to say, ‘You know I love you. I just want you to be as good as I know you can be’,” Basanez said. “He always had an open-door policy. We could always come in and talk to him, but he was a hard-nosed coach and I appreciated that about him.”
His tough-love approach followed him off the field as well,
According to Tammy, Randy Walker was firm as a coach and a father to his son, Jamie, and daughter, Abbey. Jamie said that his dad was toughest when watching him play football.
On the gridiron, Jamie played running back among other positions, which meant added pressure, since his dad had been a great running back.
Once, in eighth grade, Jamie fumbled the football, the only time he ever fumbled in a game. Afterward, Randy made his son do some ball-security drills.
“He was disappointed in the fact that I did that to my coaches,” Jamie said. “He knows how mad he gets, how angry he gets when his players fumble.”
The only one who was ever treated with kid gloves was the family dog, Magic.
“I would never use the word softie to describe my dad, but that dog was his best friend,” Jamie said. “After a hard loss or a rough day at practice, rough day at the office, he would sit there in the chair with the dog, and it was his only friend.”
Highs and lows of Ryan Field
When Walker came to NU in 1998, it didn’t take him long to find the same success that had marked his entire career. In just his second season with the Cats, he led them to a share of the Big Ten title and a trip to the Alamo Bowl.
“We wanted to be the best in every facet,” said Damien Anderson, who became NU’s all-time leading rusher at the turn of the century. “We were fortunate enough to get a share of the Big Ten title and go down as one of the best teams in Northwestern history. That means a lot to know that we have a place in history that we won’t be forgotten and that our time at NU meant something.”
But the glory was short-lived. Walker’s reputation was marred following the tragic death of senior safety Rashidi Wheeler, who collapsed during a conditioning drill in August 2001 and died shortly aftreward. Wheeler’s mother, Linda Will, sued NU, alleging the University and several of its employees’ negligenceled to her son’s wrongful death. She claimed Walker pushed his players too hard and the University did not have proper medical equipment available. NU argued the death was caused by Wheeler taking supplements containing ephedra on the day of his death.
Ultimately, the University reached a $16 million settlement with Will. As for the Cats, they went just 7-16 in the two seasons following Wheeler’s death.
But Walker’s team recovered from that low, winning at least six games in each of his final three seasons at NU. After leading the Cats to the Sun Bowl in 2005, the team’s third bowl game in its last six seasons, Walker had demonstrated that his team was moving in the right direction.
Walker was particularly famous for instituting the spread offense at NU, which helped lead the Cats to a school-record 441 points over the course of the 2000 season.
In Walker’s final season, with Basanez at quarterback, Walker’s team scored 38 or more points in six of its thirteen games.
“It was fun to say the least, backyard football, basketball on turf,” Basanez said.
After seven seasons at NU, Walker had posted 37 wins with the Cats, the second-highest total in school history.
“He was awesome,” Fitzgerald said. “He was a guy who would drive you to be the best you could be on every single rep and coached attitude every day. I’d like to think there’s a lot of Coach in me and our entire staff.”
Tough as he was, his players loved him.
Indeed, it was Walker’s honesty that helped convince a young wide receiver out of Farmington Hills, Mich., to play for NU. Five years later, Sidney Stewart remembers Walker’s pitch well.
“He was real,” Stewart said. “He would look you in the eyes, he wouldn’t tell you what you wanted to hear. He told you the truth, and that’s what I respected about him.”
A death too soon
Just two months before his death, Randy Walker had signed a contract extension with NU that would have kept him in Evanston through the 2011 season. His wife said he loved coaching the Cats, in large part due to the character of the student-athletes.
“He loved it here and he wasn’t looking for anyplace else,” Tammy Walker said. “He could’ve made more money at other places, so there are trade-offs wherever you are, but the things that he valued were here.”
Entering the summer of 2006, Walker was as vital as ever. Although he had been diagnosed with a heart virus two years earlier, it wasn’t thought to be life-threatening.
In fact, Walker had been hiking in Arizona in the week leading up to his death and had always worked out as often as possible, his wife said.
That’s what made his death so surprising.
On June 29, 2006, Randy did some work in his office, came home to do yard work that afternoon, and then went upstairs to shower, where Tammy later discovered his body. It was the day after their 31st anniversary.
His death came as a complete shock to the NU community.
“I don’t know if I could even put into words,” Fitzgerald said. “It was surreal almost and something I hope I never have to go through again.”
Jamie Walker, then the assistant director of football operations at NU, was naturally upset following his father’s death, but returned to work just one week later to help the Cats move on with Fitzgerald at the helm.
“I felt like as his son, that throughout my life, he was getting me ready for this moment,” Walker said. “He was also passing the torch to Coach Fitz, who learned a lot from him.”
Soon after Walker’s death, Fitzgerald took the team to Tammy Walker’s home.
When Tammy came to the door, her husband’s entire football team stood before her and broke into the opening bars of the NU fight song.
The emotion didn’t stop there. It continued into the 2006 season, in which the Cats’ first game came against Miami (Ohio). Amidst various ceremonies honoring coach Walker, Fitzgerald led NU to a 21-3 victory over Walker’s alma mater.
“That first game, there’s no question, we were at Miami and you could cut the emotion with a knife,” Fitzgerald said. “Just trying to lift Coach up in the way that we played and the way that we worked.”
A legacy lives on
Since that opening win over Miami (Ohio), Fitzgerald has accumulated 33 more victories, and has the best winning percentage of any coach since Richard Hanley coaches the Cats from 1927 to 1934.
“He would have been beaming,” Jamie Walker said. “He does things differently. He has his own program, It’s his program. It’s not Randy Walker’s Northwestern, it’s Pat Fitzgerald’s Northwestern. He does things his own way and that’s good. That’s what my dad would’ve wanted.”
Five years after her husband’s death, Tammy Walker remains deeply involved in NU life. She took a job in the school’s athletic department not too long after Randy’s death, working in alumni and donor relations.
“She was the first wife of our program, and because of what happened with Coach, we didn’t want to make a lot of systemic changes in terms of her involvement,” Fitzgerald said.
Tammy has remained a big fan of the football team, even though she had a hard time early on watching the players enter the field, since Randy was no longer there to lead them onto the gridiron.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Walker, who still calls herself the team’s No. 1fan, was in Dallas to see if the Cats could finally win their first bowl game in 61 years against Texas Tech.
“It would be great if they won,” Tammy said. “More than anything, Randy would say it would be nice if they won. They have a monkey on their back and they just need to win, and get if off their back so it won’t be talked about so much.”
Ultimately NU wasn’t able to win its bowl game. Indeed, the one prize that eluded Gary Barnett and Randy Walker continues to elude Fitzgerald as his team suffered yet another heartbreaking postseason loss.
However, one can be certain that when the Cats finally do break their bowl drought, Tammy Walker will be watching. Perhaps Randy will be, too.