One hundred years ago, Washington’s football fortunes were the exact opposite of what they are today. It was the fall of 1908 that Gilmour Dobie was hired as coach. Rather than losing all of their games, in nine years his teams never lost a game. The “Varsity” as the team was called — Huskies was adopted as the team name in 1922 — had a record of 58-0-3.

This, together with two other games just before and after Dobie came to campus, make up the national college record that still stands today of 63 consecutive games without a loss. After graduating in law from the University of Minnesota, Dobie coached for two years at Minneapolis Southside High and two years at the University of North Dakota and never tasted defeat at either of school. By the time he left Washington to coach at Annapolis he had never lost a game in 13 years.

Only 28 years old when he landed the prestigious job as coach at Washington, he proved to be immature, ill-tempered, rough-talking, pessimistic and generally disagreeable. No one could have possibly imagined that he would become a coaching legend, rising to national prominence during his tour of duty at Washington. How could this person who showed so many bad qualities ascend to such heights? Therein lies the story of this truly amazing character.

It wasn’t apparent at first to Dobie that he got a career-saving boost via an open letter to University President Thomas Franklin Kane in a Seattle paper. The letter spelled out a litany of bad behavior fans and sports writers witnessed at Dobie’s games. It was a humiliating lesson that saved his job: President Kane took the ill-mannered coach to the woodshed and swore that the situation would be corrected, or else. We can now see that this shock treatment worked; Dobie did get his adolescent conduct under control.

His pessimism would remain intact, however, and was the one facet of this tall Scotsman’s identity that he retained throughout his career. Many coaches of the day were known for their negative assessments of their team’s chances for the upcoming game. But coach Dobie developed this to a fine art and it became the centerpiece of his strategy in the pre-game jousting between opposing sides for that week’s contest. He was known as a master of psychology and this was just one of the tools in his arsenal. The dark cloud of gloom Dobie insisted on projecting was his trademark and the phenomenal results Washington enjoyed demonstrate that it worked.

In coaching he could use seeming abuse one moment and fatherly love the next. He also was an obsessive-compulsive taskmaster that demanded not just a player’s best efforts but perfection. Since no one is capable of perfection, he used this as a way to get his athletes to stretch to their full potential.

His record shows that he turned average players into good players, and good players were elevated to greatness. They could hate his harsh methods but over time admitted that they respected his ability to get everything possible out of the team. Wee Coyle, a great quarterback on his first team paid him the ultimate compliment 40 years later by calling him, “a natural born leader of men.”

Among the many traditions that came out of the Dobie era was the Flaherty Medal awarded for the first time to Guy Flaherty for his inspirational service to the team in 1908. Also it comes as a surprise to many to learn that Bow Down To Washington, written in 1915, originally had the line “Dobie, Dobie pride of Washington” in the chorus. All those loyal to Washington can be justly proud of this great coach and the unparalleled accomplishments of his teams.

Lynn Borland, Class of ’66

Gilmore Dobie Historian