In the spring of 1962, as Vince Lombardi’s dynasty was dawning in Green Bay, the hottest movie at the box office was a John Ford western titled The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Regarded as one of Ford’s best directorial works, the Paramount film starred Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne in leading roles. Stewart plays Ranse Stoddard, a young and somewhat starry-eyed attorney, who gains fame as the man who shot notorious villain Liberty Valance. Wayne’s character, Tom Doniphon, actually fired the fateful bullet but allowed Stoddard to take the credit. Years later after serving as governor, senator, and ambassador to the United Kingdom, Stoddard finds himself on the brink of a vice presidential nomination and tells a reporter that his entire career is based on a myth. The reporter throws his notes into the fire and utters one of the classic lines in film history: “This is the West, sir…When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”
Thirty-one years later, a football film adopted Ford’s credo. Released in 1993 and directed by David Anspaugh, Rudy is set in the mid-1970s and tells the story of Daniel “Rudy” Ruettiger, a scrappy, working-class kid from Joliet, Illinois, who dreams of playing football at the University of Notre Dame. In the film Ruettiger overcomes a number of obstacles, including temporary homelessness and a lack of athletic ability, and joins the nationally-ranked Fighting Irish as a walk-on member of the scout team. At the climax of the movie, the only obstacle standing between Rudy and his dream is Dan Devine, who stepped down as coach and general manager of the Packers in order to replace legendary Ara Parseghian in South Bend.
In the film Devine is portrayed as aloof, cold-hearted, and intent on quashing Ruettiger’s football fairy tale. He only relents when his players threaten to revolt before the regular-season finale, and a stadium full of fans chant “Rudy! Rudy! Rudy!” Ruettiger and others involved with the production admitted that Devine’s dark depiction in the film was exaggerated. In later interviews and parts of his autobiography, Simply Devine, the coach pointed out that he supported Ruettiger’s bid to play and that players never laid jerseys on his desk and he’d have kicked them off the team if they had. “I didn’t realize I would be such a heavy,” he wrote.
The Rudy episode isn’t the only time that Devine found himself miscast in an urban legend. We’ll get to that in a moment, but first a little background is in order. Devine’s tenure in Green Bay wasn’t a particularly pleasant period in Packers Country. After a successful 13-year run as head coach at the University of Missouri, Devine returned to his home state (he was born in Augusta, Wisconsin, but raised by an aunt and uncle in Minnesota) in 1971 to become coach and general manager of the Packers.
The glory years were a rapidly fading memory. Lombardi had left the organization after Super Bowl II, and his hand-picked successor, Phil Bengtson, retired after three years in which the Packers posted a 20–21 record and failed to finish higher than third in the Central Division. You’d think that replacing Bengtson would be easier than replacing Lombardi, but the legendary coach cast a long shadow. Although the Packers had some promising players like rookie running back John Brockington, linebacker Fred Carr, and defensive tackle Mike McCoy, many of the key players were holdovers from the Lombardi era and they were getting old. Safety Willie Wood and middle linebacker Ray Nitschke were 34. Wide receiver Carroll Dale was 33. Bart Starr, who was in his 16th season at age 37, was at the end of the line and would eventually replace Devine as head coach.
Devine’s only losing season as a college coach came the year before he left for Lambeau Field. But his tenure in Green Bay got off to an ominous start. The 1971 season opener—a home game against the New York Giants on September 19—was contested on a rainy day at Lambeau. A crowd of 56,253 showed up to watch Zeke Bratkowski, who was 39, fill in for Starr. The Packers jumped to an early lead when New York kicker Pete Gogolak came up short on a field-goal attempt, and Ken Ellis returned the ball 100 yards for a touchdown, tying the NFL record at the time. Led by Fran Tarkenton, the Giants converted a couple of Green Bay fumbles into touchdowns and took a 28–14 lead into halftime. Devine benched Bratkowski and inserted rookie quarterback Scott Hunter to start the second half. Hunter had some nice moments, including a 21-yard touchdown pass to tight end Rich McGeorge, but the Giants took a 42–24 lead into the final quarter. Hunter engineered a 74-yard scoring drive with Donny Anderson carrying the ball for the final 19 yards to bring Green Bay to within 42–31.
