One of the greatest coaches in the history of Michigan State is known for his Upper Peninsula roots, his Northern Michigan University ties and his fiery, in-your-face style.
This is not a story about Tom Izzo. But Carl (Buck) Nystrom did help convince Izzo to try college football in the spring of 1976, Izzo’s junior year at NMU. Izzo’s team even beat Steve Mariucci’s team in the spring game, a few months after Mariucci led the Wildcats to the Division II national title.
“He was a good running back — quicker than hell, stocky and strong,” Nystrom, then NMU’s offensive line coach, recalled of Izzo. “But (then-NMU basketball coach) Glenn Brown said: ‘You can’t do that, he’s my captain!’ Tommy had to drop the football.”
Izzo’s main recollection is the speech Nystrom gave before coaching Izzo’s team in that spring game. “Like we were about to play for the national championship,” Izzo said, then started laughing.
He sounded like Pat Shurmur, who took the time Wednesday amid a short week as Philadelphia Eagles offensive coordinator to talk about Nystrom, his offensive line coach at MSU in 1983-86.
“He would demonstrate when he coached,” Shurmur said with a chuckle, “and he would get into it with you.”
He sounded like Barry Switzer, who served with Nystrom under head coach Chuck Fairbanks — an MSU teammate of Nystrom’s — at Oklahoma in the late 1960s.
“He was as tough a guy as I’ve ever seen on the football field,” Switzer said of Nystrom. “Tougher on players than I’ve ever seen. But God, they loved him. There’s only one Buck Nystrom in the world.”
He is 81, recently celebrating a birthday the doctors at the Mayo Clinic told him he’d never see because of cancer that he continues to battle. And tonight he enters the Michigan State University Athletics Hall of Fame in a private ceremony on campus along with five other inductees — a “cherished” honor, Nystrom said, for a man who was involved in five national titles as a player or coach.
Nystrom’s MSU credentials are strong. The walk-on lineman from Marquette helped the Spartans win the 1954 Rose Bowl under Biggie Munn and the 1956 Rose Bowl under Duffy Daugherty — Daugherty called him the greatest guard he ever coached — and he was team MVP as a senior. He is the first MSU football player to earn both All-America and Academic All-America honors.
Nystrom’s legacy, though, is in his coaching — 38 years at the college level, 58 years in some capacity. Never a head coach, always an offensive line coach. That’s how he wanted it. Nystrom did not find the same glory and rewards that other disciples of Munn and Daugherty found — coaches such as Bob Devaney, Dan Devine, Hank Bullough, George Perles and Bill Yeoman.
There may be no better embodiment, though, of the Munn-Daugherty way and the imprint it left at MSU than Nystrom and his career.
“He made his kids tough, boy, because that’s how he was,” said Perles, whose first call when he became MSU’s head coach in 1983 was to lure Nystrom from Colorado.
“Best offensive line coach in the country, period,” said Bullough, who roomed with Nystrom at MSU.
“One thing our program stood for is mental and physical toughness,” Shurmur said. “You can say whatever you want about us, but that’s our heritage. And that’s what Buck stood for.”
The “Fourth Quarter” conditioning program that MSU still uses, that Nick Saban employs at Alabama, is all Nystrom. While Perles and his other assistants went out recruiting in those winter months, Nystrom got up with the players and put them through exhaustive conditioning and agility drills.
When games reached the fourth quarter, players on those MSU teams did something many teams do today — put four fingers in the air. Nystrom told his players those fingers stood for discipline, commitment, effort and enthusiasm. The thumb stood for pride. And Nystrom stood for the same things every day.
“I lived by two words in coaching — demand and confront,” he said. “I had a natural ability to get kids to practice hard and play hard. That’s all I can say. I wasn’t smarter than anybody else.”
He was smart enough to pull off the difficult coaching combination of driving players while keeping them in your corner. Izzo has built his career on the same approach, and he called Nystrom “a major influence on me.”
“When I got the (MSU) job, Buck called me and said, ‘Hey Izzo, don’t screw up my alma mater,’ ” Izzo recalled, laughing again. “’And definitely don’t let the inmates run the asylum.’”
The son of a 36-year firefighter in Marquette, Nystrom lives there today with his wife, Joan. He felt the pull to return home as an MSU freshman in 1951, eventually lured back to MSU by Daugherty with the promise of a full scholarship.
After Oklahoma and a one-year stint at MSU under Daugherty in 1971, Nystrom said he got “a little bit burned out” and returned to Marquette to open a clothing store called “Buck’s Togs.” He was back on the field in 1975 at NMU, mentoring Izzo and Mariucci among others.
He joined Fairbanks at Colorado in 1981 — Nystrom’s offensive line assistant was a young coach named Les Miles — and stayed there under Bill McCartney when Fairbanks opted for a job in the USFL. Nystrom never had a desire to coach pro ball. He returned to MSU in 1983. And that might have been it.
