by Neil Hayes
Don Eidson traveled a lot, and Terry’s two sisters and brother were older and off at school by then. Terry spent most of his time with his friends and the mother who doted on him. Lois Eidson took her son to Giants games and taught him how to play tennis on local courts, but the track remained in the background whispering his name.
His father always had a box near the finish line. Terry loved it there, among all the familiar faces and voices and the smell of horses and sawdust. He loved the excitement and, later, the thrill of placing a bet, even if it was only a dollar.
“My friends would put fifty cents in. My dad would throw in a buck and that’s how we would bet,” Terry said. “It wasn’t about the money. It was about competition and the challenge of being right.”
Don had a horse running the day of Terry’s first Holy Communion. They took a picture of a smiling Terry standing next to the statue of Mary when the ceremony was over. Then they sped toward Bay Meadows Racetrack on the San Francisco peninsula.
They listened to the call of the race on the backside. They scrambled for the winner’s circle when their horse won.
The horse already had been led to the barn by the time they got there, but they posed for a picture anyway: Terry, Don, and Lois, all dressed up for Holy Communion, smiling next to a jockey in silks. Terry still held his Bible in his hand. The horse paid $28. They never did get a bet down.
He was an energetic, precocious child, intense even then. He wasn’t a great athlete, but he understood competition. He organized baseball games in his middle-class neighborhood in Castro Valley, located southeast of Oakland. He called plays when he and his friends played football.
“He has been a coach ever since he was a kid,” said childhood friend Pat Hayes. “I remember him talking about how the game should be played in the fifth grade. He was managing the Giants when he was fifteen. He always knew when to run and when to pull the pitcher.”
Baseball was his first love. He didn’t play football until his junior year at Moreau High in Hayward, where Al Vermeil, the ultra-intense brother of NFL coach Dick Vermeil, was the coach.
Eidson was a good player, especially on special teams, but not a great one. He didn’t get the coaching bug until he was enrolled at UCLA and found himself coaching co-ed softball and flag football.
He left UCLA with a degree in political science and a plan to enroll in law school. A member of the Christian Brothers whom he had gotten to know during summer retreats persuaded him to enter the pre-novice program at St. Mary’s College in the fall.
Terry was intrigued by the idea of a life dedicated to forging extraordinary relationships with students, and he shared many of the core beliefs the Brothers held dear. Brothers must take a vow of celibacy, poverty, and obedience, and Terry could not imagine a future without a family. Still, he thought he should at least give it a try.
He isn’t the type of person who likes being told what to do. He worried about fitting into the community but soon discovered it wasn’t an issue—at least until football season started.
Terry grew up a rabid Oakland Raiders fan. There were no other Brothers who shared his passion for the silver and black. Once a month the Brothers attended a local parish for Mass. They went in two cars. Terry told the driver of each car that he would ride with the other. Then he stayed home and watched the Raiders on TV.
It wasn’t easy, but he managed to watch every game that season. Every fourth Sunday was a challenge. Brothers are required to spend one Sunday a month in solitude, prayer, and reflection. In other words, no television.
Terry snuck down to the basement and watched the Raiders with the volume turned down. He turned off the set when he heard someone approaching.
He was at the Brothers’ retreat house when the Raiders met the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl XV. They were to spend the weekend finding God through the arts. They watched a movie, attended a symphony concert, and went to a play. On Sunday, Super Bowl Sunday, they were scheduled to visit the Oakland Museum.
This was too much for Terry. How could they expect him to go to the Oakland Museum when the Oakland Raiders were in the Super Bowl? He argued with Brother Thomas Jones for two weeks. Brother Thomas told him to tape the game and watch it later. Terry knew he couldn’t spend the day in Oakland without learning the score. Brother Thomas said the experience would be good for him.
“This is not good for me,” Terry answered. “This is not good for anybody. This will just piss me off. Trust me.”
Terry refused to pose for a picture with the group after the museum tour—a sign of protest. Then the Brothers went back to St. Mary’s to discuss what they had learned. Whenever the Raiders scored, cheering students and cowbells echoed through the Moraga hills. Terry was fuming.
“I thought if I was a pain in the ass long enough I’d get my way,” he said. “When I didn’t I was completely turned off. I decided I had to split if they were going to be so unyielding about things that were important to me.”
In some ways Eidson already had learned what he needed to from the Brothers. He had enough respect for their teaching methods and the Lasallian philosophy to know he wanted to teach in a Christian Brothers school. He enrolled at St. Mary’s and began working toward a teaching certificate and a Master’s degree in theology.
The Brothers invited him to stay on campus with them during the summer of 1981, even though he was leaving the program. That was the summer he met Bob Ladouceur, who was also taking classes at the college at the time.
Eidson had watched from the stands as De La Salle played for the league championship against St. Patrick’s at St. Mary’s Stadium the previous fall. The Spartans scored what appeared to be the game-winning touchdown, only to see St. Patrick’s return the ensuing kickoff 89 yards for a touchdown and a 24–21 victory. Eidson told a mutual friend how the De La Salle head coach cost his team the game with a poor kickoff coverage scheme, not realizing that the silent presence walking with them across campus was Ladouceur himself.
