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Wayne Hardin, Navy football coach
Mr. Hardin spoke to quarterback Roger Staubach as he sent Staubach into action during the 1964 Cotton Bowl. (Associated Press/File)
By Daniel E. Slotnik
New York Times

NEW YORK — Wayne Hardin, a Hall of Fame football coach who built standout programs at the US Naval Academy and Temple University, leading Navy to victory over Army five times in a row and Temple to its first bowl-game win, died April 12 in Abington, Pa. He was 91.

During his more than 20 years as a college coach, Mr. Hardin developed consistent winners using a multifaceted approach, even when he had stellar quarterbacks.

“What we want to achieve more than anything else is balance,’’ he told The New York Times in 1979.

Bill Belichick, the New England Patriots head coach, whose father was an assistant coach under Mr. Hardin at Navy, said Mr. Hardin had been “very influential in my development as a coach.’’

Belichick said he had also copied many of Mr. Hardin’s methods and philosophies.

“I admired his brilliant game plans that he developed for opponents with superior personnel,’’ Belichick, who has won five Super Bowls, told Navy football’s website after Mr. Hardin’s death.

Mr. Hardin became Navy’s head coach after Eddie Erdelatz resigned in 1959, and he promptly led the Midshipmen to the first of five consecutive wins over Army, their archrival. The Army-Navy games were national events at the time, viewed by millions of fans on television as well as “most of the members of the presidential Cabinet, four-star generals and admirals, senators, congressmen and governors,’’ The Times wrote in 1959.

Navy routed Army, 43-12, in the 1959 game, led by Joe Bellino, a halfback who won the Heisman Trophy the following season and later played for the Boston Patriots of the American Football League.

Mr. Hardin’s last win over Army was in 1963, when he won, 21-15, with the help of three touchdowns by fullback Pat Donnelly and the dangerous legs of his scrambling quarterback, Roger Staubach.

Staubach, who won the Heisman that year and went on to a Hall of Fame career with the Dallas Cowboys of the National Football League, praised Mr. Hardin on the Navy website.

“Coach Hardin was the first person to teach me how to read defenses,’’ Staubach said. “I was a quarterback that would pull the ball down and run at the first opportunity, but he taught me how to stay in the pocket and what to look for.’’

Navy lost bowl games after the 1960 and 1963 seasons and finished 9-2 both years. In 1964, the team was plagued by injuries and went 3-6-1, including an 11-8 loss to Army that ended the streak.

Mr. Hardin, who had a 38-22-2 career record as Navy’s head coach, had differences with the school’s brass over the years.

In 1962, he was criticized for using a trick play in which a player headed toward the sideline as if leaving the field, then ran downfield and caught a touchdown pass. The play was technically legal, but Mr. Hardin apologized for it.

He resigned in 1964 amid speculation that he had been forced out of the job. “We came to an impasse,’’ he said in a statement at the time. “It was a personal one.’’

In 1966, Mr. Hardin became the coach of the Philadelphia Bulldogs, who won the Continental Football League championship that year but then disbanded.

He took over a middling program at Temple in 1970 and raised its profile over the next decade. In 1979, the Owls went 9-2 and then defeated California, 28-17, in the Garden State Bowl — the program’s first bowl victory.

Irving Wayne Hardin was born on March 23, 1926, in Smackover, Ark., to Blanche and Wayne Hardin. His family later moved to Stockton, Calif., where his father distributed jukeboxes and pinball machines. He graduated from high school there and earned letters in golf, baseball, basketball, and football.

He attended what was then the College of the Pacific, where he studied English, played many sports, and was coached by Amos Alonzo Stagg, a Hall of Fame football coach who is credited with pioneering the use of the forward pass.

After serving in the Coast Guard, Mr. Hardin became an assistant football coach at the College of the Pacific. He left to become the head coach at a high school in California and stayed there until he joined Navy as an assistant coach in 1955.

He retired from Temple in 1982 and was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2013.

Mr. Hardin’s marriage to the former Patricia Bell ended in divorce. His second wife, Jane McCausland, died a few years ago.

In addition to his daughter, he leaves three sons, Gary, Greg, and Richard; and five grandchildren.