And now there are two.
Cabot Panthers football coach Mike Malham, in the middle of his 38th and final season on the sidelines at the Class 7A school, won his 300th game Oct. 12 at Panther Stadium when the Panthers beat Little Rock Central 41-21.
Malham is now 300-137-4 prior to his team’s game against Bryant on Friday. He joins former longtime Barton coach Frank McClellan as the only two coaches in Arkansas high school football history to win at least 300 games. McClellan won 367 games during his 38-year career at the east-Arkansas school.
Malham announced prior to the season that he would retire at the end of the 2018 season.
During his tenure at Cabot, Malham has won two state championships — beating Rivercrest to win the 1983 Class AAA title and beating Fort Smith Southside in 2000 to win the Class AAAAA state title.
Malham’s Panthers have also played in three other state-title games — in 1997, 1998 and 2013 — and also made the state semifinals 11 times and won 15 conference championships.
Malham had 297 wins entering the season. The Panthers won easily against both Pine Bluff and El Dorado but then struggled, losing four consecutive games until finally beating Central.
“It’s been so long since, it feels like the first win,” Malham said after the Central game. “The last four weeks have been tough. It’s a good feeling.”
After the win, Cabot Mayor Bill Cypert read a proclamation declaring Oct. 13-19 as Mike Malham Week in Cabot. Cabot Athletic Director Rob Coleman presented Malham with a commemorative football, signifying his 300th victory.
Malham said he wishes the 300th win had happened earlier in the season.
“I wish it would have happened a long time ago; then it could have been forgotten,” he said. “We’re just trying to win ballgames so we can get into the playoffs.”
Malham tried to downplay the significance of the 300th win because he is trying to get his team into the playoffs.
“We’ve got a good football team, but everybody in this conference is good,” he said, referring to the 7A-Central. “Playing in the toughest conference in the state, you’ve got to be ready to play every Friday night. It’s tough getting wins. The last three weeks, we lost one in overtime and a couple in the final seconds of the game, and we finally got over the hump.”
Former longtime Cabot athletic director Johnny White, who worked with Malham for close to 30 years, said he is proud of what his friend has accomplished.
“His program is tremendous because it’s about discipline and repetition,” White said. “We could not have won the games we’ve won without him in charge. He beat teams that were so much better than ours. He did this by controlling the game, and he kept possession of the ball. We played some great teams with tremendous offenses, but they didn’t get the ball that much.
“We won because our kids knew how to work hard, and they had so much discipline. His weight room was never out of position. Nothing was out of place. His equipment room, if you got something out of there, he’d come and ask where something was. That is the way his football team was.”
Former Cabot Junior High South assistant football coach Jerry “Bruiser” Pryor worked for Malham in his program for seven years. Pryor also played for McClellan at Barton during their 63-game winning streak, which is a state record. Pryor said Malham and McClellan are both similar in their coaching methods.
“Neither one of them was complicated at all,” Pryor said. “The Wing T (McClellan’s offense) and the Dead T (Malham’s offense) — there are a lot of similarities there. What we did do was that every step that even the quarterbacks and the running backs and linemen took had to be the exact way every time. They were perfectionists from that standpoint. That was a big deal.”
Pryor said that even though Malham and McClellan didn’t run their teams’ respective defenses, they both had influences over them.
“It was what they wanted,” Pryor said.
Malham, who was inducted into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame in 2015, said he’s been surrounded by good people during his 38 years in Cabot.
“I’ve had great assistant coaches and great players,” he said. “One guy can’t do it all. I’ve had great support from the administration. If we need something, they get it for us. It’s not a one-man deal. It’s a team effort. It takes everybody — the players, the coaches, the administrators — to have a good football program.
I’ve been here for 38 years. You’ve got to win a couple, or you wouldn’t still be coaching.”
Malham started his coaching career at Jacksonville, where he was an assistant for three seasons before coming to Cabot in 1981, when the Panthers went 7-4.
“It’s been great here,” Malham said of living in Cabot. “I’ve raised my family here, and the support we’ve had over the past 38 years has been great.”
Malham and his wife, Alexis, have been married for 40 years. They have two children — daughter Lexi and son Matt. Matt Malham is an assistant coach for his dad. Matt and his wife, Whitney, have two children — daughter Molly, 5, and son Matthew, 2.
Staff writer Mark Buffalo can be reached at (501) 399-3676 or mbuffalo@arkansasonline.com.