WITH AGE COMES WISDOM

Harvey Hyde has lived and loved college football for over 65 years, coaching some of the game’s greatest. Today you will find him on radio, breaking down the score, the only way he knows how.

By Robert Gad

Tuesday, March 26, 2024

In 2023, college football celebrated its 154th birthday. For 65 of those years, Harvey Hyde, now of Arcadia, California, has been involved with the game—first as a player, then as assistant coach and head coach—and now as a respected journalist and guest speaker.

During the football season, the 84-years-young Hyde runs Monday through Sunday like a speedy kick-off returner finding an open lane in the middle of the field.

His expert reporting is heard on three radio stations: 830 AM KLAA in Orange, California; 1490 AM KMET in Banning, California and 1400 KXNT in Las Vegas, Nevada. If you miss him there, you can always follow him streaming on the extremely popular Peristyle Podcast hosted by Ryan Abraham, where his “no holds barred” opinions of USC Football should never be missed.

Hyde played college football at Pasadena City College, University of Arizona and University of Redlands. He was a forbear of what is now the Transfer Portal.

He began his coaching career as a grad assistant at Redlands and then moved to University of Hawaii as a Defensive Coordinator. One year later, he was back on the mainland as Co-Head Coach of Pasadena City College.

In 1981, he was offered the head coaching spot at University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), and moved to Las Vegas. There, he developed a young quarterback recruit, Randall Cunningham, out of Santa Barbara High School.

Under “Coach Harvey”, Cunningham led the Rebels to an 11-2 record, including a win over Toledo in the California Bowl.

Cunningham went on to a notable 16-year NFL career. Drafted by Philadelphia in 1985, where he became a four-time pro bowler and NFL MVP in 1990.

Harvey’s final coaching stop was teaming up with Pro Football Hall of Fame Coach George Allen at Long Beach State in 1990 as Associate Head Coach, with a focus on Running Backs and Recruiting. It was during this time, that Coach Hyde began his career in broadcasting.

And Allen was kind enough to let Hyde do both. After the untimely death of Allen in December 1990, Hyde moved back to the desert to do radio and TV full time.

“As a head coach, I was always interviewed before and after the game by the local radio guys. I knew then, this is what I wanted to do after coaching,” Hyde recalls.

His deep connections in Las Vegas gave him the opportunity to start his career there with a one-hour sports radio show. With his vibrant personality and great energy, he sold all of the time himself and soon a one hour radio spot grew into three.

His next endeavor was Southern California radio, where he began hosting both the pre-game and post-game shows for USC. A Trojan Brunch show soon followed, along with appearances on the Peristyle Podcast, an interview radio show covering the USC Trojan football team.

“The whole thing grew into three radio shows. I didn’t want to work that hard, but found out how much I loved doing it. It kept me close to the game,” Hyde remembers.

With the recent changes in college football, the loyal fans are now able to stay connected with him year-round.

“There is so much going on during the ‘off season’,” Hyde explains, “and there is always something to talk about every week. There really is no off season. College football never goes away.”

Isn’t that the truth.

The seismic rumblings in college football began with the advent of schools leaving their long-time conference relationships, hopping over to other ones for “more TV money”.

First in late July 2021, Oklahoma and Texas announced they were leaving the Big 12 for the Southeastern Conference. Almost a year later, on June 30,2022, UCLA and USC quietly worked out deals moving to the Big 10, causing a large chain reaction.

Washington and Oregon alos bolted from the Pac 12 and headed to the Big Ten. Soon after, Arizona State, Arizona, Utah and Colorado escaped to the Big 12.

Well known San Francisco Bay rivals, California (UC Berkeley) and Stanford, saw the handwriting on the wall and realized that they, too, had to make a move and found themselves a new home in the Atlantic Coast Conference with many schools more than 2,400 miles away, setting up some very interesting road trips.

The Pac 12 has melted down to the Pac 2 now with Washington State and Oregon State saving the conference.

