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Bill Mallory, Coach Who Lifted Indiana Football, Is Dead at 82

Bill Mallory at a news conference in Bloomington, Ind., after he was fired by Indiana University in October 1996. He led the Hoosiers to six of the 11 bowl games the team has played in its history.Credit...Chuck Robinson/Associated Press

Bill Mallory, who led Colorado to the Orange Bowl and became the winningest football coach in Indiana history, died on Friday in Bloomington, Ind. He was 82.

Indiana University announced his death a day after his son, Indiana State coach Curt Mallory, posted on Twitter that his father was in hospice care following emergency brain surgery earlier in the week. Curt Mallory said his father suffered a brain injury in a fall on Tuesday.

Indiana had had only five winning seasons in almost 40 years before Mallory arrived. He went 69-77-3 and took Indiana to six bowls from 1984 to 1996. Indiana has played in only 11 bowl games in its history.

His blunt assessments and earthy phrases made him a favorite around Bloomington, where he was a fitting complement to the tempestuous Hoosiers’ basketball coach Bob Knight.

In 1987, Mallory became the first to win the Big Ten’s coach of the year award in consecutive years. He was 168-129-4 overall as a head coach with stops at Miami (Ohio), his alma mater, Colorado and Northern Illinois.

At Colorado, Mallory’s team won a share of the Big Eight championship in 1976 and reached the Orange Bowl, where the Buffaloes lost to Ohio State. But he was fired two seasons later after going 35-21-1 over five years.

“A hard-nosed, tough coach who demanded that toughness from his players,” said Brian Cabral, who played for Mallory at Colorado. “I have all the respect for instilling that in me.”

William Guy Mallory was born on May 30, 1935, and grew up in Sandusky, Ohio. He went on to become a star two-way player for the Hall of Fame coach Ara Parseghian at Miami.

He later coached under Woody Hayes at Ohio State before returning to Miami for his first head coaching job. He went 39-12 at Miami, including an 11-0 Mid-American Conference championship team in 1973.

That helped him get the Colorado job. He landed back in the Mid-American Conference with Northern Illinois in 1980, and after going 10-2 in 1983, he took over at Indiana.

It didn’t hurt to have Knight on his side. While Knight often preached about academics and sticking to the rules, Mallory concurred and often talked about the need to find the right players.

“I was confident that Bill Mallory was a winner, and he’s proved it,” Knight told Indiana students during a 1986 football pep rally. “He deserves your support, because we need coaches like him, willing to work hard and play by the rules.”

Mallory fulfilled and exceeded Knight’s expectations by turning a long-languishing program into a respectable Big Ten team. The Hoosiers finished .500 or better seven times under Mallory, the most consistent period of success the Hoosiers had known since the turn of the 20th century.

In 1987, Indiana celebrated a rare double — beating Ohio State for the first time since 1951 and beating Michigan for the first time since 1967.

When the Ohio State coach at the time, Earle Bruce, called the loss in Columbus the “darkest day in Ohio State football since I have been associated with it” (starting in 1949), Mallory fired right back at his former colleague with the Buckeyes.

“You tell Earle I’ve had a couple of dark days, too, and I don’t want to hear that,” he said. (Bruce died in April at 87.)

Still, the vastly improved Hoosiers could never quite reach the top of the Big Ten; instead they wound up playing in second-tier bowl games while making semiregular appearances in the Top 25.

Eventually fans expected more.

So when Mallory went 2-9 in 1995, followed that with a 3-8 mark in 1996 and lost 15 of 16 conference games over those two seasons, Indiana announced that he would not return for the 1997 season. He finished the season by beating rival Purdue and receiving an emotional ride on the shoulders of his players with both arms raised.

Mallory continued to live and stay active with the Indiana program long after his firing.

Two of his sons have returned to Indiana as assistant coaches. Curt Mallory worked for Gary DiNardo from 2002-04, and Doug Mallory worked for Kevin Wilson from 2011-13.

Curt Mallory is entering his first season at Indiana State, while Doug Mallory works for the Atlanta Falcons and Mike Mallory is with the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Bill Mallory was inducted into the athletic halls of fame at Indiana, Northern Illinois and Miami (Ohio), as well as the Mid-American Conference Hall of Fame in 2013.

Besides his sons, he is survived by his wife, Ellie, whom he married in 1958; a daughter, Barbara; 11 grandchildren and one great-grandchild, Indiana University said.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section B, Page 12 of the New York edition with the headline: Bill Mallory, 82, Eminent Indiana Football Coach. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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