Chick Harris, Former Don James UW Assistant Coach, Dies at 79

Fifty years ago, the soon to be legendary Don James was a new University of Washington football coach, scrambling to put together a staff.

On New Year's Eve, he revealed the final member of a group that would include some of his Kent State assistant coaches who had accompanied him to Seattle, plus a handful of holdover Jim Owen coaches.

In this case, it was Cleveland "Chick" Harris, who was neither. He had his own little coaching niche and he fit right in.

James found him in the floundering World Football League, where Harris had coached a single unnerving season for the Detroit Wheels. He later would share stories of that WFL team getting on chartered busses for games and leaving behind unpaid hotel bills.

Fortunately for Harris, he found much greater stability coaching for Don James in Montlake. He launched his career with the Huskies as a defensive-backs coach, answering to then-defensive coordinator Jim Mora. He proved to be a savvy recruiter, landing talented players because of his friendly and persuasive nature. Best of all, the UW met all of its financial obligations while he was on the payroll.

On January 6, Harris died at his home in Atlanta, surrounded by family members, after a brief battle with cancer. He was 79. A memorial service will be held for him on February 22 at 1 p.m. at Mount Paran Church in Atlanta.

While with the UW, Harris was instrumental in bringing a junior college quarterback from Southern California to the Huskies who was named Harold "Warren" Moon. This was big stuff, though no on knew it at the time. Moon would become a program-changer on the order of Michael Penix Jr., a quarterback who took the Huskies to unprecedented college football heights.

Harris and Moon made an instant connection. Harris had played his high school football at Long Beach Poly and coached as an assistant at Long Beach State University, so he knew the landscape and the would relate.

Three years later, these two would share in a 27-20 Rose Bowl victory over Michigan, both returning to their football roots to celebrate a milestone football moment.

Harris coached six seasons for James' Huskies before he left after the 1981 Rose Bowl against Michigan to try the NFL, hired by Chuck Knox to be his running-backs coach for the Buffalo Bills. Yet Harris wasn't done with Seattle quite yet.

Less than two years later, Knox became the Seattle Seahawks coach and he brought Harris with him to oversee his running backs. As a player himself, Harris had been a running back and a team co-captain in his two years at Northern Arizona.

These coaches would spend nearly a decade in the city together before Knox and Harris left to coach for the Los Angeles Rams, where Knox previously had headed up that franchise and would finish his career.

Harris worked 33 seasons as an NFL assistant coach, bringing his long-winding career to a close in 2014 with the Houston Texans.

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