With a little more than seven minutes left in the game, Packers strong safety Doug Hart intercepted a Tarkenton pass in front of the Green Bay bench. Giants offensive tackle Bob Hyland, who had played in Green Bay, pushed Hart out of bounds and into Devine, who was carted to St. Vincent Hospital with two broken bones in his left leg. Defensive line coach Dave “Hawg” Hanner took over for Devine. The Packers pulled to within 42–40, but Hunter threw a last-minute interception to end the comeback.
Devine returned to the sidelines on crutches, and the Packers won their next two games. They ended the year with a 4–8–2 record that had fans, media, and some players wondering whether Devine—or any coach from the college ranks—could succeed in Green Bay. Those fears were allayed, at least temporarily, when Devine guided the Packers to a 10–4 record the next season. After unseating the Minnesota Vikings as division champs, Green Bay lost a playoff game to the Washington Redskins, but the fanbase was energized, and “The Pack is Back!” became a rallying cry in Wisconsin.
The fun didn’t last. The Packers finished 5–7–2 in 1973. Critics saw Devine as colorless and corporate. Some saw him as paranoid and image-conscious, as well as bumbling and incompetent. “Never in my life have I met a man like him,” Packers publicist (and Devine antagonist) Chuck Lane told The Washington Post. “Time after time he jumps out of a burning building and lands smack in the middle of a bed of roses.”
With two years left on his contract, he was seen as a lame duck. There were nasty banners in the stadium. His daughter, Jill, was harassed by classmates. When his wife, Jo, began showing the first symptoms of what turned out to be multiple sclerosis, rumors spread around Green Bay that she was an alcoholic. “I suppose it’s fair to say that my Green Bay experience had an effect on me,” Devine said during his days at Notre Dame. “Before I went there, I had never been subjected to disloyalty. I had never had to choose my words with reporters and then found them being misinterpreted in the paper. Since then I’ve been more careful, been more wary of people I don’t know.”
In the middle of the 1974 season, Devine engineered one of the worst trades in franchise history when he sent five draft picks to the Los Angeles Rams for aging quarterback John Hadl. When the Packers lost their last three games on the way to a second consecutive third-place finish in 1974, Devine resigned, walking away from his final year to take the job the next day at Notre Dame. Packers officials never confirmed a rumor that Devine, whose record was 25–27–4, was going to be fired if he hadn’t resigned.
In 1974, Devine’s last season, Time wrote a piece on him under the headline “Haunted in Green Bay.” Devine told writer Phillip Taubman that things got so dicey during the middle of his tenure that one of his dogs had been shot outside his house. That’s hardly a pleasant thought, but some passionate Packers fans took pride in the story in the way that Philadelphia fans embrace their reputation for booing Santa Claus. “Devine was such a crappy coach that somebody shot his dog,” fans tell the uninitiated.
Cliff Christl, who was a longtime sportswriter and columnist for the Green Bay Press-Gazette, the Milwaukee Journal, and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel before becoming the Packers’ team historian, provided a takedown of the legend worthy of the mythbusters at Snopes.com. “Yes, Dan Devine had a dog that was shot while he was head coach of the Packers,” Christl wrote on the team’s website. “But it wasn’t a disgruntled fan that shot the dog and it had nothing to do with losing.”
Christl caught up with a farmer who lived in the area west of Green Bay where Devine resided. The farmer said his neighbor, the father of 14 kids, depended on his chickens to lay eggs and feed his family. One of Devine’s dogs kept chasing chickens and causing problems on the farm. The farmer warned Devine to keep his dogs tied up. When the henhouse harassment continued, the farmer shot the dog. This wasn’t an uncommon practice then nor is it particularly illustrative of the passion of Packers fans. But when the legend becomes fact, print the legend.