This feature was originally published in the football game-day program for Dartmouth on September 30, 2023.

by Joe Juliano

The Penn football program had gone through 21 seasons of misery after winning the Ivy League championship in 1959. The administration was looking for a new head coach who could do something—anything—to reverse the drought that included a 3-24-1 record over the previous three seasons ending with 1980.

Despite only two seasons of collegiate head coaching experience at DePauw University in Greencastle, Ind., Jerry Berndt got the call. The Ohio-born Berndt had some familiarity with the Ivy League, having been an assistant coach at Dartmouth for eight years. When he arrived at Penn, his players didn't quite know what to expect but they thought the guy certainly looked the part.

"Coach was right out of central casting when it came to being a football coach," said Jeff Goyette C'86, a co-captain and All-Ivy offensive guard on Berndt's 1985 team. "He was distinguished, white hair, in his 40s. He looked like he should have been in charge of something. He was always impeccably dressed. Even on campus, he'd be in a coat and tie."

Even though the Quakers struggled to a 1-9 mark in Berndt's first season of 1981, they learned there was much more to the new coach than met the eye, like the fact that he was a winner. Starting in 1982, and continuing each of the next three seasons, Berndt led Penn to four consecutive Ivy championships—two outright, two shared—while going 28-9-2 during that time with a 23-4-1 league record.

Berndt spent just five seasons at Penn, but he left a legacy that continues to resonate with his players 40 years later. Many will be on hand today at Franklin Field to honor Berndt, who died on December 4 of last year in Hilton Head Island, S.C., at the age of 84 after a lengthy fight with cancer.

"As we all get older, you reflect back on who had an impact on your life, and he's clearly at the top of the list for a lot of guys that played Penn football in the 80s and the success he had during those five years," said Tim Chambers C'85, a two-time All-Ivy defensive back and the 1984 Ivy League Player of the Year. "He really restored the foundation of the program and I think most people recognize that. He brought it back to its glory days."

From the day he set foot in University City, Berndt made an immediate impression on the young players he coached and recruited.

"He changed my life," said Denton Walker III W'86, who was an All-Ivy linebacker in 1985. "He recruited me from Georgia to go to an Ivy League school. When Coach Berndt came down to see me, he met my mother—my parents had divorced. That was a game-changer. He was always class. He was a great coach but he was just as good a person. When I met him, I just believed in his character, his integrity."

"Off the field, he was a real father figure to a lot of guys," Chambers said. "His door was always open. The Ivy League is a little bit different. You are truly a student-athlete. If you're struggling in the classroom, he was a guy that was there to support you knowing it was about you as a complete player and as a human being. He saw things in us that we didn't see in ourselves, and I'm sure it underscored why he was successful."

Chambers, originally from Newtown Square, Pa., actually signed with Villanova during his senior season at Cardinal O'Hara High School but changed to Penn after 'Nova dropped Division I football.

Berndt also had success being flexible in coaching and mentoring his players, as Goyette and his fellow 1985 co-captain, linebacker Tom Gilmore, learned during their meetings with him.

"We'd talk about whether a player was in trouble or did something on the field that was unbecoming to the university," Goyette said. "In a couple of instances Tom and I were like, 'You know, we've got to jettison this guy.' We thought Coach would be super hard-nosed, but he gave people second chances. A lot of guys got second chances and they flourished. He would listen to your point of view, but he really cared about us individually, and it wasn't just wins and losses."

Former quarterback Gary Vura W'83, whose junior and senior seasons coincided with Berndt's first two years with the Quakers, said the coach had an ideal personality for this team.

"He was always calm," Vura said. "There was no swearing. You kind of knew he was a God-fearing man. He had kind of a twinkle in his eye and maybe a little smirk on occasion, but nothing loud, nothing offensive. He had a calm demeanor. He was always kind of quiet and shy, maybe sarcastic."

It wasn't always tranquil between Vura and Berndt. Vura ended the 1980 season as Penn's starting quarterback, but Berndt decided to split the duties between him and senior Doug Marzonie when the coach took over the next season. Vura's early share of the action was quite productive – touchdown passes of 93 yards (still a program record) and 84 yards to Karl Hall in a season-opening win over Cornell.

However, an ankle injury slowed Vura late in the season and as 1981 ended, he said Berndt told him, "I'm not sure you're my starter." A motivated Vura worked hard in the off-season and started every game in the Quakers' first championship season under Berndt in 1982, completing 54 percent of his passes for 1,771 yards and 13 touchdowns.

"I cursed him when I was working out but at the end of the day, we both got what we wanted," Vura said. "Later in life, I softened toward him because I think each coach has to treat each player differently and motivate him differently and try to get the best out of him. That's kind of how I feel about him, a second father figure."

The Quakers shared the Ivy title in 1983 and won it outright the next two seasons. However, that was all for Berndt, who shocked those around the program by leaving and becoming head football coach and athletic director at Rice. After three seasons there, he spent four seasons at Temple, including the final two years when the Owls joined the Big East Conference. He completed his coaching career with six seasons as offensive coordinator at Missouri, his last in 1999.

