By Bob Markus

I know it was only yesterday I promised to stay out of your hair for awhile. What I didn't know yesterday was that John Pont was going to die this morning. John was a great football coach, a great friend, and one of the greatest human beings ever to grace this earth. I simply cannot let his passing go unnoted. My wife and I knew John was very ill, because we had planned to visit the Ponts in their Oxford,O., home on our annual summer migration starting tomorrow.

We had stayed with the Ponts on other visits, but with John battling a vicious form of leukemia, we were planning to just stop by for a short visit. We knew it would be the last time. Then, this morning, Leslie called John's wife Sandy for an update and Sandy calmly told her: "John died this morning."

When the sports sections publish John Pont's obituary, they no doubt will make note of the fact that he led Indiana to its only Rose bowl appearance, that before that he had been a very successful coach at Yale, that he was one in a long line of coaches at Miami (O) who went on to fame and inspired the school's nickname: The Cradle of Coaches. They may note, too, that John was both head coach and athletic director at Northwestern, a job at which, by conventional standards, he failed.

But wins and losses do not define a man. What defines a man is character. If my son had played football I would have wanted him to play for John Pont. His players loved him and no further proof is needed than this: When it became apparent that something was terribly amiss with John, a group of his former Indiana players insisted he go to a noted hospital in Houston and flew him down there on a private airplane.

I first met John Pont in the fall of 1965 when his first Indiana team played No.1 ranked Michigan State in what was supposed to be a light tuneup for the Spartans' highly anticipated season-ender at Notre Dame. The Hoosiers put up a tremendous battle before losing 27-13. When I entered the visitors locker Pont was sitting bare-chested on an equipment locker and calmly talking about the disappointing loss. No, he said, coming close did not make losing any easier. "We thought we could win the game," he said.

Two years later John guided the Hoosiers on a fanciful flight to the Rose bowl and I was around for much of the ride. The team was led by three talented sophomores, known collectively as "The Cardiac Kids." They were as unpredictable as they were entertaining. When John sent tailback John Isenbarger back to punt, he never knew if the happy-go-lucky sophomore would kick or run the ball, as he did to help win the Michigan game. Pont never flinched. "That's John," he would say.

Like many head coaches, John would host a small dinner party for friends after the game and, in time, Leslie and I were among the invitees. After dinner, John and Sandy would drive up to Indianapolis where John would film his coach's show. Usually they would be in a friend's customized bus and a coterie of friends would go along for the ride. On one such Saturday night we were seated at the dinner table when John was summoned to the telephone, where he learned his father had died. When he came back all he said was "God damn it!" It's the only time I ever heard him swear.

When he left Northwestern, John went back to Oxford and tried his hand at selling insurance. I played golf with him once during this period and he was obviously unhappy. He tried his hand at coaching a high school team and later started from scratch the football program at Mt. St. Joseph's. Then, now in his 70s, he took on the task of coaching an industrial league team in Japan. Every year he would say this was going to be his last, but it never was. Typically, while in Japan, John, with Sandy's help, immersed himself in the culture.

Last summer, when we visited John and Sandy on our way up north, they took us on a tour of the Miami campus. John pointed out the dormitory where he had stayed when he was an undersized running back for Ara Parseghian, and we saw the statue of John that was going to be in the circle of coaches outside the Stadium.

We looked forward to seeing John and Sandy again this year, but after Sandy told us a few weeks ago that doctors had decided he was not a candidate for a bone marrow transplant and that the only other hope was "a miracle," we knew it was fourth and long for John with no John Isenbarger to punt him out of trouble. Then Leslie made that phone call this morning and although I heard only her end of the conversation, I knew immediately what had happened. All I could say was, "God damn it."