Homer Smith, Innovative College Football Coach, Dies at 79

Homer Smith, a football coach whose strategizing enlivened the offenses at U.C.L.A., Alabama and Arizona, and who was the coach at Army in the difficult years at the end of the Vietnam War, died Sunday at his home in Tuscaloosa, Ala. He was 79.

The cause was multiple myeloma, said his daughter Kimberly Smith Hall.

Smith was a football man with an intellectual bent. He had an undergraduate degree from Princeton, a business degree from Stanford and a theology degree from Harvard.

Known for his keen offensive mind, he became a master of the wishbone formation, the basis of the triple-option running game that transformed college football in the 1970s.

He was also known as a molder of quarterbacks. At U.C.L.A., where he served three different stints as an assistant coach, he tutored at least a half-dozen quarterbacks who made it to the National Football League, including Steve Bono, Tommy Maddox, Jay Schroeder and Rick Neuheisel, who is now the U.C.L.A. coach.

Smith was the offensive backfield coach at U.C.L.A. under Pepper Rodgers in 1973, when the team, using the wishbone, led the nation in rushing, averaging 400.3 yards a game. That led to his hiring at the United States Military Academy, where both the football team, which had endured a winless 1973 season, including a 51-0 loss to Navy, and the institution, hobbled by the unpopularity of the Vietnam War, were at a low ebb.

Smith improved the Army team, winning three games in 1974 and seven in 1977, including victories over its service academy rivals Navy and Air Force. But after five seasons his record was only 21-33-1, and he was fired after a 28-0 loss to Navy in 1978.

His departure was rancorous. He subsequently accused the academy of violating N.C.A.A. recruiting regulations and of covering up the violations. The N.C.A.A. investigated and reprimanded the academy, although no sanctions were imposed.

Smith spoke bitterly about his dismissal the next spring, after he had enrolled at Harvard’s divinity school, but the wounds healed. Leamon Hall, who was the quarterback on Smith’s Army team, and who married Smith’s daughter Kimberly, said his father-in-law had long ago gotten over his anger. Taylor Hall, Smith’s grandson, is enrolled at West Point.

Homer Austin Smith was born in Independence, Mo., on Oct. 9, 1931, and grew up in Omaha, where his father operated car dealerships. At Princeton he was a star running back who once ran for 273 yards against Harvard, a university record that stood until 1992. He served in the Army in the mid-1950s, then enrolled at Stanford Business School, where he also coached freshman football. Before arriving at U.C.L.A., he coached running backs at the Air Force Academy and was the head coach at the University of the Pacific and Davidson College.

As a coach, Leamon Hall said, Smith was both imaginative and precise. He taught the exact positions for a quarterback’s hands and fingers when he took the snap from the center.

“Your fingers are spread widely, your top knuckle goes in a particular place; your left thumb fits into the curve of your right thumb,” Hall said. “I played for teams where it was just assumed that the snap would be made. There were no assumptions with Homer. He wouldn’t just tell a running back, ‘Go off the butt of the guard’; he’d get down on the ground and point to a blade of grass, and he’d say, ‘Straddle that!’ ”

In addition to his daughter Kimberly, who lives in Johns Creek, Ga., and his grandson Taylor, Smith is survived by his wife, the former Kathryn Haskell, whom he met as a freshman in high school in Omaha and married in 1952, while he was at Princeton; another daughter, Cari Smith Carpenter, of Wilbraham, Mass.; and three other grandchildren.

After finishing a two-year theology program at Harvard, Smith returned to U.C.L.A. as offensive coordinator in 1980, and over the next seven seasons the team went 59-12-4. He then spent a year in the N.F.L. as offensive coordinator for the Kansas City Chiefs. He returned to college football at Alabama, U.C.L.A. again, Alabama again and finally Arizona before retiring after the 1997 season.

“Since he died I’ve been hearing more from the second-string guys, and even guys who got cut — not the guys who were the crème de la crème — about how he influenced them and shaped their lives,” Leamon Hall said. “Of course, coaching college football is all about wins and losses, but he found a way to subjugate that to building character in people.”