Herb Deromedi

Bio

Elected to the Hall of Fame as the all-time winningest coach in Mid-America Conference history, Herb Deromedi led the Central Michigan Chippewas to 14 winning seasons in 16 years as head coach. In grade school, Deromedi decided he would go along with his friends and pursue a manual trades education. But a teacher changed Deromedi's form, sending the student who had already skipped two grades into college prep, changing his life forever. He went on to the University of Michigan where he gained his Bachelors and then a Masters degree in just one year. As a senior, he coached seventh and eighth grade football at University High to start his coaching career. After spending two years as a high school coach, he met Roy Kramer, who was taking the head-coaching job at Central Michigan. Kramer offered Herb a position. For the next 11 years he was an assistant on Kramer's staff. In 1974, CMU won the Division II national title before moving up to Division I-A. When Kramer left to take the Athletic Director position at Vanderbilt, Deromedi was his hand-picked successor. His first team was predicted to win as few as three games, but Deromedi led the squad to a nine-win season. The next two years he won MAC titles with the 1979 team going 10-0-1. In 1990, he added his third conference crown and took Central to the California Bowl. Along the way, he received two conference Coach of the Year Awards and retired with the 15th-highest winning percentage of active coaches. He stepped down as coach to become the school's athletic director, a position he would hold until his 2006 retirement.