Cypress Gardens closed its doors September 23. It was Florida's oldest theme park, the one where Southern belles wear hoop skirts, skiers leap from ramps, and women skiers build pyramids upon each other's shoulders and ski in formation. Strange that this news brought a rush of football memories back for me, but it did.

In February 1996, I was in Florida, Winter Haven to be exact, on assignment for Ski magazine. My friend and co-author, Robert Clark, and I had spent three days with professional water skiers doing a cover story on Cypress Gardens' 60th anniversary. Robert and I had wrapped things up and were driving along Interstate 4 to Lake Mary, Florida, when the radio released a bulletin about Wayne McDuffie, a coach at Georgia under Vince Dooley and later Ray Goff. McDuffie lived in Tallahassee, where he once was a vital cog in the Florida State Seminole machine.

I remember how excited a fellow Bulldog, David Starkey, was when he learned McDuffie was returning to Georgia. McDuffie masterminded Florida State's high-octane offense in the 80s and earlier he had been part of Georgia's 1980 glory, the offensive line coach under Vince Dooley. I heard him speak at a Bulldog Club meeting in Columbia back in the 90s. He spoke deliberately, choosing his words with precision, seemed stoic, and was intense beyond description, an iron man, indestructible.

The relentless grind came Wayne McDuffie's way, and as strong as he was, the grind was stronger. It grinds in many directions and it never stops. There's the pressure of not winning and there's the pressure of being a nomad, forever wandering the land looking for work. In a penetrating article in the Sporting News in August 1996, Bill Minutaglio wrote about Wayne McDuffie. In "The Coach, The Players, Their Demons," Minutaglio wrote a heartbreaking piece on the man describing how his life spiraled down after the Ray Goff era ended at Georgia.

1994. "I really thought I wouldn't survive this year. I'm so exhausted from trying to put pieces together that don't fit," Wayne McDuffie was telling his wife of more than two decades. It was at the end of another grueling season as offensive coordinator at the University of Georgia. "I'm trying to make something from nothing. I really thought I would die. I thought I would have a heart attack and die because I worked so hard. I worried so much and tried so desperately to hold this thing together."

The team had what was, for Wayne McDuffie, at least, a disastrous season. The Bulldogs went 6- 4-1."

In Tales from the 1980 Georgia Bulldogs, Vince Dooley discusses what a great coach McDuffie was and discusses also how he couldn't turn off his intensity. Dooley writes that they had to send him on recruiting trips Thursdays and Fridays. "The players would be so stressed out after Sunday through Wednesday with Wayne that they needed a few days to build their confidence back up."

The ruthless quest for gridiron perfection. It's a grind that takes a toll on many coaches, and when that perfection doesn't materialize in the won-loss record, it does their family life few favors. For some, it's too much. The ex wife of a former college coach told me she divorced her husband because she could not take the fan abuse. "I couldn't go the grocery store or the hair salon without strangers walking up and criticizing my husband. I couldn't go anywhere without being harassed. It just got to be too much."

One night I was talking to a high school coach here in Columbia. He told me that a good friend, another coach, had an offer to join Nick Saban's staff at Alabama. It sounded like a dream come true, but his friend declined the offer. "Seems that if you coach for Saban," he said, "you spend the entire season in the athletic facility, with food catered in and just two weekend breaks all season to visit your family."

I couldn't confirm this statement so I present it here as conjecture, empty talk. I checked it out, of course. A Bama friend of mine called some Alabama alumni he knows and there's no truth to it as far as they know. "Saban is a big believer in family," said one, "and I think it would be hard to keep good assistants if you treated them that way."

Still, there's no denying the long hours coaches put in. Minutaglio's piece in the Sporting News said this of McDuffie. "Sometimes, the assistant coaches at Florida State, where he coached for most of the 1980s, would hear a strange flapping sound echoing from one of the football offices. It could be 6 a.m. or even 5 a.m.

"As they held their cups of coffee and looked inside, there would be Wayne McDuffie asleep on a conference table, his Clint Eastwood face and body oddly illuminated by the flickering light coming from the movie projector. The film he had been studying, rethreading and rerunning all night long was still spinning wildly in the reels. But, when someone woke him up, he would simply, wordlessly, move to the football field where he had ordered his offensive lineman to show up before sunrise."

More from Dooley's book ... "He was a very demanding coach," said guard Jim Blakewood. "I can't imagine there being a tougher coach. It really gave us an edge. We felt like nobody in the league worked harder than we did. The teams we were getting ready to play couldn't survive our practices. The games were a piece of cake."

Ironclad determination drives men like McDuffie and yet so-called fans give them fits. The coaches can never do enough. If their team goes undefeated, then it must do so forever. Over the message boards and forums, over sports talk radio and in the stands, guys play armchair quarterback. To hear them criticize and rant, you'd think they had coached a few national championships and a Super Bowl winner or two. Many I'm sure never played a down of football; many have thin, weak shoulders like a scarecrow's.

Following Dooley amounted to a tough task. From 1989 to 1995, Ray Goff chalked up just 46 wins to 34 losses and one tie. Six wins a season pretty much did in Goff and with him went the coaching staff, and that included Wayne McDuffie.

"When the situation at the University of Georgia disintegrated, a big part of McDuffie's life was dying right there in front of him," wrote Minutaglio in the Sporting News.

"McDuffie watched members of the old staff move on to other jobs. Wayne jogged in his golf-course neighborhood, pushing himself hard. He lifted weights. And, with his wife, he wrestled with plans for the future. He hoped a professional team would come calling. He had feelers in with the Dolphins.

"But his birthday (December 1) and the holidays passed, as did the big bowl games, the pro playoffs and the Super Bowl, and Wayne McDuffie still was unemployed. He was 51 years old. The chart, the map, had led nowhere."

1996. February. Robert and I are driving along Interstate 4 when the radio crackles. Football was all Wayne McDuffie had known. He was out of work and the offers he thought that would come from NFL teams? Well, his phone never rang.

At the age of 51, Wayne McDuffie shot himself to death near the family pool.

Letters and praise poured in. A former player said he "couldn't stop thinking of Coach McDuffie, of the imposing figure he cut between the green grass and blue sky, of the wonderful way he affected my life."

He left behind three kids and his wife of 26 years.

Email Tom with feedback and ideas for new columns. tompol @earthlink.net