Jack Pardee, UH Head Football Coach, 1987-89.
It’s been a week since Jack Pardee passed away on April 1, 2013, but we’ve needed all that time and then some to thank him for his contributions to the game of football and to the State of Texas for this contribution of another world-class human being in athletics.
Pardee died of gall bladder cancer at a hospice in Centennial, Colorado that he had chosen for sake of being near his family in his final days. He was 76 years old when he died.
Jack Pardee was first noted as a survivor of Texas A&M Coach Bear Bryant’s 1954 “Junction” camp in the Hill Country near Kerrville. He survived well enough to become one of the best linebacker/fullback two-position players in Texas Aggie history, becoming a second round draft selection of the Los Angeles Rams in 1957.
Pardee played linebacker for the Rams from 1957 to 1964 before sitting out a season in 1965 for the treatment of melanoma. He returned for five more seasons with the Rams (1966-70) before finishing his playing career with the Washington Redskins (1971-72).
Jack then tried is sure hand at coaching with the Chicago Bears (1975-77) and the Washington Redskins (1978-80), and in 1979, he was named as NFL Coach of the Year. On a break from the NFL, Pardee then used a previously conceived offense called the “run and shoot” to steer a new club called the Houston Gamblers before taking the offense on a three-year tour under his coaching auspices at the University of Houston (1987-1989). In that last season under Pardee, Cougar QB Andre Ware captured the Heisman Trophy.
From UH, Jack Pardee was hired to coach the Houston Oilers, which he did for the better part of five seasons (1990-1994). He was fired in 1994 after the club started with a 1-9 record and replaced by assistant coach Jeff Fisher.
Jack Pardee is survived by his wife, Phyllis, five children, and twelve grandchildren.
Rest in peace, JP. You did a great job for a boy coming out of tiny Christoval, Texas and a six-player football team conference to become one of the 35 players from 100 that started and survived the 1954 Junction Aggie football camp of Coach Bryant. “I never thought about quitting,” Pardee said of his time with the Junction Boys. “If I did, where would I go, Christoval? Hey, I worked hard to get out of there.”
Good traveling on God’s Road too, Jack. – The whole State of Texas should treasure your memory as your footsteps now take you over the hill that none of us ever see in person until it’s our time to be there too.
Tags: Life of Jack Pardee
The Pecan Park Eagle 
April 8, 2013 at 3:30 pm |
Amen