Robert Davis, a Central Georgia and statewide coaching icon, dies at 77
Updated, 8 p.m.
By Michael A. Lough
The Sports Report
centralgasports@gmail.com
The vision is of the crew cut, a towel on the shoulder, and some barking along the sidelines.
The results, at two different programs, were wins.
Thatâs the legacy left by former Warner Robins and Westside head football coach Robert Davis, who died Thursday morning in Houston County.
Davis has battled health issues for several years, primarily related to diabetes, and had been under hospice care for the past several weeks. He had bypass surgery during the 1992 season that was barely a hiccup.
The 77-year-old had been mostly relegated to wheelchair movement the last several years, but it wasnât enough to slow him down from attending many Warner Robins games, as well as the Southwest-Westside game to open the 2019 season in the Macon Touchdown Clubâs Middle Georgia Kickoff Classic at Mercerâs Five Star Stadium.
He is survived by his wife Cecilia, son Bob Jr., daughter Kelly, stepdaughter Julie, brother Patrick, and several grandchildren and one great grandchild. Services are Saturday at Southside Baptist Church in Warner Robins, with the family receiving guests from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Bob Jr. played quarterback under his dad and coached with him as well, retiring from coaching a few years ago.
David Bruce coached under Davis at Warner Robins and Westside, and visited him, along with former Westside assistant and current Warner Robins middle principal Brett Wallace, about a month ago.
âWhen he was good, he was sharp as ever,â said Bruce, who went to a Warner Robins playoff game last year and went to lunch a few times last spring.
Davis had been at the Phoenix Center, a behavioral health services facility, in Warner Robins of the past several weeks, and was released to go home on Wednesday, passing away over night.
The graduate of old Livingston State College, now West Alabama, went 354-74-1 (according to the Georgia High School Football Historians Association) at Warmer Robins and Westside, from 1973-2008.
Davis is the No. 3 winningest coach in the state of Georgia with a record of 354-74-1, behind Larry Campbell (477-85-3) and Alan Chadwick (389-73-0, still at Marist). Right behind Davis is retired Mary Persons legend Dan Pitts at 346-109-4.
The next active coach is Jackson Countyâs Rich McWhorter at 293-89-2. He is in his mid-50s, and left a legendary career at Charlton County to take over at Jackson County, a below-average program thatâs won less than 30 percent of its games in 41 seasons and has one above-.500 season since 1992, and has five winless seasons in that span.
Former Washington County head coach Rick Tomberlin is now at Appling County, and is 263-127.
Of the top 20 winningest coaches in the state, GHSA and GISA, Davis is the latest to pass away: Luther Welsh, 2011; Wayman Creel, 1990; Nick Hyder, 1996; Billy Henderson, 2018; Graham Hixon, 2005; John Cravey, 2014; and Wright Bazemore, 1999.
Davis retired from Westside in March of 2009, citing âthings like cutbacks, downsizing, and a bad economy,â that maybe it was time for somebody younger.
Indeed, successor Sheddrick Risper was 34 when he was promoted from Weaver Middle School head coach, who did take a short break from coach to play with local indoor football team Macon Knights. He was part of Davisâ first full varsity staff in 1998.
Westside has had only one non-winning season in its history.
The native of North Carolina who grew up in north Florida was lured to Warner Robins by Joe Sumrall, who left Thomasville to take over a team in 1966 that hadnât had a winning season since 1956, going 6-3-1 under W.J. âDocâ Kirksey.
Sumrall left after the 1969 season, following three straight 9-1 years, and Frank Orgel took over. He had three nine-win seasons and moved on, passing the head whistle to the offensive line coach.
The Davis Era at Warner Robins began, with a 10-1 season, Central handing him his first loss as a head coach, 14-13 in the Class 3A â Georgiaâs largest classification back then â quarterfinals.
But the normal Davis standard at Warner Robins was set. Only five times from 1973-1996 did a Davis team at Warner Robins win less than nine games, with four eight-win seasons and one seven-win year. The lone years sitting on the postseason state playoff sidelines were in 1974, 1975, and 1978.
