Contra Costa College football coaching legend Vince Maiorana died last Thursday afternoon at the age of 92, his son Mark told this news organization.
Maiorana led the football program from 1957 to 1980, coaching future NFL players, including Travis Williams, whose four kick return touchdowns as a rookie still stand as an NFL single-season record.
Maiorana is a member of the California Community College Football Coaches Association Hall of Fame, as well as the halls of Contra Costa College and Monterey Peninsula College.
He took over as the coach of a downtrodden school and vaulted CCC to back-to-back league championships in the early 1960s, then won five more league titles in the 1970s.
“His style was the old Power I,” former CCC and Diablo Valley baseball coach Larry Quirico said. “They threw the ball OK, but usually they were a very physical team back then.”
The Monterey High graduate, after a stint at Monterey Peninsula, played at Cal in the early 1950s under Pappy Waldorf and, according to his son Mark, made a surprise appearance in the 1951 Rose Bowl against Michigan as a 5-foot-9 offensive guard who began the game in the stands with his parents.
“In the first quarter, the starter goes down. Over the loudspeaker, it’s ‘Vince Maiorana, please report to the Cal locker room,’ ” Mark said. The backup guard was Les Richter, the future Hall of Fame linebacker. Richter was hurt in the second half, and a hastily dressed Mairoana went in to block for one play before Richter went back in.
After two years in the Coast Guard, Maiorana took over the junior varsity team at Cal to begin his coaching career. Shortly after, the job at West Contra Costa Junior College (now CCC) came open and he took it, against the advice of his Cal colleagues.
The team initially practiced at the Richmond shipyards and played at Richmond High, Mark said, but Maiorana’s first team became an immediate conference title contender. Three players on that team eventually became his full-time staff, and later, CCC Football Coaches Association hall of famers: Tom Kinnard, Neill Gunn and Robert Creer, whom Maiorana’s son said he encouraged to transfer to UC Davis to break the color barrier at that school. Future Chabot hall of fame coach Terry Cagannan was also on that team.
Mark said the University of Oregon offered his father its coaching job after that season, but he turned it down, outwardly saying he was afraid to fly, but really out of fear of eventually being fired after growing up as a poor first-generation Italian-American. So he stayed at CCC and built his program.
“He went door to door recruiting kids,” Mark said. “There were just six high schools in the district, and he lived in those high school living rooms.”
The relationships Maiorana formed with high school coaches through recruiting helped him continue to bring talented players from the East Bay to CCC.
“In the ‘60s and ‘70s, Contra Costa had a lot of great players go through that school,” Quirico said, citing future NFLers Mike Burns (DB, 1977 49ers draftee), Ray Strong (RB, 1978 Falcons draftee) and Larry McGrew (LB, 1980 Patriots draftee), as well as Super Bowl-winning defensive back Benny Barnes, who played at Stanford.
In 1980, Maiorana ceded the head coaching job to Kinnard and became defensive coordinator for several seasons.
After giving up coaching, Maiorana stayed on as a physical education instructor at CCC, becoming the athletic director in the early 1990s and eventually the district chairperson before retiring in 1996. Even in retirement, Quirico said Maiorana taught tennis at the college on Saturdays.
