Baker City native Bobb McKittrick earns posthumous Pro Football Hall honor

Baker City native Bobb McKittrick, the offensive line coach behind one of pro football’s great dynasties, will receive a posthumous Award of Excellence from the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, this June.

McKittrick will be honored June 24-25, with his family set to attend the cocktail dinner and awards luncheon and accept the award on his behalf. The Hall established the Awards of Excellence in 2022 to recognize the people who shaped the game from behind the scenes, and McKittrick is one of three assistant coaches selected for the 2026 class, along with Mike Westhoff and Ted Cottrell. This year’s assistant-coach honorees bring the total recognized in that category to 17 in the program’s first five years.

For Baker County, the honor reaches far beyond football. Robert Oran McKittrick was born in Baker on Dec. 29, 1935, attended Baker public schools and graduated from Baker High School as valedictorian in 1954. He spent his early childhood in Baker City before his family moved to a ranch in Bowen Valley, a local path that began with school achievements and 4-H-type discipline and led all the way to the sport’s biggest stage.

McKittrick played football at Oregon State University, where he helped the Beavers win a Pacific Coast Conference title and earn a Rose Bowl berth in 1956. He later coached at Oregon State from 1961 through 1964, followed Tommy Prothro to UCLA, worked with the San Diego Chargers and then joined the San Francisco 49ers in 1979. He served as the 49ers’ offensive line coach for 21 seasons, through 1999, and helped guide the franchise to five Super Bowl victories: XVI, XIX, XXIII, XXIV and XXIX.

The 49ers say McKittrick was one of only four coaches who were part of all five of the team’s championship seasons. In 1999, the franchise established the Bobb McKittrick Award for the offensive lineman who best reflects his courage, intensity, sacrifice, dedication, excellence and commitment. That tribute still links today’s 49ers linemen to a coach whose standards were forged far from the NFL spotlight, in Baker City classrooms, along Baker County roads and at Oregon State.

McKittrick died March 15, 2000, in San Jose, California, at age 64. His recognition also follows the 2023 Paul “Dr. Z” Zimmerman Award from the Pro Football Writers of America for lifetime achievement as an assistant coach, adding another national honor to a legacy that began in Baker and helped shape a championship era in San Francisco.