POCATELLO — Mike Calley, an Idaho State Hall of Fame linebacker, vividly remembers one of those famous “player-coach” confrontations with Jim Koetter back in the 1980s.

It was in Ogden, Utah, the Bengals were playing rival Weber State and Calley was supposed to blitz the quarterback while a safety was going to pick up his receiver in the secondary. But the safety didn’t cover the receiver, who caught a pass and turned it into a touchdown.

“I was greeted when I came to the sideline,” Calley said of his encounter with Koetter, then the Bengals head coach. “He said, ‘So we’re not going to make a play today,’” recalled Calley. “I tried to explain that hey, I was supposed to go in on a blitz, and he just said again, ‘So we’re not going to make a play today.’ In my opinion, he made his point. Yeah, blitz, but make sure your guy is covered.”

Later in that same game, the blitz was on again, but this time Calley knocked his receiver off his route before he rushed the quarterback. ISU intercepted the pass and returned it for a touchdown.

“I was greeted (by Koetter) again — and I got one of those little smiles,” recalled Calley.

There were a lot of those kind of stories shared about Koetter after the 87-year-old coaching icon passed away at his home Wednesday in Pocatello. They were all consistent in message: Jim Koetter was a tough, demanding coach who made you a better football player — and more importantly, a better person.

“Coach Koetter had very high expectations for his players and his coaches,” said Warren Whitaker, a longtime coach and teacher at Highland High School who worked with Koetter near the end of his career. “He raised the bar for everyone. You were expected to meet that standard. In doing so, he made everyone around him better.”

Koetter put together one of the most impressive coaching resumes of any football coach in Eastern Idaho history. A native of McCook, Neb., he played football at the local junior college before transferring to Idaho State, where he played wide receiver in 1958 and 1959. He also competed on the track team and was inducted into the ISU Athletic Hall of Fame in 1985.

After graduation, he coached at Aberdeen High School for two years before taking a job as an assistant at the newly opened Highland High School. He coached under Ron Anderson for two seasons, then took over the struggling Ram program and turned it into an enduring dynasty, winning two state titles and posting a 102-49 record during his 14 seasons at the high school on the hill.

His 1972 and 1973 teams at Highland are still considered among the best to ever play the high school game in Idaho. They featured quarterback Mike Falash, who was recruited by Notre Dame, and star running back Larry Kemp.

At Notre Dame’s request, Koetter sent tape of Falash to Irish coaching legend Ara Parseghian for his review. Upon return of the tape, Parseghian included a note that said Highland was the best coached high school team he’d ever seen.

Then Koetter joined Dave Kragthorpe’s coaching staff at Idaho State University, where the Bengals went from an 0-11 season the year before Kragthorpe and staff arrived, and won a national championship two seasons later. Koetter was elevated to head coach after Kragthorpe’s departure in 1983 and took Idaho State to its last NCAA post-season appearance that year.

After his dismissal from ISU in 1987, Koetter took over a Pocatello High School football program that had been mired in the depths of Idaho’s large school competition for over a decade. Two years later, he led the then-Indians to a state championship, then added two more state titles at Poky in 1990 and 1992.

Although he turned over the head coaching post at Pocatello High School to son Brent after the 1992 season, Koetter continued as an assistant, helping to lead the program to another state title in 1994. He then continued to assist Brent back at Highland High School and the Rams added some more state titles to their trophy case.

“Jim was very adaptive,” said Don Neves, who coached with Koetter at Highland and later served as assistant principal and athletic director at the school. “He could look at kids and pretty much determine what position they would be beneficial at for the team. In the course of a game, he could change a game plan. The other thing, too — he took a bunch of us young kids — Scott Thornley, Terry Hopkins, Chris Frost, Pal Sartori, myself, and molded us into what he needed. He coached us, taught us to be good football coaches, and to be good people.”

The list of young coaches that Koetter mentored is seemingly endless. Gino Mariani played quarterback under Koetter at Idaho State, then served as an assistant coach under him at Pocatello High School. Mariani eventually went on to coach four state championship football teams at Highland.

“I learned everything from Jim Koetter,” Mariani said in an Idaho State Journal column that ran shortly after his departure as Highland’s head coach. “I was a sponge. I took everything he taught me, then I put my own stamp on it. I learned from Jim, and that was a lot to learn.”