Robert Davis watched Southwest and Westside in the 2019 opener at Mercer.
Photo: Michael A. Lough/The Sports Report
The Demons won state titles in 1976, 1981, and 1988, with one other championship visit and six trips to the semifinals. Along the way, the Warner Robins-Northside rivalry grew more bitter with the relationship Davis and then-Northside head coach Conrad Nix being pretty much frozen from the start, having only warmed up a little bit in recent years.
The blueprint wasnât complicated. Before Nick Saban had a process âŠ
âCoach Davis basically had that same process, before it was cool,â said Bryan Way, who played for Davis and then coached with Davis and eventually became Warner Robinsâ head coach. âWe had a plan, and thatâs what we were going to do. Football was the most important thing, and thatâs what he focused on, and what we focused on.â
Bruce left Westside to return to Warner Robins in 2004, eventually become a head coach when Veterans was born.
âHe was good at hiring good people and letting them to their job,â said Bruce, a thought echoed almost word for word by Way. âHe did not interfere, he did not micromanage.â
Then, just like that, Davis â often an imposing figure whose career had occasional public relations bumps - stunned Warner Robins and the state when he resigned. Way was on the staff then, and it was clear something was up.
âHeâd had, what, 30 years in,â Way said. âHe wasnât going to make more money at Warner Robins. In Houston County, his salary wasnât going to go up exponentially.â
Just as stunning, if not moreso, was the next step: at new Westside in Macon with the challenge of starting from scratch a program in a county that hadnât sniffed much success or statewide respect in awhile, along with big bucks and more administrative freedom.
Bruce had left Warner Robins to become head coach at Nease High in Florida, and Davis called.
âHe said, âHey boy, Iâm going to Westside in Macon, I want you to come run the defense,â said Bruce, now an assistant at Brookstone in Columbus. âI said, âCoach, you ainât leaving Warner Robins. ⊠I donât believe you, but if you do, call me. When itâs official, Iâll come run your defense.â Iâll be danged if about two or three days later âŠâ
Big-eyed boosters and then-athletics director Raynette Evans dangled a bigger paycheck, a truck, and the unofficial promise of little or no meddling, very appealing to the then-55-year-old.
He, in fact, selected the nickname and colors, paying tribute to his beloved Florida State Seminoles. Davis had input in the new stadium that was initially set for an optimistic 9,000 seats â and what was marketed as âskyboxesâ that could be rented for hundreds of dollars a game - but is in fact less than 7,000 with a skybox plan never really materialized.
Red-tape didnât get in the way of getting the stadium started and done in stunning time, about three months. Bypassing some zoning rules drew negative attention to Davis, the school, and the fiscal investment.
Soon, reality met optimism, and pledges werenât paid, and Westside Boosters Inc. was in trouble with the $3.2 million - that grew by about $400,000 - project. The boosters, according to a Macon Telegraph story, âwalked awayâ from its obligation, and taxpayers were on the hook after all.
The club reportedly had 17 boosters who were to account for $395,000 a year. Within a few years of breaking ground, the boosters turned the property over to Bibb County, which eventually renamed it the âEd DeFore Sports Complexâ after the longtime youth sports booster and city councilman.
Despite all that and other issues involving design and construction that had to be fixed, there were no issues on the football field, for Davis delivered on the high expectations.
âHe handled all that,â Bruce said. âAll we had to do was coach. He didnât want us to worry about anything but coaching.â
Bruce had no doubts that Davis could pull it off at a start-up program in a county that wasnât competing much on a statewide level, which is why Bruce made the odd career decision to join him.
âI knew that if it was his deal, it was gonna be a good deal,â Bruce said. âHe donât make bad deals. He donât get hoodood.ââ
Westside went 5-0 â no region play - in 1997 against Class A Lanier County, and Class 4A â the largest class at the time in Georgia â Woodstock twice and Centennial twice, while also playing other schools.