“The first time I met Terry he pissed me off,” Ladouceur said. “I figured he knew something about the game because he was able to pinpoint the most critical moment. But it was pretty presumptuous to pop off like that. He still hasn’t stopped.”
Brother Jerome Gallegos found a position for him teaching religious studies and social studies and working in the campus ministry. Coaching would have to be done on his own time. Eidson gladly accepted. He was twenty-three years old.
His energy and passion filled a void on a campus still reeling from the death of Brother Laurence two years before. Eidson threw himself into his job. The school became his life. He helped with the junior varsity football team and assisted the freshman baseball coach.
“Brother Laurence was gone and then Terry came in and brought an enthusiasm and a real zest for life,” said longtime teacher and coach Pete Kelly. “It was almost like a new beginning for us.”
Eidson had a limited football background but was determined to learn what he didn’t know. He overcame an awkward introduction to forge an immediate friendship with Ladouceur.
“Bob was talkative, outgoing, funny,” Eidson said. “We just clicked. Then I came on campus and I realized I had gotten to know him more in one week during the summer than most people had in two years. I have never seen him the way most people see him unless we’re around other people. He’s never like that around me. Even now, the word around school is, ‘Only Eidson can talk to Ladouceur that way.’ ”
It wasn’t until the following spring that Eidson learned that Ladouceur was promoting the junior varsity head coach to the varsity staff. That was fine with Eidson, but who would coach the JV team?
Ladouceur stared at him. Eventually, the reality sank in.
“Are you kidding? I don’t even know the offense,” Eidson protested.
“You’ll learn it,” Ladouceur promised.
“I followed him around like a puppy all summer,” Eidson said. “I was just trying to figure out how to run the offense.”
There were some faculty members who chuckled at Ladouceur’s decision. They didn’t believe the first-year teacher had the temperament, background, or experience to be a head coach at any level. Eidson proved them all wrong by going 20–0 in his two years as the JV head coach. But the wins aren’t what players remember most.
They remember how he opened every game with a trick play.
Ladouceur used his offense to set up an occasional trick play. His new JV coach used trick plays to set up his offense.
Eidson scribbled them down when he saw them on TV, collected them from other coaches, and invented some of his own. Every week another fumblerooski, flea flicker, or double-reverse pass was installed.
“You lose the element of surprise when the other team knows the trick play is coming,” Ladouceur would point out logically.
“They know it’s coming but they still can’t stop it,” Eidson insisted, and he was right once more. His game-opening shenanigans almost always resulted in big gains or touchdowns. His players loved it.
The first play of the game had the urgency of the last, with opposing coaches screaming instructions to frantic players.
“That’s when I knew he had a flair for it,” Ladouceur said. “Those kids had a great time and got real excited about football.”
Eidson had an uncanny knack for managing a game and the clock despite his lack of sideline experience. He was even more demonstrative then, even louder, if such a thing is possible. He stalked the sideline, destroying clipboards in fits of harmless rage.
“I don’t want to say he was Bobby Knight. He wasn’t that intense. But he was a close second,” said Joe McNiff, his JV assistant. “He absolutely breathed Spartan football at that point in his life.”
He picked songs out and played them to players if he thought they held special meaning for them, a practice he would later incorporate into team chapel services. Ladouceur preferred a low-key approach, but Eidson whipped his players into a frenzy before games.
It always came back to the trick plays. There was one game against Moreau, Eidson’s alma mater, when the offense lined up in an I-formation with two tight ends instead of in the traditional veer.
On quarterback Mark Panella’s signal, they shifted into a split-back formation. Then Panella retreated into shotgun position. The opposing coaches were pointing and yelling as bewildered defenders scrambled around the field, unsure of what might happen next.
Panella handed the ball off to a running back, who pitched it back to Panella, who threw deep to a waiting receiver for a touchdown.
“The defense was chasing our guy downfield and Terry is on the sideline jumping up and down and screaming, ‘I knew it would work! I knew it would work!’ ” Panella said, chuckling at the memory.
“That’s how I’ll remember him as a head coach. That was Terry in all his glory.”
★ ★ ★
Eidson insisted on coaching the special teams units when he was elevated to the varsity staff in 1982. He wanted a team he could call his own. Ladouceur was all too willing to give Eidson that responsibility.
“Before Terry came there was nothing special about our special teams,” Ladouceur said. “It was an afterthought for me. I felt I had so many other things to worry about, it was always last on the list.”
Eidson wanted to make his special teams a cornerstone of the program, and the kickoff coverage team the cornerstone of the special teams. He succeeded in creating a game-breaking unit for the team and an alter ego for himself—Cobra.
“The whole environment around Cobra is a little cultish, and I don’t want to use that word loosely,” former player Patrick Walsh says. “This cult is centered on good special teams play and creates special memories for kids. What is the value in that? That’s what coaching is about, creating positive memories for kids.”
Eidson has succeeded on that front. To this day, if the kickoff team allows even a mediocre return, Eidson receives complaints from former players, who fear he has grown soft.
