Hal Mumme
Head Football Coach

In 1988, Iowa Wesleyan College's football team went 0-10 on the season. In the offseason, IWC offered the head-coaching job to Hal Mumme, and he accepted it as his first collegiate head-coaching job. With three returning players and 52 new recruits, Mumme led the Tigers to a 7-4 record and later took them to two
consecutive bowl games and an NAIA_Playoff appearance.

Valdosta State University in Valdosta, Ga. never had a football team reach the NCAA Division II national playoffs. The Blazers hired Mumme beginning with the 1992 season, and VSU was a playoff team by 1994. Also, Mumme didn't suffer a losing season in five years with the team.

The University of Kentucky in the NCAA Division I's Southeastern Conference had been to one bowl game in 12 years. The Wildcats hired Mumme, and he responded by taking UK to two consecutive bowls in the 1998 and 1999 seasons including the first New Year's Day Bowl since Paul “Bear” Bryant was head coach at UK.

Southeastern Louisiana State wanted to bring back a football program after an 18-year absence and participate in the NCAA Division I-AA.  The Lions hired Mumme and nearly had a winning season in its first year at 5-7. Then, in 2004, Mumme helped SLSU to a 7-4 record in only the program's second year.

Another NCAA Division I school, New Mexico State, left the Sun Belt Conference following the 2004 season to join the more powerful Western Athletic Conference (WAC) and wanted a high-powered offense. The Aggies hired Mumme and he produced quarterback Chase Holbrook who left as NMSU's all-time leader in passing in 2008, and he stands fourth all-time in the WAC's history for passing yards.

THE “C” WORD

Turnarounds, comebacks and monumental challenges aren't things that Mumme shies away from. But, on April 15, 2009, Mumme may have taken on the most significant challenge in his career by taking the job as McMurry University's head football coach.

The McMurry faithful beckons Mumme to be the defibrillator to a program that went 0-10 in 2008, is on the second longest losing streak in school history at 13 games, and is 16-63 since 2001. Those are football challenges, ones that Mumme has taken on in the past and conquered.

But the unique thing about Mumme's situation at McMurry was that he accepted the job just two months after prostate cancer surgery.

In August of 2008 in training camp before his final year at New Mexico State, Mumme wasn't feeling very well. Initially doctors thought that his symptoms were consistent with heat exhaustion. During two-a-days, he was so sick that he often was forced to sit in a golf cart during practice with bags of ice on his head, and he was mostly limited to observing the Aggies' football team.

In March he went in for initial blood tests and continued to operate day-to-day with the assumption that he was suffering from heat-related sickness.

However, when the first week of the 2008 regular season rolled around, New Mexico State's season opener was in Lincoln, Neb. against the Cornhuskers. Mumme said he was feeling so bad, he had to go to one knee for most of the game on the sideline.

Following the game, he decided to re-visit the doctor and get checked out. His blood tests indicated that his Prostate-Specific Antigen level had nearly doubled since yearly check up in March.

As a result there were two possibilities: a prostate infection or prostate cancer. Prostate cancer, Mumme said, is a silent killer and often does not produce sickness symptoms. So at first, he and his doctor were optimistic that it might just be an infection.

So, for 40 days, Mumme went on medication to treat a prostate infection. His symptoms improved, and in the meantime, the Aggies were off to a quick start with a 3-2 record after a 48-45 win over Nevada on the road Oct. 11. In the last drive of the Nevada game, NMSU lost its starting center for the season with an ACL injury.

Then, the following week, in a 31-14 loss to San Jose State Oct. 18, Mumme lost six more players for the year including two offensive tackles, two starting receivers and his top two running backs. After early talks of the Aggies getting into a bowl game, the key offensive injuries took a toll on the team and NMSU closed the season with seven consecutive losses.

After 40 days of medication to treat the prostate infection, and during the week before NMSU's Nov. 15 game against Fresno State, Mumme received word that his PSA level hadn't gone down, and it was likely that he had prostate cancer.

With an inclination that his time at New Mexico State was about to end, Mumme elected to wait until the end of the season, and after NMSU made a change to deal with his health issues.