The Spartans mashed opponents with Nystrom’s offensive line. The bread-and-butter play was “Toss 38,” a pitch to the halfback for a wide run with the fullback leading. It was devastating with Lorenzo White carrying the ball.
“We did it over and over,” said Shurmur, who met Nystrom for lunch in East Lansing over the summer and got him to draw up the blocking schemes for “Toss 38” on a place mat.
But with MSU on the doorstep of a 1987 Big Ten title and Rose Bowl win, Nystrom discovered that MSU was not affiliated at the time with the state’s Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association. That put his retirement in jeopardy.
He found that NMU was affiliated and he made a call. Nystrom was going home again, to be the Wildcats’ associate head coach.
“It was a sad, sad day,” Perles said.
“I felt extremely bad because George was the best head football coach I ever worked for,” Nystrom said. “I worked for 14 head coaches and all of them were good guys. George was the best.”
Perles invited the Nystroms to the Rose Bowl to watch MSU take on USC, but Buck declined. He stayed home and he coached through the 1991 season. He got his retirement. He has helped at Ishpeming High and elsewhere since.
And, of course, he still enjoys taking in an MSU practice. He is not always able to sit back and watch.
“Yeah, I nudge in there a little bit,” he said. “I get a little bit excited when I see that offensive line working at one end of the field. A little antsy.”
One year ago, things looked bleak for Nystrom. He was diagnosed in August 2013 with melanoma and was told by doctors at the Mayo Clinic “that I maybe had six-to-nine months left,” he said.
Bullough called Izzo and told him they needed to get after Nystrom to tell him to keep fighting.
Izzo and about 250 of Nystrom’s former players attended a benefit at Northern Michigan for Nystrom, during which an NMU scholarship was endowed in his name.
It was a good-bye of sorts. But Nystrom wasn’t done. He lined up and attacked his radiation and chemotherapy.
“I just had a scan, and there are only a couple spots left,” he said. “By gosh, I’m not out of the woods, but I’m in pretty good shape, to be honest with you. I might wipe this damn thing out completely.”
That would surprise no one who has watched Nystrom quietly — and loudly — make overachieving the standard for so many others.
“I’ve lived 81 wonderful years, and I’ve done exactly what I wanted to do,” he said. “All I ever wanted to do was coach. And to be honest with you, I still miss it today. Every single day, I think football.”
This is not a story about Tom Izzo. But Carl (Buck) Nystrom did help convince Izzo to try college football in the spring of 1976, Izzo’s junior year at NMU. Izzo’s team even beat Steve Mariucci’s team in the spring game, a few months after Mariucci led the Wildcats to the Division II national title.
“He was a good running back — quicker than hell, stocky and strong,” Nystrom, then NMU’s offensive line coach, recalled of Izzo. “But (then-NMU basketball coach) Glenn Brown said: ‘You can’t do that, he’s my captain!’ Tommy had to drop the football.”
Izzo’s main recollection is the speech Nystrom gave before coaching Izzo’s team in that spring game. “Like we were about to play for the national championship,” Izzo said, then started laughing.
He sounded like Pat Shurmur, who took the time Wednesday amid a short week as Philadelphia Eagles offensive coordinator to talk about Nystrom, his offensive line coach at MSU in 1983-86.
“He would demonstrate when he coached,” Shurmur said with a chuckle, “and he would get into it with you.”
He sounded like Barry Switzer, who served with Nystrom under head coach Chuck Fairbanks — an MSU teammate of Nystrom’s — at Oklahoma in the late 1960s.
“He was as tough a guy as I’ve ever seen on the football field,” Switzer said of Nystrom. “Tougher on players than I’ve ever seen. But God, they loved him. There’s only one Buck Nystrom in the world.”
He is 81, recently celebrating a birthday the doctors at the Mayo Clinic told him he’d never see because of cancer that he continues to battle. And tonight he enters the Michigan State University Athletics Hall of Fame in a private ceremony on campus along with five other inductees — a “cherished” honor, Nystrom said, for a man who was involved in five national titles as a player or coach.
Nystrom’s MSU credentials are strong. The walk-on lineman from Marquette helped the Spartans win the 1954 Rose Bowl under Biggie Munn and the 1956 Rose Bowl under Duffy Daugherty — Daugherty called him the greatest guard he ever coached — and he was team MVP as a senior. He is the first MSU football player to earn both All-America and Academic All-America honors.
Nystrom’s legacy, though, is in his coaching — 38 years at the college level, 58 years in some capacity. Never a head coach, always an offensive line coach. That’s how he wanted it. Nystrom did not find the same glory and rewards that other disciples of Munn and Daugherty found — coaches such as Bob Devaney, Dan Devine, Hank Bullough, George Perles and Bill Yeoman.
