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Bruce Jankowski was the total package
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
BY STEVE ADAMEK
The Record
STAFF WRITER
SPECIAL TO THE RECORD
Sixties Fair Lawn great Bruce Jankowski and his wife, Sharon, settled in the suburbs of Kansas City, Mo.
After finishing a session of the summer basketball league he ran in Fair Lawn in the '60s, Hubie Brown, plus two Duke assistants, Chuck Daly and Tom Carmody, went out for pizza and beer.
As they left, they saw a sight Brown said he'll never forget.
Running in the dark, wearing a weighted vest, was a soon-to-be ninth-grader named Bruce Jankowski.
"I was a little bit psychotic," Jankowski said with a laugh when told the story. "I would do three, four workouts per day. I did crazy things."
But that, said Brown, who eventually coached Jankowski at Fair Lawn in three sports ? as basketball and baseball coach and football assistant ? speaks volumes about an athlete who's arguably the greatest in school history.
"He had, from Day One, the work ethic, the athletic tools, [the] competitiveness, [and was] not going to be beaten by anyone," said Brown, the former Knicks, Hawks and Grizzlies coach who now broadcasts the NBA for ABC and ESPN.
"He was the total package."
Still, Jankowski said, "I was a little nutso."
And yet, speaking from suburban Kansas City, Mo., an area he's called home since he played for the Chiefs (1971-72), and where he met his wife of 35 years, Sharon, Jankowski recalls how that drive fueled him through Fair Lawn, Ohio State and business today.
"You hear the analogy between sports and business," said Jankowski, 61, who lives on a golf course in Leawood, Kan., near the Kansas-Missouri border, and has a daughter, Elizabeth.
"I believe it. I buy it. I drink the Kool-Aid because in business, there are times when you're going to get the [stuffing] knocked out of you and you've got to get back up off the ground and go right back in.
"Those were life lessons."
Lessons learned from, among others, three Hall of Fame coaches: Brown, Ohio State's Woody Hayes and the Chiefs' Hank Stram.
Lessons applied in the post-football sales career he built after he quickly found out as an Ohio State graduate assistant that coaching occupied far too many hours.
Lessons learned from two devastating losses still vivid to him today: Fair Lawn's 40-34 loss to Ridgewood on Thanksgiving 1966 that snapped the Cutters' 24-game unbeaten streak, plus a 24-12 loss to Michigan during his junior year that cost Ohio State a second straight national title.
Virtually every detail of the loss to Ridgewood (3-6) ? a shootout in which Jankowski ran for 154 yards, including 75- and 30-yard touchdowns; caught a 32-yard touchdown pass among three receptions; and completed three of seven passes, including a 61-yard TD ? remains etched in his memory.
"We cried," he said. "Lots of guys cried. I cried."
In fact, he and two teammates hid out afterward for 1 1/2 days at a Pennsylvania farm owned by an aunt.
But at Ohio State ? where he became a wide receiver after the position coaches "drafted" players from a running back pool that also included Passaic's Jack Tatum ? he earned a spot on a Sports Illustrated cover during the Buckeyes' national championship season.
He also developed enough of a trust with the autocratic Hayes to suggest pass plays that were otherwise anathema to the ground-oriented coach.
NorthJersey.com: 'The total package'