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In his seven seasons as Arizona's football coach, Larry Smith always seemed to lead the league in tears spilled.

His team stunned No. 1 USC in 1981. The coach choked up.

In 1982, the Wildcats went to Notre Dame and shocked the undefeated Fighting Irish. It turned into a tear-jerker.

And after each of the UA's celebrated victories over Arizona State — five in succession, 1982-86 — Smith would emerge from a joyous Wildcat locker room sniffling, dabbing at his eyes.

"Those doggone guys just wouldn't quit," he would say. "I love every one of those dang guys."

Inevitably, his indomitable wife, Cheryl, would tug at his arm and say, "C'mon, Larry, they've heard it all before. Let's go; we've got kids to get to bed."

He didn't take himself too seriously.

On a Sunday afternoon at the conclusion of his final Arizona season, a few days before New Year's Eve, 1986, Smith drove to the home of UA Athletic Director Cedric Dempsey. Smith was going to resign. He would accept a lucrative contract to become the coach at USC. He barely made it into Dempsey's living room before choking up.

"He was so emotional; he came in and started hugging me, crying, saying he really didn't want to go," Dempsey said Monday. "He said 'I've got to go, Ced, it's USC. I've got no choice. I feel like I've got to chase the rainbow.' Larry went to USC, but he was probably as happy in Tucson as he ever was anywhere."

Larry Smith died Monday. He was only 68, built like John Wayne, seemingly indestructible, but danged (one of his favorite words) that he couldn't beat the double team of lymphoma and leukemia the way he used to beat ASU and UCLA.

He was an old-school guy, a blue-collar Ohio laborer's son who would play at Bowling Green and coach with Bo Schembechler at Michigan. When he left coaching in 2002, Smith returned to Tucson so he could be with his five grandchildren.

During a scrimmage at Arizona Stadium last spring, Smith chased a grandson rather than watch the blocking and tackling.

"I'm going to take him to the carwash," Smith said, exiting early. "He loves going through the carwash. I get such a kick out of watching him."

Priorities: aligned.

Sitting in the press box at an Arizona football game last fall, Smith spoke fondly of his days as a high school ballplayer when a "big night out" in Lima, Ohio, was watching TV while munching popcorn and eating apples.

You can't talk about the life of Larry Smith without putting a white picket fence around it.

"My vision of Larry is of a very muscular, big, good-looking guy," said former UA head coach Jim Young, who brought Smith to Tucson as his defensive coordinator in 1973. "And that's how I'm going to think of him."

Smith's UA career had the predictable turbulence of any college football coach. He battled with the fans when he thought they booed his quarterback unfairly. He failed by a whisker to get to the Rose Bowl in 1985 and 1986, unable to prevail in must-win games against UCLA. And when he left for USC, he did so almost overnight, without a proper goodbye.

He told me several times he regretted the timing of his departure and wished Arizona fans could forgive him.

Smith's best player, UA Hall of Fame linebacker Ricky Hunley, learned of his coach's death Monday. He booked a flight at the Cincinnati airport and immediately left for Tucson.

"The influence he had on my life goes beyond words," said Hunley. "I had absentee fathers in my life, in and out, but Larry was always there. My mother loves him dearly. She is so upset, crying."

As part of his team's underdog persona, Smith recruited Sunnyside High School's 5-foot-6-inch David Adams, a tailback who in 1986 made the All-Pac-10 team and gained in excess of 1,000 yards. Smith was the only major-college coach to visit Adams' home.

Smith was uncanny that way. He invited 1987 consensus All-America safety Chuck Cecil to be part of the team when no other major-college team gave him an offer. He persuaded Phoenix South Mountain basketball player Byron Evans to play football for the Wildcats. In 1986, Evans became the Pac-10's premier linebacker and went on to prominence in the NFL.

But it was Smith's relationship with Adams that probably best reflects the spirit of Smith and those UA football teams, 1980-86.

"Coach Smith came to my house and met my mom," Adams said Monday. "She liked those old-school guys like him. He would say 'yes ma'am' and 'no ma'am.' He told her that he would take care of me and give me an opportunity.

"My mom said 'David, I don't know a thing about football, but I know a lot about people. You go play for Larry Smith. There's a man you can trust.' "

A photographic look back at Larry Smith's career at azstarnet.com/slideshows