Mike Giddings, Millennium Hall of Fame

There are two fraternities in which Mike Giddings has been firmly

connected. They are not connected, but both feature men with the utmost

mutual respect for each other.

“The U.S Marine Corps and football coaching,” said Giddings, who grew

up on Balboa Island and dreamed of playing football at Newport Harbor

High, after watching legendary former Sailor fullback Hal Sheflin lead

the Sailors to the Sunset League championship and a berth in the 1942 CIF

finals against Bonita and Glenn Davis.

Giddings, whose Newport Beach roots are as deep as his place in

football, never realized his boyhood fantasy of suiting up for the

Sailors because his family moved.

But several years later, after playing at Cal under Coach “Pappy”

Waldorf and coaching at every level (including at USC and in the NFL and

WFL), Giddings returned to Harbor and guided the Tars to three

consecutive Sea View League titles, the only three-peat championship

period in the school’s 69-year varsity football history.

“I think I had more fun than the guys who were playing for me,” said

Giddings, who compiled a 34-12-3 record in a brief stint as head football

coach at Newport Harbor from 1982 to ‘85, leading the Sailors to the CIF

Southern Section Central Conference quarterfinals three times and the

semifinals once.

Giddings, who founded Pro Scout Inc. in 1977 and has operated the

NFL-based business out of his Newport Heights property ever since, was

forced to drop his moonlighting position as Harbor’s coach when the work

load escalated in his scouting business.

A former big-wave surfer who attended Newport Grammar School, Giddings

missed coaching when his son, Mike, entered Harbor to play football in

the late 1970s. Hank Cochrane, the varsity coach at the time, needed help

on the sophomore level and the elder Giddings gladly joined the staff.

“I thought in sophomore football you’d just throw out the balls ...

but in that damn Sunset League, I found out sophomore football was a

little more than I thought,” he said.

Cochrane’s teams struggled for three years and Giddings was asked to

replace him. First, though, he had to clear it with his Pro Scout

clients, which meant guys like Paul Brown and Don Shula.

Giddings was given the green light, as long as his scouting duties

were completed. Sometimes he’d stay up until 2 a.m. analyzing game tapes.

Later, when his son was playing at Illinois, Giddings would coach the

Tars on Friday nights, catch a red-eye to the Midwest and watch “Gidds

II” on Saturday afternoons.

Eventually, free agency began to enter the NFL landscape and Giddings’

opinions became more valuable to the league’s coaches and general

managers, and thus his tenure as the Tars’ football coach came to an end.

“That was a great period for me in my life,” said Giddings, who, in

four years, coached nine Division I scholarship winners, including

quarterback Shane Foley (USC), guard Dave Cadigan (USC) and tackle Mike

Beech (UCLA).

Giddings, who has spent 31 years in the NFL, started his coaching

career at Monrovia High, where he led the Wildcats to the CIF finals in

1959. In 1960, he was head coach at Glendale College, then after one

year, John McKay hired him at USC, where Giddings was the defensive

coordinator when the Trojans won the 1962 national championship.

That year, the Trojans won their first national title in 23 years, the

longest drought between championships since they won their first in 1923.

McKay’s Trojans in ’62 beat Wisconsin in the Rose Bowl in a battle of

the nation’s top two teams. His son, Mike, would later play in the Rose

Bowl with Illinois in 1984, when the Illini lost to UCLA, giving the

family a rare father-son Rose Bowl-ring combination.

Following the ’67 season, Giddings “got my butt fired ... every

football coach should get fired at least once in life,” he said.

Giddings became an assistant coach with the San Francisco 49ers, who

won two division titles in the early 70s, then after the ’73 season he

left to become head coach of the World Football League franchise in

Hawaii.

“I figured I could surf and be in pro football as a head coach, but I

surfed about twice the whole time,” said Giddings, who owned 5% of the

team, until the league folded.

Giddings started Pro Scout Inc. while with the 49ers, because “nobody

in the league was scouting players who’d been cut ... and none of the

teams had scouting departments.”

When the WFL was dropped, Giddings took his private coloring book of

scouting non-college players and rating them for availability to the

league and the business has been going strong since.

“I didn’t want to work for anybody anymore,” he said. “But I still got

to stay in my profession. I don’t know any doctors or lawyers who can

work at home and stay in their profession ... I’m a lucky son of a ...,

and you can quote me on that. I count my blessing every day.”

Giddings said if he was a salesman for football, he’d sell high school

football to people, because it’s “as pure as it gets.”

He enjoys pro and high school players the most, because they both

listen. “You can get the attention of high school players, and pros will

listen because you might be able to help them make a living, but college

players have more distractions,” he added.

Mike Giddings, a member of the Daily Pilot Sports Hall of Fame,

celebrating the millennium.