He earned his football fame many miles from Happy Valley. First he played safety for the University of Miami Hurricanes. He also served as an assistant coach at Miami, Virginia, Kentucky and North Carolina State. And, most impressively, he vaulted from an assistant’s role at LSU to the head coaching job.
Only a six-year term as linebacker coach with the Pittsburgh Steelers allowed Mike Archer to practice his profession near to his hometown of State College. But even though he has spent most of his career in the sunny South, Archer has never forgotten his home. And I’m sure we’ll never forget him—especially those of us who grew up alongside his athletic brilliance and his unique personality.
Mike isn’t coaching this fall — it’s one of only two non-coaching seasons in his last 40 years. So it’s a good time to reflect on the past with this 1971 graduate of State College Area High School.
Archer’s life has combined a bit of comedy with a large dose of tragedy. The biggest shock hit him early, on July 25, 1963, just one day before his 10th birthday. Brought home from a baseball game by a friend’s parents, he was puzzled to see many cars in front of his home. “As they dropped me off,” says Mike, “I see my Uncle Jack and my Uncle Elmo, and then I see the priest from Our Lady of Victory. I just remember walking in (the house) and my two sisters were there crying, my mom was there crying…”
A TRAGIC DEATH
Mike’s dad, William “Posey” Archer, had died that evening of a massive heart attack. Mike still remembers his uncles saying, “You’re going to have to grow up quick. You’ll have to help your Mom. And we’re going to help you.”
Mike’s mom, Helen Archer, faced an incredibly difficult future. A stay-at-home mother, she had not worked outside the household and she did not know how to drive. But she soon learned to operate the family’s Ford Falcon and she found a job in Penn State’s athletic ticket office. Mike’s grandmother moved into the home to help out, and somehow, Mrs. Archer was able to provide for Mike, his older sister, Jane Ann, and his younger sister, Mary Kay.
“My mom was 36 when my father passed away,” says Mary Kay, herself now the mother of two grown children. “I don’t know how she did it. She had three little kids — 8, 10 and 12. She never remarried; she just did really well as a single mom. We didn’t want for anything.”
For Mike, not wanting meant getting a full diet of athletics. “She was very supportive of me — the demands of time in getting me to practice and getting me home from practice,” he says. “She sacrificed a lot. She would always work extra on a Saturday if she could.”
THREE SPORTS PER YEAR
It was a sacrifice that some could hardly imagine. Mary Kay, now an executive assistant for the State College Area School District, recalls the time an aunt asked her mom why she let Mike play three sports a year. “Because then I always know what he’s doing,” said Mrs. Archer. “He’s not getting into trouble.”
Helen Archer eventually took a leadership position in Penn State’s Engineering Library, and after serving with Penn State for more than 25 years, she enjoyed a well-earned retirement that included trips to watch her son’s teams in action. She passed away on February 17, 2011.
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Mike was a Little League baseball star, but I never saw him play at that level. We grew up when the Centre Region had one league (“Nittany Valley”) for borough kids like me, and one league (“Suburban”) for those like Mike from surrounding townships. But when “Arch” and I aged out of Little League, we ended up on the same Teener League team, and that was great for me.
By the age of 13, I was virtually washed-up as a pitcher — a kid who threw hard from Little League’s 46-foot pitching distance but not so hard from Teener’s distance. Fortunately, my catcher had an amazing level of baseball savvy. Just 13 himself, Mike had studied all the hitters. He always knew what pitch I should throw and where I should put it. I always felt I could get an out if I hit Archer’s target (pun intended). Little did I know I was throwing to a future LSU head football coach.
Archer offered more to his teams than just his athletic ability. His humor kept us loose in a sport where a relaxed attitude yields good results. In fact, he entertained the parents, the umpires and players on both teams with his banter. I played baseball with Arch for at least six seasons, and whenever I returned home from a game, my father would typically ask: “How did you do?” and “What crazy comment did Archer make?”
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“He always had a ball in his hand,” says Mary Kay. “If it wasn’t a football, it was a basketball or it was a baseball. Back in those days, we spent the whole day at the park. And he would be organizing pickup games. Or Tim Curley (former Penn State athletic director) would come over, and they would want to play catch and I’d end up being the monkey in the middle.”
The parents of his sports teammates provided Mrs. Archer with some adult backup. Says Mike, “Tim’s mom and dad, Mr. and Mrs. Curley, were like my second set of parents. Larry’s mom and dad, Steve and Ginger Suhey, were the same, all through high school.”
