Floyd Keith stood on a platform on the field at Memorial Stadium, trying to do his best impression of his longtime friend and former IU football Coach Bill Mallory.
In front of the crowd scattered throughout the East bleachers, Keith heightened his voice in both volume and pitch and flung his hands about with every uttered syllable.
He embraced Mallory’s so-called “unique passion with the English language,” pronouncing Kentucky as 'Tucky' and Nebraska as 'New-braska.'
He even broke out the move Mallory would do before he would lead his team out of the tunnel prior to games, a move Keith called the “two-step,” gyrating his legs and feet on the platform before making a running motion toward the crowd.
As the laughter subsided, Keith stood behind the podium and stressed how important the opportunity to be at Mallory's Celebration of Life ceremony was to him, after Mallory died at the age of 82 on May 25.
As if the realization his friend was gone hit him all over again, Keith could only think of one thing to say.
“Why the hell do I even need this paper?" Keith said, his written speech in hand. “I don’t need it because I loved the guy. I loved him. Man, I loved him.”
In front of the platform, in fold-out chairs on the field, sat Mallory’s family, including his wife, Ellie; sons, Mike, Doug and Curt; and daughter, Barbara. They sat smiling, despite being just a few hours removed from Mallory’s memorial service at the First United Methodist Church in Bloomington.
This was a time of reminiscing, of celebration.
Keith, a former assistant coach for Mallory at three out of his four head coaching stops during Mallory's career at Miami (OH), Colorado and IU, was just one of a number of speakers that stood before the family and the crowd behind them at the ceremony Saturday.
Mallory’s head coaching career, which lasted from 1969-1996, saw him become IU’s all-time winningest coach with 69 total wins, a member of the athletics hall-of-fames at IU, Miami (OH) and the Mid-American Conference and the first back-to-back Big Ten Coach of the Year recipient in 1986 and 1987.
However, as each speaker shared their own memories and thoughts on the storied coach, it was clear he was remembered as more than that.
“Coach Mallory was a man of great humility,” former IU running back Anthony Thompson said, before giving an opening prayer. “He would always put others above himself, and he walked like that and spoke like that. Coach Mallory spoke with passion and was a man of great conviction, a man that cared about each and every one of us.”
The ceremony was emceed by legendary IU football and men's basketball broadcaster Don Fischer, and featured speakers representing each of Mallory’s head coaching stops throughout his career. Speakers included Mike Poff of Miami (OH), Steve Stripling of Colorado, Vince Scott and Tim Tyrrell of Northern Illinois, and Thompson and current IU defensive line coach Mark Hagen.
Meanwhile, others such as Keith were family friends who had either worked for, or had been associated with, the Mallory family along the way. Family members of former IU players, such as Kelly Bomba, wife of Matt Bomba, and Connor Smith, son of Chris Smith, also gave speeches.
Smith even missed his own high school graduation to share a few words about Mallory.
“Right about now I’d be walking across the stage, but I couldn’t care less about that,” Smith said. “I couldn’t think of any other place I’d rather be right now than here.”
Each speaker’s life had been affected by Mallory in a different way, but each speech eventually came back to stressing who Mallory was and why he had affected them so strongly.
“There’s not a day that goes by in 30 years that I don’t think of Coach Mallory,” Scott, a former kicker at Northern Illinois, said. “Faced with any situation, I always say to myself, 'what would coach do,' and I always did what I know he would do because that was the right thing.”
The love each speaker had, or had received, from Mallory remained a constant theme, and none more prominently than in Keith’s speech.
As he reminisced through countless memories and relived his friendship with Mallory, he couldn’t help but leave the crowd with one final thought.
“Hey, College Football Hall of Fame,” Keith said. “It’s that time.”
