ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT
George Seifert, BS’64 The Art (and Sport) of Teaching
G
eorge Seifert began his professional coaching career in 1977 as a defensive assistant to San Francisco 49ers’ head coach Bill Walsh. After nine years and three Super Bowl championships with Walsh, Seifert was appointed Head Coach of the San Francisco 49ers in 1989.
They were big shoes to fill for the unassuming defensive specialist and defensive backfield coach standing on the sidelines wearing his signature windbreaker and poker face, and not everyone thought he was up to it. “My wife told me, ‘George don’t screw it up,’” Seifert has reported, “so I did everything I could not to screw it up.” Little did he know then that someday he would be first an assistant coach and then the head coach of his hometown team, accompanying the 49ers to two more Super Bowl wins for a career total of five.
Crossroads of the West None of this was to happen until after college, however. The Friday before he enrolled in Cal Poly Tech, the University of Utah offered him a football scholarship. He took it. The 4