Dick Kaiser, a longtime football coach and college sports administrator, joined the Idaho State coaching staff in 1980, at the same time that Koetter came aboard.

“He was obviously a colleague, but to me, I viewed him as a mentor and someone I could trust to be straight with me,” said Kaiser. “I was only 30 years old at the time and Jim helped me out a lot. I’d often go and talk to ‘Big Jim’ about coaching styles, philosophies and various schemes. I would often bounce things off Jim from a defensive point of view to see how he might attack them offensively. He had a brilliant football mind and talking to him was like looking into the encyclopedia of how to coach football.”

All that football knowledge was certainly not lost on Koetter’s two sons, Dirk and Brent, who both starred at Highland, played on the ISU national championship team, and went on to outstanding coaching careers of their own.

“One of the pieces of furniture in the Koetter house was a 16-millimeter projector,” said Neves. “Not only did he use it, but Dirk was there, too, and Brent. That was kitchen table fodder.”

When Dirk was a budding 26-year-old offensive coordinator at the University of Texas El-Paso back in the 1980s, a reporter asked him where he got all of his sophisticated offensive knowledge at such a young age. His response?

“At the kitchen table.”

A few decades later during an emotional press conference in 2016 to announce his five-year contract as head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Dirk recalled that 16-millimeter projector and the role it played in his childhood dreams of being a football coach.

“I grew up wanting to be my dad from the time I was very little,” said Dirk at the press conference. “My dad coached every sport — football, basketball, track. I saw what that was like from the time I was tiny. In those days, that (coaching) was lining the fields, cutting the grass, fixing the helmets, washing the uniforms, 16-millimeter film on the kitchen table. Long hard days, JV games, varsity games, weight room, teaching guys how to squat. Buried in a basement. Playbooks, notepads, napkins, plays all over the place. Every coaching book ever written was in our basement.”

Wherever “Big Jim” or “the American,” two nicknames that were attached to Koetter in deference to his commanding presence, went, his coaching style remained the same.

“We go back to when I was a junior in high school, he was my football coach at Aberdeen High School,” said Thornley, who coached with Koetter for 15 years at Highland. “I’ve known him since I was 16 years old. He stayed the same — he stayed true all the way through. His vision was to be successful no matter what hand you were dealt. Dealing with high school or college kids, you try to get the most out of them. Be successful, make them successful. I think for the most part, it was mission accomplished.”

Sometimes that required some quick adjustment in lifestyle. Chris Frost, who went on to a long and successful coaching career at Highland, was still a student at Highland when Koetter noticed he was heading out of the gym in baseball spikes. Koetter stopped him rather forcefully and asked him pointedly what value baseball was going to be to his football career. The next thing Frost knew he was running for Koetter’s track team.

“That afternoon I was running the 4 by 400 relay,” Frost recalled. “That was a distance race to me, that wasn’t a sprint.”

While Koetter could be disarmingly abrupt, he also had a lighter side. Glenn Alford, the longtime sports information director at Idaho State, recalled the Bengals were having a walk-through at Bronco Stadium on a cold, dark and dreary afternoon in advance of a game against Boise State.

“Jim didn’t like what he was seeing about concentration, so he said, ‘OK, we’re going to do this again,’” Alford recalled. “Maurice Sims, a linebacker, said, ‘Coach, it’s cold and flu season.’ Koetter thought a minute and said, ‘OK, everybody in.’ Afterwards, half to me and half to himself, Jim said, ‘I love that Maurice Sims.’”

Koetter’s departure leaves another void in a group of about a dozen Pocatello luminaries who gathered on a regular basis for golf for over 20 years.

“Jim was like a second father to me,” said Ned Bell, who played and coached under Koetter at Highland and was part of that high-profile golfing group. “He was intelligent, super intelligent. And a helluva motivator. I wanted to play my heart out for him.”

Jim is survived by his wife of 68 years, Barbara, his sons Dirk and Brent, his daughter Jill Latimer of Pocatello and their families. A memorial service will be held Tuesday, Feb. 25, at 12:30 p.m. at Wilks Funeral Home in Chubbuck, with a reception following.

The family has created the Jim and Barbara Koetter Scholarship Fund to help provide scholarships for league and equipment fees for economically disadvantaged youth. Donations may be sent to the Idaho Youth Sports Commission, Attention Taryn Sorrell, 5437 Kimball Drive, Chubbuck, ID 83202.