There may be no better embodiment, though, of the Munn-Daugherty way and the imprint it left at MSU than Nystrom and his career.
“He made his kids tough, boy, because that’s how he was,” said Perles, whose first call when he became MSU’s head coach in 1983 was to lure Nystrom from Colorado.
“Best offensive line coach in the country, period,” said Bullough, who roomed with Nystrom at MSU.
“One thing our program stood for is mental and physical toughness,” Shurmur said. “You can say whatever you want about us, but that’s our heritage. And that’s what Buck stood for.”
The “Fourth Quarter” conditioning program that MSU still uses, that Nick Saban employs at Alabama, is all Nystrom. While Perles and his other assistants went out recruiting in those winter months, Nystrom got up with the players and put them through exhaustive conditioning and agility drills.
When games reached the fourth quarter, players on those MSU teams did something many teams do today — put four fingers in the air. Nystrom told his players those fingers stood for discipline, commitment, effort and enthusiasm. The thumb stood for pride. And Nystrom stood for the same things every day.
“I lived by two words in coaching — demand and confront,” he said. “I had a natural ability to get kids to practice hard and play hard. That’s all I can say. I wasn’t smarter than anybody else.”
He was smart enough to pull off the difficult coaching combination of driving players while keeping them in your corner. Izzo has built his career on the same approach, and he called Nystrom “a major influence on me.”
“When I got the (MSU) job, Buck called me and said, ‘Hey Izzo, don’t screw up my alma mater,’ ” Izzo recalled, laughing again. “’And definitely don’t let the inmates run the asylum.’”
The son of a 36-year firefighter in Marquette, Nystrom lives there today with his wife, Joan. He felt the pull to return home as an MSU freshman in 1951, eventually lured back to MSU by Daugherty with the promise of a full scholarship.
After Oklahoma and a one-year stint at MSU under Daugherty in 1971, Nystrom said he got “a little bit burned out” and returned to Marquette to open a clothing store called “Buck’s Togs.” He was back on the field in 1975 at NMU, mentoring Izzo and Mariucci among others.
He joined Fairbanks at Colorado in 1981 — Nystrom’s offensive line assistant was a young coach named Les Miles — and stayed there under Bill McCartney when Fairbanks opted for a job in the USFL. Nystrom never had a desire to coach pro ball. He returned to MSU in 1983. And that might have been it.
The Spartans mashed opponents with Nystrom’s offensive line. The bread-and-butter play was “Toss 38,” a pitch to the halfback for a wide run with the fullback leading. It was devastating with Lorenzo White carrying the ball.
“We did it over and over,” said Shurmur, who met Nystrom for lunch in East Lansing over the summer and got him to draw up the blocking schemes for “Toss 38” on a place mat.
But with MSU on the doorstep of a 1987 Big Ten title and Rose Bowl win, Nystrom discovered that MSU was not affiliated at the time with the state’s Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association. That put his retirement in jeopardy.
He found that NMU was affiliated and he made a call. Nystrom was going home again, to be the Wildcats’ associate head coach.
“It was a sad, sad day,” Perles said.
“I felt extremely bad because George was the best head football coach I ever worked for,” Nystrom said. “I worked for 14 head coaches and all of them were good guys. George was the best.”
Perles invited the Nystroms to the Rose Bowl to watch MSU take on USC, but Buck declined. He stayed home and he coached through the 1991 season. He got his retirement. He has helped at Ishpeming High and elsewhere since.
And, of course, he still enjoys taking in an MSU practice. He is not always able to sit back and watch.
“Yeah, I nudge in there a little bit,” he said. “I get a little bit excited when I see that offensive line working at one end of the field. A little antsy.”
One year ago, things looked bleak for Nystrom. He was diagnosed in August 2013 with melanoma and was told by doctors at the Mayo Clinic “that I maybe had six-to-nine months left,” he said.
Bullough called Izzo and told him they needed to get after Nystrom to tell him to keep fighting.
Izzo and about 250 of Nystrom’s former players attended a benefit at Northern Michigan for Nystrom, during which an NMU scholarship was endowed in his name.
It was a good-bye of sorts. But Nystrom wasn’t done. He lined up and attacked his radiation and chemotherapy.
“I just had a scan, and there are only a couple spots left,” he said. “By gosh, I’m not out of the woods, but I’m in pretty good shape, to be honest with you. I might wipe this damn thing out completely.”
That would surprise no one who has watched Nystrom quietly — and loudly — make overachieving the standard for so many others.
“I’ve lived 81 wonderful years, and I’ve done exactly what I wanted to do,” he said. “All I ever wanted to do was coach. And to be honest with you, I still miss it today. Every single day, I think football.”
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