Coach Hyde sees them soon working with the 10-member Mountain West Conference, re-creating the Pac 12 and keeping it as a Power 5 conference. Hyde notes that lots is changing in college football and many things are on the move.

“If they can pull this off, it would enable one member a possible berth in the expanded 12-team FBS Championship in 2024 and the ability to reap millions of dollars.”

Long-time fans have been left shaking their heads in disbelief.

Hyde notes the other major shift in college sports has been with the financial picture – how money is now paid to athletes for their “Name, Image and Likeness” also known as NIL. The Supreme Court ruled that athletes can create business opportunities and income while in college, which was once strictly prohibited. The problem, however, is that there are no regulations to control this new endeavor.

“The NCCA was so strict,” Coach Hyde remembers during his era of coaching, “that if a player on the team had a death in the family, you could not pay for his transportation home for him to attend the funeral.”

Hyde had a situation when one of his players had an abscessed tooth.

“Because it was not an athletic injury, I could not take him to the dentist.”

Certainly over the years, many noted that the NCAA and schools were taking advantage of their athletes.

Frustrations grew until UCLA former basketball player Ed O’Bannon sued the NCAA and won. That verdict and a Supreme Court ruling in 2021 in NCAA vs Alston ruled that the NCAA could not bar members from offering “education-related benefits” to student-athletes. Those benefits included marketing money to plug a product on their social media accounts, or be a product endorser in a TV spot like former USC quarterback Caleb Williams, whose NIL deal, at the time, was believed to be worth millions.

Hyde thinks the best move would be to have the football programs leave the NCAA and create their own league with each team having their similar salary cap, much like the NFL. That would eliminate what is going on now as many schools with wealthier fan bases are collecting huge sums of money to lure players to their teams via NIL collectives.

That type of reorganization is just what the Big 10 and Southeast Conference recently began discussing.

Hyde has been covering these stories, commenting as they unfold; continuing to appear on the Peristyle Podcast, hosted by Ryan Abraham, a podcast now downloaded more than a million times a year.

Abraham and Coach Hyde have had multiple in-depth discussions about these changes occurring off the field and in the game, both on Hydes’ radio program and on Abraham’s podcast.

“Harvey’s old-school and proud of it,” says Abraham. “He has great passion and energy. That’s why so many of our listeners tune in.”

Abraham and Hyde share a unique dichotomy.

“When I join Harvey on his shows as a guest, he’s asking and framing the questions to me. On my show, he is the guest, and our listeners listen for his strong opinions which flow like a river.”

Coach Hyde does not mince his words and in recent days, has not been hiding his opinions of USC’s short comings. The unhappy Trojan fan base has looked to Hyde for the reasons of underachieving results.

“This is my opinion,” Hyde often says as a disclaimer. “If you ask me what I think, I’m not holding back.”

In that aspect, Abraham has always given him the green light and a long leash on the Peristyle Podcast.

Hyde continues to be tough on USC Head Coach Lincoln Riley regarding the last two seasons. As Hyde would describe, Riley lacks interaction with the local media. Hyde describes his coaching style as lacking on the defensive side of the ball (a place Hayde finds dearest to his heart, coming up in the ranks as a defensive coach). Hyde is noted for delivering his comments as if he is about to jump through his microphone.

And those outbursts are what the listeners can’t wait to hear and truly enjoy.

Ryan Kartje, the well-respected LA Times USC beat writer, also has appeared as a guest several times on Hyde’s radio shows.

“The Coach is a real throwback. He’s truly authentic and will not hide his strong feelings for college football; yet, he can really be charming, too,” explains Kartje, who is now on paternity leave waiting to rejoin the LA Times in April for spring practice.

Oscar Wilde, the Irish poet and playwright, once said: “With age comes wisdom.”

Without a doubt, more changes in college football are on the way. When they come, Coach Harvey Hyde, with this vast wisdom of the sport, will be on his various media outlets trying to help make sense of it all.

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