Mudra-Darrell-1946

Darrell Mudra

Class of 1946 - Inducted 2002

Darrell was inducted into the SHSAA Hall of Fame in 2002.

Dr. Victory retired from collegiate football in 1988, bringing an end to a Hall of Fame career which boasts a 200-81-4 record and two national championships. He rebuilt every football program he oversaw and turned them into a playoff team. He started his collegiate head-coaching career at Adams State in 1959 and led the team to the Mineral Water Bowl. In 1963, he became the head coach at North Dakota State, where he successfully turned the program around from a 90-10 record the year before to a 1964 Mineral Water Bowl victory. In 1965, he won his first national championship, defeating Grambling in the Pecan Bowl.

He then coached at the University of Arizona for two seasons and led them to the 1969 Sun Bowl. After a successful stint at Western Illinois, Mudra coached Florida State for two years before going to Eastern Illinois, where he won the Division II National Championship. Recently his Florida State Team was honored at a half-time program where Bobby Bowden acknowledged them as the start of the Florida State dynasty. During Coach Mudra's tenure at Northern Iowa, he led them to the semifinals in both 1985 and 1987. Not bad for a kid from South Omaha who got his start coaching the Phillips Midgets in 1951.

But Dr. Mudra is more than a sum of his wins and losses. His coaching philosophy became the book "Freedom in the Huddle." He advocated listening to players and giving them more of a say in play calling and the general direction of the team. He did what a true educator would do.