The ‘Deans’ Are Still Working (and Winning!)

(St. Louis, MO) – Rare and unique are the coaches that stay at college institution for 20 or 30 years, but the Ohio Valley Conference is blessed to have two such coaches. Rick Byrd at Belmont University and Austin Peay’s Dave Loos are throw backs to a bygone era when coaches built long lasting history and the name of the coach was almost synomous with the university.

Byrd (732) and Loos (494) have combined to win over 1,200 games and are the recognized ‘deans’ of the OVC coaching fraternity. They have won over 1,000 games at their present institutions.

One crowning achievement occurred last year when Loos’ Governors went on an historic run through Music City Madness to win the OVC tournament. Belmont has won or shared a conference or division title in nine of the last eleven seasons and they’ve won six in a row.

The words we hear from other coaches about these two veteran mentors are ‘classy’, ‘gentleman’, ‘smart’, ‘prepared’. And they win games!

Southern Illinois Edwardsville’s Jon Harris and Eastern Illinois’s Jay Spoonhour told me Byrd and Loos are coaches they respect and men from whom they can learn.

 

 

Loos is closing in on 500 overall wins and Byrd who is on the NCAA Rules Committee, took time to tell me he how they feel about one another. Coach Byrd confessed that he, like many others in the OVC, were secretly rooting for Loos’ Governors during last season’s league tournament.

 

 

The current crop of OVC coaches contains a long list of impressive young coaches. To a man, they speak of these two veteran coaches in reverential terms. Murray State’s Matt McMahon says for better or worse, coaches like Loos and Byrd that stay at one place for a long time are diminishing in number.

 

 

Pay attention to these hall of fame type of coaches. They are part of a breed of mentors that we may not see again in our life-time of watching our favorite sport.

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