Mumme underwent surgery Feb. 4, 2009 in Lexington, Ken. at the University of Kentucky Hospital to remove the cancerous prostate.

WHY McMURRY?

70 days later, Mumme stood in Kimbrell Arena on McMurry University's campus and was introduced to approximately 100 fans, students, faculty and staff as the head football coach.

From the time he left NMSU to the time he had the surgery, Mumme said coaching in 2009 wasn't on his radar.

“Coaching was the furthest thing from my mind, there were a lot of things to think about that didn't have anything to do with football,” he said.  “When they hang you upside down and stick robotic arms in your body to cut out an organ, it takes a while to get over that.“

Mumme's recovery time was slow and it required him to be in the hospital for a week after the surgery. From then, he was in his home in Las Cruces, N.M., but he was limited in mobility.

As time progressed, and through connections with his son Matt, he heard about the job at McMurry.

“I wanted to coach, but I just didn't feel very good. I was walking about 10 minutes a day and the rest of the time I was sitting around,” said Mumme.
    
Mumme wanted to check out McMurry and Abilene on his own time without anyone knowing he were there.

He drove to Abilene with his son Matt and Mason Miller, who both coached with him at New Mexico State. They spent the night, and they checked out the campus and the football facilities.

The 992-mile roundtrip from New Mexico to Abilene would also serve as a test for Mumme physically.

“Before I made the trip to McMurry, I hadn't even hardly left my house,” he said. “We talked the whole way back to Las Cruces about whether we wanted to do it.”

Mumme did have some positives at New Mexico State. In 2006, the team set multitudes of offensive records for both NMSU and the WAC while posting a 4-8 record. However, in 2008 when the Lobos looked like they were headed for a winning season after a 3-2 start, the aforementioned injury bug hit.

“We didn't want to have a bad experience, we had just had one. McMurry's track record hadn't been that great,” said Mumme of contemplating taking the position at McMurry. “So I just wanted assurance that they wanted to turn it around. A lot of the reason I'm here is because of Dr. [John] Russell, Ron Holmes, Mark Miller, Dale Doby and Spud Aldridge. They wanted to see this place do well.”

Mumme said that Grant Teaff was a major influence as well. Teaff was a former player and head coach at McMurry; he went on to be the head coach at Baylor University where his name remains legendary. Teaff became the executive director of the American Football Coaches Association in 1992 and still holds the position in 2009.

After accepting the position, Mumme brought most of his staff from NMSU to help turn the program around. The staff had just six practices in the spring with the expected returnees at McMurry, and then they had just three months to recruit formulate a team for 2009 in hopes of changing the tide.

The experience of starting over, starting fresh, taking over a losing program, and working with just a few returnees was nothing new to Mumme. He said it began to remind him of his past coaching positions.

“It's kind of a cross between what we did at Valdosta and Southeastern Louisiana,” he said. “We do have some guys returning, but most of them are young and I don't think they're so set in the negative attitude like they would be if they were all seniors.”

Regardless of McMurry's fortunes last season, Mumme said that more than football skills, the mental aspect is what turns programs around.

“The most important thing is attitude, and that's not just the team, it's everybody,” he said. “I really believe that if the kids walk around campus and everybody tells them they're bad, they'll probably be bad. If you walk around town and everyone tells them they're terrible, they'll start believing it.

“At Iowa Wesleyan and Southeastern Louisiana, we had immediate success, and the reason we did is because we had very few of the guys back,” said Mumme. “When they walked around and people told them they weren't very good, they were like, 'what are you talking about we haven't been here?' They didn't believe it. So they went out there and started winning.”

COMING HOME

His collegiate playing days began just 100 miles southeast of Abilene. However, Mumme's brief time at Tarleton State in Stephenville was the unfolding of a coaching career that began in 1976 in Moody High School just off Interstate 35.

When Holmes elected Mumme as the school's 20th head football coach in school history April 15, it ended a 21-year absence from Texas.