They went 9-3 overall in 1998, the first of full varsity and region play. The Seminoles beat Upson-Lee 37-21 in week 2 for their first win ever, and went to the playoffs, losing 42-7 o Brunswick in the first round in Class 4A.
A 7-3 season followed, and then Westside won at least 10 games for four straight years, reaching the semifinals in 2000 and 2003, a pair of quarterfinal trips in between.
Despite that success, attendance never came close to expectations, what with a new school and no tradition, history, or alumni, as well as some strong feelings from other county schools and backers at the attention and money involved with Davis and the facilities fiasco.
Adjustments in county school district zones as well as the addition of Howard and Rutland high schools changed things in the country, including lowering Westsideâs enrollment. The school was in 4A, jumped to 5A when the classification was added in 2000, and dropped back to 4A in 2004, and .
Westside didnât make the playoffs in four of Davisâ final six years with the program, but did go 12-1 and reach the 4A quarterfinals in his last season.
The program reached a level of stability despite assorted changed, and successor Sheddrick Risper has had only one non-winning season since taking over in 2009, making the playoffs every season except 2011.
Davis joined many friends and former rivals in the Georgia Athletic Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2010, and went into the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame in 2012. The Macon Sports Hall of Fame called his number in 2005, while he was still coaching.
In later years, Davis returned to the city that gave him the most fame and wins, and was a regular attendee at Warner Robins games, rolling around in a wheelchair.
For all of the success, there were situations that didnât quite shine the same spotlight.
It was discovered that James Brooks, a star running back on the 1976 state and ânational championshipâ team, had gone on to stand out at Auburn and graduate despite being illiterate. That came to light in 1998 during proceedings regarding a failure to pay child support.
Stories and reports indicated that Brooksâ reading issues were no secret at Warner Robins. From a school secretary in an Issues of Higher Education story in 1999:
âReading was always [Brooksâ] problem. No one here knew how he got into Auburn ⊠much less how he made it through. We knew he couldnât read. There was just no way.â
Travis Evans was the best running back ever to play at Westside with nearly 6,300 yards to his credit.
But as a story in the Macon Telegraph in 2005 detailed, he did not in fact have the credits â much to the surprise of Evans and his family - to graduate, thus making him academically ineligible for Division I football.
He played at a junior college and two Division II programs in a career that had Division I potential until the academic issues arose in high school and college.
Neither reflected well on the high school programs, but the Demons sent scores of players off to college with no issues.
And at Westside under Davis, Julian Burnett played at Georgia Tech before a neck injury ended his career, Marlon White started at Vanderbilt, Owen Williams played at Tennessee, and Kareem Jackson started at Alabama and is in the NFL, with several others competing on the FCS/I-AA level and lower.
Bruce said he was pretty sure Davis enjoyed his retirement, which did not include golf.
âHe liked fast cars,â Bruce said. âHe had an El Camino, a Trans Am. He had âem souped up. He let me drive a few times. Man, those jokers could go.â
Way laughed at discussing Davis talking about being a fisherman. Well, he did have a boat.
âI think he did more drinking beer on the water than he did fishing,â Way said with a laugh. âI donât blame him.â
Davis, who played tight end in college and was an offensive line assistant before his head coaching career began, was obviously a wise football mind. But Way and Davis again were in sync in the Davis scouting report.
âHe was a great motivator,â said Way, an assistant at Tattnall. âHe didnât have a lot to do with Xs and Os, not that he didnât know Xs and Os, but he let the assistants handle that.
âHe motivated players and coaches, better than anybody Iâve ever been with. That was his gift.â
Said Bruce: âHe was a great motivator. He could get kids to play.â
Davis was something of a lightning rod, Way admitted, and no doubt many who didnât like him did hold on to a smidgeon of grudging respect for so much sustained success, and at markedly different programs.
And Wayâs simple summary is no doubt something Davis would approve of as an epitaph.
âHe was a guy that was a football coach,â Way said. âThatâs what he did.â