Bill Conkright - Coaching Career

Coaching Career

Conkright remained with the Rams through the 1945 season, when the team won the NFL championship. Rams owner Dan Reeves moved the team to Los Angeles after the season, but Conkright decided to stay in Cleveland, where he and his family lived. He took a job as a scout and coach for the Cleveland Browns, a team that was to start play in 1946 in the new All-America Football Conference (AAFC).

Conkright was joined by five former Rams players who switched to the Browns when the Rams moved, including center Mike Scarry, tackle Chet Adams and backs Gaylon Smith, Tommy Colella and Don Greenwood. Before the 1946 season started, Reeves sought an injunction in federal court to prevent Adams from signing with the Browns and force the tackle to honor his contract with the Rams. Adams argued that his contract described a team in Cleveland, and the move to Los Angeles invalidated it. Then acting as an agent for the Rams, Conkright had signed Adams to a new contract in October of 1945. Conkright was named as a defendant in the suit, which was decided in August in Adams's favor.

Conkright spent a year as Cleveland's end and center coach under head coach Paul Brown as the team won the 1946 AAFC championship. While with the Browns, he coached ends Mac Speedie and future Pro Football Hall of Fame member Dante Lavelli, who he praised for his "uncanny way of getting into the open" to receive passes from quarterback Otto Graham.

Conkright signed as an end and center coach for the AAFC's Buffalo Bills in April of 1947. In moving to the Bills, he rejoined Tom Stidham, his old head coach at Oklahoma. Stidham was working as the Bills' line coach. Conkright convinced the Bills to put into place Brown's version of the T formation offense, and the team improved in the 1947 and 1948 seasons. The Bills advanced to the 1948 AAFC championship, but lost the game to the Browns.

Conkright was hired as an assistant coach by the Baltimore Colts in 1949, and spent one season with the team. He took a job as an end and center coach for Mississippi State College in 1950 and spent two seasons there.

After five years away from football, Conkright in 1957 became a defensive line coach at the University of Houston. Two years later, he was named the head football coach at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas. In three seasons as coach there, his football team did not have a winning season and posted an overall win-loss-tie record of 6–25–1.

Conkright resigned as Austin's head coach late in November 1961. The following April, he was hired by the Oakland Raiders of the American Football League (AFL) as defensive line coach and director of player personnel on the staff of head coach Marty Feldman. Following a 2–10 season in 1961, the Raiders opened the 1962 season with five straight losses, leading to Feldman's dismissal and his replacement by Conkright as interim head coach on October 16, 1962. The Raiders finished the season with a 1-13 record under Conkright, and he was replaced in January 1963 by Al Davis.

After his firing by the Raiders, Conkright joined the coaching staff of the AFL's Houston Oilers. He was an assistant for the Oilers in 1963 and 1964.