Berndt passed on one final coaching opportunity before retirement: a chance to join LSU's offensive coaching staff when Nick Saban took the Tigers' head coaching job in 2000. Saban, of course, won it all at LSU in 2003, the first of his seven career national championships.

As for the reason he left Penn, Berndt wanted to move up to a bigger league—at the time, Rice was in the vaunted Southwest Conference—to eventually reach his goal: head coach at Ohio State, his home homegrown state university. It did not work out.

"When he left Penn, Rice was almost four times the amount of money plus the ability to coach at that next level," Goyette said. "There was just no way economically he couldn't take that position. But there wasn't a round of golf that we didn't play in Hilton Head that he didn't remind me that, if there was one regret he had in life, it was that he should have never left Penn."

"He said to me later in life that his goal was to be the head coach at Ohio State," Vura said. "He thought the Rice job was the path and the direction but he said later, 'I wish I had never left.' Pat, his wife, to this day will still say they wish they never left Penn because he would have unquestionably gone down as the greatest Ivy League coach in history."

Goyette, who became Berndt's financial advisor in his retirement, had a home in Hilton Head Island and saw the coach often. Chambers, Vura and Walker stayed in touch with each other and Berndt occasionally. In August of last year, knowing the coach's health was failing, the three met Goyette in Hilton Head and hung out with him for golf and conversation.

"The three of us knew he wasn't doing well, but we flew down there because we knew he probably wasn't going to live much longer," Walker said. "That's what his daughter and his wife told us, so they said it'd be a good idea to go.

"I took with me an article from The Philadelphia Inquirer that I still had from years ago with a photo of coach Berndt. I showed Coach and he said he remembered it. I told him, 'You were great. You worked us hard but you were great for us. We had the best coaches. You always had us ready.' This is what he said to me: 'I think we had better players than coaches.' I said, 'No way, Coach.'"

Said Chambers, "Obviously getting a chance to see him a couple of months before he passed, all of us acknowledged how much he meant to us and the sacrifices his family made. It's a tough profession when you realize what goes into it. It was great that all of us had an opportunity to thank him and say good-bye."

Goyette said he saw Berndt a few hours before he passed away, later last year.

"It was the last time he spoke," he said. "It was just incredibly touching. He wanted to give me a hug and his daughter has a picture of it. I just knew how sick he was."

Berndt's passing set off a flood of memories from his players recalling the impact and the influence he had on their lives.

"It dawned on me that he had really more of a presence, almost more like a pastor than a football coach," Chambers said. "When you look at someone who's so at peace with his role and his leadership ability, and clearly his ability to get the best out of the group—we called ourselves 'misfit toys'—that played for him. Just his ability to unite us for that common goal, his presence and his poise, where he never felt rattled regardless of the game."

"He made a huge impact on my life," Walker said. "What's incredible was, the way he did it, he didn't even know it. We all honored and respected Coach Berndt and I didn't want to let him down. He did so much for me. Even today, I've had great success in business and I attribute that to my football years at Penn and Coach Berndt."

Of course, the memories contain some lighter moments. Goyette recalled playing "hundreds" of rounds of golf with the coach, and that the retired Berndt would sometimes change back into the coach on the golf course.

"He would grind for every inch," he said. "He'd yell at me when I was 50-some years old that I didn't get putts to the hole. He'd tell me all the time, 'Jeff, 100 percent of those putts don't go in.'"

Then there were Berndt's idiosyncrasies that the teammates remind each other of whenever they get together.

"The entire team picked them up," Goyette said. "When he would point at a film or a board, he would have his index finger out but also his pinkie and his thumb out. I never knew where he was pointing.

"Sundays after games, we'd go through all our goals. There were 20 of them for offense and defense – score 30 points, have 15 first downs, things like that. He'd have a clipboard in his hand so instead of clapping, he'd snap his fingers. So when we reached every goal, we would all snap our fingers. To this day, somebody does something good, I know myself and a bunch of my friends who were former players will snap our fingers."

Berndt's career coaching record wasn't exceptional; he compiled a 55-87-3 mark in 14 seasons. But the success he built and the legacy he left at Penn will never be forgotten. He revived a dormant program to the point where, to this day, the annual expectation continues to be winning the Ivy League championship.

And Penn's leap into Ivy League elite showed in the postseason awards. During Berndt's four championship seasons, 17 different players earned a total of 20 All-Ivy honors. At a time when just one player earned Ivy League Player of the Year—nowadays, the Ivy League gives the Bushnell Cup to one offensive and one defensive player each season—it was two of Berndt's defensive players who became just the second and third defensive players in league history to be so honored (Chambers in 1984, Gilmore in 1985). Running back Rich Comizio, who was recruited by Berndt, won the Cup in 1986. The trio were the first players in program history to win the Bushnell Cup.

Nearly 40 years removed from Berndt's fourth straight championship with the Quakers, Goyette still calls it "hard to believe I was actually a part of that."

"I was a lower middle-class kid from a Catholic school," he said. "The first time I ever got on a plane was when I went to Penn as a recruit. I never left New England; I was from Rhode Island. He gave me the opportunity to show up on this incredible school's campus and be part of an incredible football tradition. There's not a day that goes by that I don't think about Coach."
 

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