When he left a successful college career to become the first coach of the expansion Tampa Bay Buccaneers, his teams lost an NFL record 26 games in a row. At a press briefing following one of the losses, he was asked about the Buccaneers' "execution".

"I'm all in favour of it," replied John McKay.

Half the newspapers in the country revived that quip to lead their obituaries after McKay passed away at 77 last Sunday. That the other half did not was largely due to the fact that McKay expired the night before Timothy McVeigh would be put to death.

McKay was a newspaperman's dream, a veritable quote machine, and while the tendency has been to remember him as a great college coach who was a miserable failure in the professional ranks, neither portrayal would be entirely accurate.

In 16 years at the University of Southern California he won four national championships, nine conference titles, went to eight Rose Bowls, and coached three undefeated teams, but there were times when he was hung in effigy in Los Angeles.

After his proud Trojans were trounced 510 by Notre Dame in their 1966 season finale, McKay's post-game speech to his troops was memorably brief. "The bus leaves in an hour," he said. "Anyone who needs a shower, take one."

And while his Tampa Bay teams did set a record for futility, by 1979 McKay had driven the Buccaneers to the NFC Central title, and his teams earned two more play-off berths before he retired in 1985.

He was OJ Simpson's college coach, and ran an I-formation offense geared to fully exploit the talents of his tailback. When critics wondered if he might not be overburdening Simpson by making him carry the ball so much, McKay replied "Why not? It's not very heavy."

The battles between McKay's USC teams and Notre Dame under Ara Parseghian were the stuff of legend in the 1960s. Earlier this week Parseghian told Chicago newsman Ron Rapoport that he had looked it up just a few days before McKay died and discovered that in the 11 years they coached against one another, USC won three national titles, Notre Dame won three, "and the other five years one of us knocked the other out of contention."

In 1965 the Trojans visited South Bend, and after taking the field had to wait for 20 minutes before Parseghian deigned to release his troops from their dressing-room. When Southern Cal played at Notre Dame two years later, McKay tried to deflect the gamesmanship by keeping his team in the dressing-room. The referee informed him if his team didn't take the field they would be subject to a 2-0 forfeit.

"Two to nothing?" said McKay. "That would be the best deal we've ever gotten in this damned stadium."

When a kicker named Peter Rajecki complained that the coach made him nervous by watching him during practice, McKay said "Please inform Mr Rajecki that I plan to attend all of the games."

When he "recruited" his oldest son, JK, who would play for him at USC and in Tampa Bay, away from Stanford, McKay explained: "I had a distinct advantage. I slept with his mother."

Years after the University of Alabama had been forcibly integrated, the football team remained white until McKay's USC team pummelled 'Bama 42-21 in the opening game of the 1970 college season.

Obviously intent on creating a cautionary tale, McKay used black full-back Sam Cunningham, normally a blocking back, to run 230 yards and three touchdowns in that game. It was later said Cunningham's performance "did more for integration in the south in 60 minutes than Martin Luther King did in 20 years."

McKay was also a racial pioneer of sorts in his NFL days. It was under his tutelage that Doug Williams, a future Super Bowl MVP and now the head coach at Grambling University, became the league's first black quarterback to start throughout a season.

Although Tampa Bay fans took up twin rhyming slogans: "Go for O!" and "Throw McKay in the Bay," McKay professed to be unconcerned over his 0-14 first NFL season.

"If you don't win it doesn't matter what your record is," he said. "Seattle (also an expansion team that year) won two games. Are we supposed to throw a party for them?"

Besides, he added cheerfully, "three or four plane crashes and we're in the play-offs."

Later in his career he was asked to assess an interception thrown by quarterback Steve DeBerg.

"It was thrown to nobody," said McKay. "Well, it was thrown to somebody, to Harry Carson, but he happened to be playing for the New York Giants at the time. It would have been a good pass if Harry was playing for us."

McKay stepped down in 1985, a season in which his best defensive player, Hugh Green, was lost for the year when his car was blindsided by one driven by an interior decorator. ("First time I've ever been done in by an interior decorator," said McKay), and spent his latter years as sort of a dignified elder statesman. His younger son Rich, in his capacity as the Buccaneers' general manager, has crafted a perennial contender from the seeds his father sowed two decades earlier.

A fixture on golf courses on both sides of the Atlantic during his retirement, McKay underwent triple heart-bypass surgery in 1986, but the official cause of death was kidney failure due to complications from diabetes. We will not see his like again.

Once he watched from the sideline as his kick-returner fell to the ground without having been so much as touched by an enemy player.

"My God," gasped McKay in mock horror. "They shot him!"