After stops at West Texas A&M and UT-El Paso as an assistant coach, he was the head football coach at Copperas Cove High School. He left Copperas Cove and Texas in 1988 and was named head coach at Iowa Wesleyan College. Since then, Mumme has slowly been inching his way back to the Lone Star State. He stayed three seasons at IWC before taking control of his first NCAA program at Valdosta State (Division II) in Valdosta, Ga. from 1992-1996.

Then, Mumme broke into the division I ranks in 1997 when he coached the Kentucky Wildcats in the Southeastern Conference from 1997 to 2000 and made back-to-back bowl appearances in 1999 (Outback Bowl) and 2000 (Music City Bowl).

After a brief break in coaching, he began the trek home with three years in Hammond, La. at Southeastern Louisiana followed by four years in Las Cruces, N.M. at New Mexico State

“That was very attractive,” he said of returning to Texas. “I wouldn't have even talked to [McMurry] if this place was in Illinois.”

THE AIR RAID

In 18 seasons as a collegiate head coach, Mumme's primary starting quarterbacks in his Air Raid Offense have averaged 3,686.7 yards and 31.72 touchdown passes per season.

If the truth of these numbers translates to McMurry's football program, the school's game, season and career passing records are likely to be re-written.

Mumme's stop at NCAA Division III is the first in his career. Although he's been a head coach at the NAIA, NCAA Division II, NCAA Division I-AA and NCAA Division I ranks.

However, neither the athletic association nor the division has stopped quarterbacks from posting astronomical numbers in the air raid system.

Chris Hatcher, Mumme's quarterback at Valdosta State from 1992-94, tossed 55 touchdowns his senior season marking the most ever under Mumme. Chase Holbrook, a three-year quarterback for Mumme at New Mexico State and current McMurry assistant, passed for 4,619 yards in his sophomore season in 2006 marking the best single-season passing mark with Mumme as head coach.

Perhaps the most recognized name on Mumme's list of quarterback alumni is Tim Couch. Couch played for Mumme two seasons at the University of Kentucky before becoming the NFL's No. 1 draft pick in 1999 by the Cleveland Browns. But as a collegian, and the Heisman Trophy Award Runner-Up, Couch passed for 73 touchdown passes and 8,159 yards in two seasons in the Air Raid system in perhaps college football's most elite conference, the SEC.

Others on the Mumme resume include Dustin Dewald of Iowa Wesleyan (11,488 yards, 115 TD passes in three seasons), Lance Funderburk of Valdosta State (7,932 yards, 64 TD passes in two seasons),and Martin Hankins of Southeastern Louisiana (7,777 yards, 65 TD passes in two seasons). Jared Lorenzen also played a year for Mumme at Kentucky and later signed with the New York Giants.
       
The system isn't fool proof, however, Mumme admits that having a capable quarterback is essential to the system.“

“[The Air Raid] can be successful anywhere if you just do it right, you can't do it without a quarterback,” said Mumme. “We proved that at New Mexico State. I think we've got a guy around here [at McMurry] that can do that.”

But when Mumme finds his guy, the offense moves the ball. Holbrook came in the final three years of his time at NMSU to post 11,846 passing yards and 85 touchdown passes.

All in all, Mumme's primary quarterbacks tossed 66,360 yards and 456 touchdowns in 18 seasons. Those numbers don't include backups; for example, his son Matt Mumme - McMurry's offensive coordinator and Couch's backup in 1998 - played at Kentucky and still has the 13th and 14th longest pass plays in school history to his credit (79 & 78; both were TDs).

To give Abilene fans a comparison of how much ground has been covered through the air at the hands of his primary quarterback under Mumme's tutelage: 66,360 yards is equal to 199,080 feet or 37.7 miles; if one drove in their car from Abilene down Interstate 20 going east, you'd nearly make it to Cisco.
 
“If the most important position to recruit is the quarterback, then do something that features the quarterback so that you can get the most important person,” Mumme said of the Air Raid Offense.

If Mumme has that person on McMurry's campus and under center for the 2009 football season, like the other five schools where he's been head coach, the passing record book as it stands through 2008 could be in for an overhaul.

Back