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Bob Spoo, Former Football Coach At Eastern Illinois, Dies

CHICAGO (CBS) -- Bob Spoo, the former Hall Of Fame football coach at Eastern Illinois University, did Monday in Rockford, the university announced.

Spoo coached at Eastern for 25 seasons from 1986-2011. He came to EIU from Purdue, where he was the quarterbacks coach, mentoring  Mark Herrmann, Scott Campbell and Jim Everett, who all played in the National Football League.  He played that position for the Boilermakers, the cradle of quarterbacks, in the late 1950s.

Before arriving at Purdue, Spoo was the head football coach at Loyola Academy High School in Winnetka and an assistant coach at the University Of Wisconsin.

He finished his coaching career as the EIU leader in career wins with 144.  He was inducted into the Ohio Valley Conference Hall of Fame in 2012 and the Eastern Illinois Athletic Hall of Fame in 2015.

While at EIU, Spoo had seven players drafted and nine former EIU players appeared in an NFL game, including former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo and current San Francisco 49ers quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo.

Bob Spoo was 80-years-old. The cause of his death was not immediately released.

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