Most of all, Jim Williams meant the world to the man who lost his dad at such an early age. Williams became the head football coach for State College in 1969, the fall of Mike’s junior year. He was a father figure and a football mentor. Says Archer, “Jim was probably the most influential in how I’ve done things in coaching. The game doesn’t change; it’s still about fundamentals. That was the thing that Jim instilled in me from the very beginning. And he let me call the plays…that’s unheard of today.”
IRON KETTLE VICTORIES
With Archer as his quarterback and future all-state sensation Suhey at tailback, Coach Williams was able to pull the Little Lions out of their past mediocrity. They finished that ’69 season with a promising record of 6-3 that included a 19-7 win over “Iron Kettle” rival Bellefonte. In that game, Archer completed nine of 19 passes, and then he put his mark on the post-game celebration. According to the Centre Daily Times, “Time after time he slid across the wet locker room on his bottom….”
With stars like Archer and Suhey returning, the 1970 season produced an 8-1 record that was marred only by a shocking 30-6 loss to Tyrone. Mike shed tears in the locker room after that game, perhaps focusing on his three interceptions. But according to linebacker Pat Little, Williams told his quarterback, “You’ll have bigger games than this in the future. Just keep your head up. You did everything you could.” Buoyed by his coach, Archer came back the next week with an 11-for-18 passing performance that included four touchdown throws. The result was a 44-12 season-ending win over Bellefonte.
Some nine months later, Mike was off to the University of Miami where he hoped to play quarterback. But when he discovered the Hurricanes had nine incoming QBs, he volunteered to play defense. He won a starting position at safety because of his skill and intelligence. “I played,” says Mike with a typical touch of humor, “because I could get the guys lined up.”
After finishing his playing days at Miami, Archer brokered his defensive knowledge into a graduate assistant role with the Hurricanes. Next, he moved into an assistant coaching position at Miami, and his six years in that capacity included the huge thrill of winning the 1983 national championship when the Hurricanes defeated a powerful Nebraska team.
State High yearbook from 1971 shows Archer on headset during 1970 Tyrone defeat; football coaching staff including Jim Williams (far right) Photo: Pat Little
UPS & DOWNS AT LSU
Mike’s next coaching stop was at LSU., where he began as an assistant in 1984, served as defensive coordinator in 1985 and 1986, and then was head coach from 1987 to 1990. His Tigers posted a 10-1-1 record in ’87, their first 10-win season in more than 25 years. Then they went 8-4 in ’88, earning a share of the Southeastern Conference championship.
But in the dog-eat-dog world of the SEC, Archer’s team slumped to 4-7 in 1989 and 5-6 in 1990. He was forced to resign and now says, “We created high expectations and once you do that, as Les Miles has found out, they expect it every year. But I have no regrets about it. How many places when you’re 32 years old do you get to coach in front of 84,000 people every week?”
And so it was time for Mike to hop back on the coaching carousel. Everywhere he went, he applied his athletic intellect, sense of humor and commitment to hard work, a trait he ascribes to his mom’s example and to the hard-working central Pennsylvanians he knew in his youth.
He went to Virginia, then to Kentucky, then to the Steelers (barely missing two opportunities to go to the Super Bowl), then back to Kentucky, to N.C. State, and then back to Virginia for the last two years. It wasn’t easy for Mike’s wife, Barbara, or for their two children, Jeff and Betsy. But Barbara heroically shouldered the demands of selling houses, buying houses, moving furniture and settling the kids in new communities.
Archer draws a laugh from Vinny Scavo (center), longtime University of Miami athletic trainer, and Ed Hudak, a former Miami teammate who is now the Coral Gables police chief. Photo provided by University of Virginia
The family even found some ways to make moving bearable if not fun. “The first night that we moved into the house,” notes Mike, “the furniture was never there, so it’s been a tradition that we slept on the floor in sleeping bags. Barb and I and our two kids and our dog or rabbit or whatever we had.”
Will the coaching carousel carry Mike and his wife to at least one more wonderful stop? Well, I’m the crazy guy who predicted in this column that James Franklin and his Nittany Lions would defeat Ohio State. So I’m going out on a limb again, but I must say this one is much less risky than the previous one. I’ve got a feeling in my bones that Mike Archer, only 63 years old, has lots more to give to some lucky group of college football players.
I think Mike will be coaching somebody’s linebackers or defensive backs next year, and when he does he’ll carry with him the work ethic and wisdom he learned from various adults in State College and from his remarkable mother. Barbara, if you don’t mind sleeping on the floor one more time, all of us in Happy Valley would like another chance to watch your husband make us proud.
