http://auburn.247sports.com/Gallery/Relentlessly-positive-Sullivan-still-showing-the-way-46410153
Relentlessly positive: Sullivan still showing the way
Pat Sullivan with his wife, Jean, when he was honored at Jordan-Hare Stadium in 2014. (Photo: 247Sports)
HOMEWOOD, Ala. – Pat Sullivan is an Auburn football hero for the ages. He is immortalized in a statue outside Jordan-Hare Stadium. He is a Heisman Trophy-winner and a member of the College Football Hall of Fame and the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame.
As much as he was a quarterback who could do magical things with the football, Sullivan was a leader, a man whose teammates knew always would be at his best when it mattered most, a winner who showed the way to greatness on and off the field. As a coach at Auburn, TCU, UAB and finally Samford, he taught generations of players lessons of football and life.
Pat Sullivan in his office at Samford. (Photo: Phillip Marshall, 247Sports)
Sullivan’s courageous battle with cancer in 2003, when he was offensive coordinator at UAB, was a lesson in refusing to give in even in the hardest of times. At 66, Sullivan’s coaching days are over now. But he still has lessons to teach. Through health challenges he could never have imagined, he remains relentlessly positive.
Sullivan takes his nourishment through a feeding tube, and has since his final three seasons as Samford’s head coach. He has oxygen to help him breathe. Both are the result of the radiation treatments that killed the cancer but left him scarred and of damage from a later surgical procedure. In 2014, he coached his final game against Auburn at Jordan-Hare Stadium, where he became an icon. He was honored in an emotional ceremony before the game.
“The two times I came to Auburn to coach, I was on a feeding tube,” Sullivan says matter-of-factly as he sits in his office in the Samford building that bears his name. “I mention that to encourage people that may have issues of some kind or another. I’m blessed. I have some issues, but I’m blessed.”
That doesn’t mean it’s easy.
“I was with my grandchildren at the lake,” Sullivan says. “Used to, when we would go to the lake I would start planning my menu on Monday of what I was going to cook on the grill for the kids. Now, of course, I can’t do that. I miss that. I miss being able to do some of those things with them.
“On the other hand, I’m so thankful and blessed to be able to be with them.”
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Jean Sullivan has been at her husband’s side for 47 years. They have three children and eight grandchildren. They met the summer after he graduated from John Carroll High School in Birmingham and she graduated from Berry. They were married after their freshman year at Auburn. She marvels at the way he approaches every day.
“To go through the diagnosis of cancer and the treatment while still coaching, he was very positive he was going to beat it, which he did,” Jean Sullivan says. “The post-radiation effects cause issues. You fight with issues daily. Anybody who is a cancer survivor knows.
“He’s always optimistic. It might take him a while to get going in the morning, but when he does he’s ready to go. He enjoys being with people. He’s very fortunate to be at Samford, where he can be around the players and kids and also contribute to the university.”
Sullivan will be remembered for so many great moments as an Auburn football player – the epic 35-20 victory in the battle of the unbeatens at Georgia in 1971, a comeback from 17 points behind against Alabama in 1970, so many big plays at big times. He and wide receiver Terry Beasley had few equals. “Sullivan to Beasley” became forever a part of college football history.
After playing in the NFL, Sullivan started his own business. He didn’t get into coaching because he wanted to spend time with his children. Finally, in 1986, he joined Pat Dye’s Auburn staff. He tutored Jeff Burger, Reggie Slack and Stan White. In 1992, he left to be the head coach at TCU, where won a Southwest Conference championship in 1994.
Sullivan with his Heisman Trophy.
Sullivan’s road was sometimes bumpy. He agreed to become the head coach at LSU, only to have the deal fall apart over his buyout. He returned to TCU, but things were never the same. He became offensive coordinator at UAB and finally head coach at Samford.
There are no regrets as Sullivan looks out his window and sees Samford players working out on their own. He believes Samford’s 2016 football team, coached by Chris Hatcher, has a chance to be special, and he will be there to offer his support.
“I was blessed,” Sullivan says. “I was at the right place at the right time. When I was at John Carroll, we had 23 on our team playing in the top classification. We were fortunate. We had (future Auburn teammates) Dick Schmalz and David Shelby. Our offensive line probably averaged 160 pounds. We threw the ball.
