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A couple of hours before the start of what turned out to be an emotional news conference on Tuesday, set up for Ron McBride to announce the end of a 50-year career, effective after this season's last game, one of the most consequential college football coaches in the state's history cruised down memory lane.

It was more like a grand boulevard.

He reflected fondly on all of it — from Gavilan (Calif.) Junior College, UC Riverside, Long Beach State, Utah, Wisconsin, Utah, Arizona, Utah, again, and Kentucky — straight through to his final year at Weber State.

"I'm retiring … or whatever," he said. "It's been a helluva ride."

There are too many Ronnie Mac stories to cover, many of them having to do with his beloved players, most of them rich with texture, some of them completely insane. For instance …

While coaching at Utah, McBride relied on common hard work, saying: "You've got to love this to do it. It's a way of life. I haven't found a shortcut yet. There isn't one." But, then, the coach used to insist on seducing and satisfying good fortune with charms, chants, costumes, routines, magic sand, sorceresses, all lucky things.

"When I coached at UC Riverside, we used a voodoo girl who would stab a doll dressed like the opponent's mascot," he once told me. "She was a cocktail waitress at a place where we used to drink beer. She was a little trippy, really a little scary. But, hey, we had a hell of a streak of wins with her — something like 19-3. She was good.

"A guy gave me a shillelagh stick once and said if I carried it on the sideline and pointed it at a ball carrier, it would make him fumble. The guy guaranteed it would work. I tried it one game and it was a dog. Not only did the stick not work, it looked ridiculous. But some things do work. They make you feel good, like everything is going right, like you can't lose."

McBride found his match in superstition when Utah faced Fresno State one season and his equally fortune-fearing son-in-law, John Baxter, who was a Bulldog assistant coach.

In the middle of the game, Mac zapped the Fresno sideline with hexes firing out of his fingertips. But Baxter wore a string around his neck with large rubber balls on it to bounce the hexes back at the Utes. McBride, though, countered with a ceramic necklace, which was countered by a Bulldog Beanie Baby in Baxter's pants pocket, which was countered by a Chinese charm, given to the coach by an acquaintance, hooked onto McBride's keychain.

After a 24-16 win, McBride said: "We used everything we had on them today, and we needed it."

But McBride was nobody's nut-job.

He believed in genuine recruiting, old-time diligence and straight-ahead football.

"Some coaches have big philosophies," he said over a decade ago. "All that's a bunch of bulls—-. What it comes down to is 1) Kids have to want an education, 2) They have to be totally committed to the program, 3) They have to give their best and be accountable for that."

As for recruiting, McBride said: "You get good players because people believe you. Parents will send you their kid if they trust you. When I go into a home, I focus on the family. I say what I say and they like it or they don't. I don't know how people perceive me. I'm just me. I'm no genius, I know that."

I once received a phone call from McBride while he was sitting in a car outside a California prison, as he described it, "waiting for a 6-foot-8, 290-pound guy with, like, 20 tattoos, who runs a 4.5 40 to come out the door."

McBride sounded awful, coughing and wheezing and sneezing.

"Man, I've been all over, talking to all kinds of recruits," he said. "This is one of the busiest times of the year, from early December until the end of January, until signing day. Geez, I met with five guys on Martin Luther King Day. I went to Portland twice this week. I've been to California, Washington, Hawaii, Idaho, Nevada, all over Utah, and I still have to go to Oklahoma, Hawaii, again, Idaho, again, and around Utah, again. It's been a circus."

He continued: "You've got to be straight with people, you can't fool them. But every deal is different. I remember sitting with one mom on a cliff overlooking the ocean. She was in a cult, or something. She asked me what my sign was. I said, 'Libra.' To her, that was good. Meanwhile, her friend was checking a star chart concerning when the kid should sign. It was wild."

During our Tuesday conversation, McBride thought back on his great teams at Utah, where he turned around a listing program, finishing with an 88-63 record over 13 seasons before being fired in 2002, shortly after his sixth win over BYU.

Think about that for a minute. Think about what Utah football was before McBride arrived at Utah. Then think about what he left behind. It's not a stretch to say that without Ron McBride, there would have been no Urban Meyer, no Kyle Whittinghham, no BCS bowl wins and, quite likely, no Pac-12 invitation.

He laughed about a full day I spent tailing him at Camp Carbon, where he held annual Ute preseason practices at the College of Eastern Utah.

Starting at 7 a.m., when Mac held a coaches meeting that could have been mistaken for a corporate board meeting, except for the fact that the CEO was wearing a wrinkled shirt and shorts, stained white socks with no shoes, and mussed-up hair that looked like crows were nesting in it.

Contrary to his good-buddy image, at the meeting, he was demanding and in-charge.

At one juncture, McBride, who was hurting with a broken ankle and a hurt back because 270-pound running back Chris Fuamatu-Ma'afala had run him over during an earlier practice, waddled down a hallway to his dorm room. After arriving in a space that looked like a bomb blew up in a dirty-clothes hamper, the coach reached into a mini-fridge, pulling out a bottle of Kombucha, which was some sort of mysterious, smelly health brew from the Orient that contained mushrooms, brown sugar, tea, and a mix of vitamins and minerals.

"My wife won't even let me keep this in the house, I have to keep it in the garage because it stinks," he said. "It's good stuff. It helps me feel good."

Even back then, in the mid-'90s, McBride, who subsequently suffered multiple heart attacks and dizzy spells, suffered from high blood pressure, arthritis, and gout.

But he plugged on.

That day, McBride alternately yelled at players, got in their faces, chatted them up, hugged them, joked with them, swore at them, and loved them.

And they loved him back.

Late that night, McBride was spotted, sitting on a couch, capping a long, sweated-out day, surrounded by his players, rubbing their heads, arms wrapping around their shoulders, everybody laughing hard, singing Polynesian folk songs.

"No doubt about it, he's crazy," then-wide receiver Henry Lusk said. "But I love him. We all love him."

That exact image is what I thought about as Ronnie Mac prepared to announce his retirement on Tuesday. Fifty years of coaching, and what came to mind was that picture and yet another Lusk quote.

McBride said the Weber State football program is in good shape, with good players and a strong system in place. Same as when he left Utah, under different circumstances. So, it is time, the 72-year-old McBride said, for him to go, to fade away.

"I don't know how to feel," he said. "I'm a football coach. I've never retired before. It feels kind of weird. I'm not happy, I'm not sad …"

His voice trailed off, as the plumbing backed up in his eyes.

"… I don't know what I'll do. I love the players and I'll be involved in their lives somehow …"

More tears.

"… I appreciate all the people in Utah and the way they've treated me and taken care of me through the years. This is my home. I appreciate everybody and everything, all the great memories."

Said Lusk: "He's a blessed individual. He loves us and we love him."

GORDON MONSON hosts "The Gordon Monson Show" weekdays from 2-6 p.m. on 97.5 FM/1280 AM The Zone.