It is more than a point of pride. The efficiency of these elite units is one of the primary reasons why De La Salle is so dominant. Players must fill out an application before they are considered, as if they were applying for a job or admission into college.
“Walt Michaels, former coach of the New York Jets, summed up what kind of man plays on special teams,” concludes the application’s introductory paragraph. “A man with no fear belongs in two places—a mental institution and on special teams.” The paragraph ends with a question: “Are you that man?”
The seven questions range from serious to silly and reflect the nature of the process and the man who drafted it. Players are required to state which special teams unit they are applying for and why Eidson should consider them for such an important assignment.
“What would you do if you saw your mother running with the football?” That’s the last question. It comes from an article on special teams that Eidson read years ago. If the response is “push her out of bounds,” the player is best suited to offense. If it’s “tackle her,” then he is a candidate for defense. If the answer is “knock her head off,” it’s a sure sign of a committed special teams player.
Most players state matter-of-factly that they would cream their mother in such a situation. Former star running back and linebacker D. J. Williams took it a step further. He included a videotape with his application that began with his mother dressed in a football uniform and ended with her son, then a six-foot-one, 220-pound man-child who would become one of the most intensely recruited high school athletes in history, leveling her after she caught the ball.
The extra effort gave D. J.’s mother recurring back pain but did not land her son a spot on the kickoff team. As a two-way star at running back and linebacker, he was just too valuable.
But that’s how far players will go to please the Cobra.
Eidson’s Cobra persona evolved over time. He and his special teams units would watch a movie together every year. The movie always involved a good guy who did something borderline psychotic. Cobra would bring the movie’s posters to practice, and his players would kneel and bow reverentially in front of them.
One year they watched Sylvester Stallone’s Cobra. Not long afterward a player showed up with a toy-store version of Cobra sunglasses and a gun. Eidson put on the glasses and walked onto the field. The first chant of “Cobra! Cobra!” was heard. A tradition was born.
Eidson has accessorized through the years. Cobra now wears a black leather jacket with silver studs, black pants, and black zip-up boots when he makes his weekly appearance. The cobra tattoo on his right biceps is the result of his wife’s dare.
He’ll often read an article from a tabloid to inspire his troops. “Man shot three times drives self home” is a time-tested favorite. Each year Eidson designs a new version of the “Cobra Corps” T-shirt. A hooded snake, poised to strike, adorns the front. An image from the most recent movie night is on the back. Before the 2002 season the team watched Black Hawk Down. Thus, the 2002 shirts feature a Black Hawk helicopter above a line from the movie: It’s about the man next to you.
Only players who make a special teams contribution will earn a T-shirt.
“Kids will do anything to get one of those shirts,” senior tackle John Chan said. “You still see guys wearing them six or seven years later.”
The ultimate in “Cobra Theater,” as Mark Panella likes to call it, occurred in 1990. But its roots were in the 1989 game against Pinole Valley, when De La Salle shocked its league rival with a 28–22 come-from-behind win at Owen Owens Field.
The Spartans already had lost two games that season—18–16 to St. Francis and 14–13 to El Cerrito—and Pinole Valley had the offensive weapons to knock De La Salle out of the playoff chase.
That game will always be remembered for the Toomer brothers. Amani Toomer, who would go on to star at Michigan and for the NFL’s New York Giants, fielded a kickoff on his own 15-yard line with his team trailing by two early in the
fourth quarter. He avoided several tacklers before bolting up the sideline.
There was only one player on the field who had a chance to catch him. That was his brother Don, who played cornerback for Pinole Valley. But Don, a senior, couldn’t catch his brother, a sophomore, and De La Salle took a momentary lead. The teams exchanged scores before a Spartan defender knocked down a pass in his own end zone to seal the victory and set the stage for Cobra’s finest hour months later.
De La Salle played Pinole Valley for the league championship the following season. Two nights before the rematch, Eidson dug a shallow grave in the east end zone and carefully replaced the sod.
Cobra came out in his usual attire the next afternoon. The team gathered around him as he pointed to the spot where Pinole’s last-gasp pass had fallen incomplete the year before.
That’s where Pinole fantasies of a league title had been buried, he told wide-eyed players. A ghost now roamed the end zone, and one never knew when the Ghost of Pinole would rise up and attempt to reclaim the dreams of championship it had lost on this field the year before.
Eidson had a friend who had been a star running back at Pinole. The friend agreed to wear his old high school jersey and hide in the “grave” until the signal was given. When Cobra said “rise,” the ghost leapt out of the grave, genuinely scaring the players.
That’s when things went awry. It was a simple plan. The ghost would pretend to attack Cobra. Cobra would fight him off before retrieving a chainsaw hidden behind the bleachers. He would then chase the ghost off the field with the chainsaw, exorcising him forever.
They didn’t anticipate startled players chasing the ghost themselves. Eidson’s friend wasn’t in the same physical condition as the last time he wore that jersey. By the time Eidson reached the chainsaw his friend was on the verge of collapse.
Cobra chased him from the field, disengaged chainsaw roaring, with the Ghost of Pinole on his final gasp. The Ghost sat in his truck for ninety minutes waiting for his fluttering heart to calm. A trainer was sent to check his vital signs periodically.