“When I got to Auburn, I had Terry and the different ones. We went from Coach (Shug) Jordan being three yards and a cloud of dust to kind of being open.”
But none of those things are what Sullivan cherishes most about his time in football.
“I’ve said it many, many times, and I believe it: What you get out of athletics is the relationships that last for a lifetime,” Sullivan says. “Johnny Musso was here Friday. He called and came by and we sat and visited. All the different people that I have such great relationships with, that’s what it’s all about. That’s what I tell these kids.”
Even as he played in the NFL and was later successful in business, Sullivan believed his calling in life was to coach. He did analysis on Auburn radio broadcasts and coached his son, Patrick, in youth sports. Jean was one of Birmingham’s more successful real estate agents. It was she who told her husband it was time for him to follow his heart.
“It was the summer of 1985, right before the season,” Sullivan says. “She said ‘You don’t want to wake up when you are 50 and not be doing what you want to do.’”
Sullivan, who had turned down an offer to join Auburn’s staff in 1981, accepted Dye’s offer in 1986. In 1992, Sullivan became the head coach at TCU and turned a moribund program into a winner. He coached the Horned Frogs to their first win over Texas in a quarter of a century, took them to a bowl, took them to back-to-back winning seasons in 35 years and won a championship. When Dennis Franchione won 10 games at TCU in 2000, 19 of 22 starters were recruited by Sullivan and his staff.
Sullivan verbally accepted an offer to move to LSU, only to have it fall apart.
“I had to go to TCU and actually get my job back,” Sullivan says. “The whole thing really hurt us in recruiting. We were building it back up, but things were never the same again.”
When the Horned Frogs went to the 2011 Rose Bowl, they sent Sullivan a ring that said “Thanks for building the foundation.”
As he looks back, Sullivan says he wouldn’t change anything. He was part of three consecutive SEC championships as Auburn’s quarterbacks coach. He led Samford to its first Southern Conference championship in 2013. He impacted the lives of young men.
“As time has gone on, I think more and more how blessed I am by the Good Lord,” Sullivan says. “He gave me kind of a platform, especially with the kids when I was coaching. I feel like Jean and I both, that we’ve helped so many of them. They’ve come back and are so thankful maybe for some guidance that has helped them in along the way.”
Sullivan is a special assistant now to Samford president Andrew Westmoreland, who has become a close friend.
“As I have grown close to Pat in the years since he became Samford’s head football coach in 2006 and as I have seen him in some of the highest and lowest moments of life, proximity has only enhanced my profound respect for him,” Westmoreland said when Sullivan announced his retirement.
“In every sense, he is exactly as he appears to be: a person of intelligence, persistence, wisdom, good humor, with an impenetrable core of ethics that is rooted in a vibrant faith. He cares deeply about his family and his student-athletes. He is respectful of every person he encounters.”
Coaching at Samford, Sullivan says, was one of the highlights of his life, more rewarding than he could have imagined when he took the job.
Sullivan statue outside Jordan-Hare Stadium.
“If I had gone and been a head coach in the SEC or somewhere else, I wouldn’t have had an opportunity to come to Samford,” Sullivan says. “Coming here and coaching here and coaching these kids and having a chance to build this to what it is, having a relationship with Dr. Westmoreland, I would never have had that. I treasure that as much as anything that I’ve done.”
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Through it all, Sullivan has remained devoted to his alma mater. He was on the committee that hired Gus Malzahn in December 2012. He’s proudly an Auburn man, but he’s a Samford man, too.
“Without question,” Sullivan says. “I’m both of those.”
Auburn offensive coordinator Rhett Lashlee, who had been an Auburn graduate assistant, was Sullivan’s offensive coordinator in 2011. He left after that season to join Malzahn at Arkansas State and returned to Auburn after the 2012 season.
“I think the world of Coach Sullivan,” Lashlee says. “He’s a lifelong friend. He’s been a mentor to me. He instilled confidence in me as a 27-year-old offensive coordinator. I was able to learn a whole lot. One thing that stands out is that you always knew he had your back.”
Lashlee and Sullivan continue to talk often about football and life.
“He always sees the best in people,” Lashlee says. “You can just be around him for 30 minutes and feel better about everything.”
