Former MSU head coach Muddy Waters has passed away
Former MSU head coach and football player Frank “Muddy” Waters passed away on Wednesday in Saginaw. He was hired as MSU’s head football coach in 1980 and coached the Spartans for three seasons following a very successful career at Hillsdale College and Saginaw Valley State.
He was 83 and is survived by three sons, their wives and seven grandchildren. The Lansing State Journal has some comments from his family.
“He’ll be remembered as a very generous person who gave his time to a lot of young men and mentored a lot of young men,� said “Murky� Waters, who played at MSU under Duffy Daugherty in the late 1960s. “He didn’t care if a kid was a first-stringer or a last-stringer, if he had a problem, my dad would bend over backward to solve it.
“He believed in everybody.”
Here is his biography from the College Football Hall of Fame web site.
An exemplary coach and role model, Frank “Muddy” Waters is one of the most respected coaches in Michigan football history. Muddy’s tireless efforts resulted in one of the nation’s most powerful and respected college programs. At Hillsdale his teams were nationally ranked twelve times, and from 1953-57, Hillsdale won 34 games in a row, a Division II record. His teams earned trips to the playoffs twice and played in the 1957 Holiday Bowl. Waters was selected NAIA Coach of the Year in 1957, the same year Hillsdale was recognized by the Washington D.C. Touchdown Club as the nation’s outstanding small college team. In 1973 Hillsdale’s football stadium was named Frank Waters Stadium. In 1974 Waters began building a football program at Saginaw Valley State College. The next year they were recognized as a varsity team and by 1979 he had led them to the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference championship. That year he was selected Michigan Coach of the Year, marking the eighth time in his illustrious career that he won the award. He concluded his coaching career with a three-year stint at Michigan State and was later inducted into the NAIA and Hillsdale College Athletic Halls of Fame. Outside of coaching, Waters remained very involved in the game of football. He was a four-time chairman of the NAIA Football Advisory Committee, and was president of the NAIA Football Coaches Association.View site