Do You Love Football?! (8 page)

By spring practice of my second year at Tennessee it all started to click for me mentally. I became really comfortable with the offense and more confident with my understanding of all aspects of it. There were still many things I didn't know, but by then I could tell the difference between a three technique and a five technique. I could draw all the fronts. I could draw all the coverages. I could install the passes and the protections in an elementary fashion for the young quarterbacks I was working with.

I could help them call the plays. I could teach them how to use the snap count and how to audible to a run or a pass. I could teach them the formations and protections and where they were supposed to go with the ball against the blitz. I was able to speak like an educated quarterback guy, and I liked that feeling.

I could get on the board or put acetates on the overhead projector and walk the quarterbacks through the different patterns.

I was able to do actual coaching with the scout team and the jayvee team. I got to be more productive on game day with Walt in the press box, more comfortable around him and maybe less intimidated.

The quarterback I spent the most time around was Sterling Hinton, a freshman who was on his way to becoming a starter by the end of my second year with the Volunteers. In the spring game he made a couple of right calls on audibles that we had worked on together. It was the first time that I could actually say I helped to accelerate a player's growth, and there was no better feeling in the world. I also spent a lot of time around Jeff Francis, the starting varsity quarterback, and Randy Sanders, his backup, who now is the offensive coordinator at Tennessee.

I'd be the buffer between Walt and the quarterbacks, because Walt was hard on those guys. He was just on their asses about everything-from carrying out their play-action fakes properly to looking someone in the eye when they shook hands.

"Everything you have to give, that's what we expect here," Walt would always say. "Don't let that be your claim to fame.

We expect that. That's part of the program."

Whenever the quarterbacks screwed up he would let them know. He was like Coach Knight in some ways. He was helping these guys become real men and great technicians and the best quarterbacks they could be, but he was always on their asses.

Mine, too. And we loved it. At night we'd go out for a beer and ask one another, "What did he call you today?"

I didn't have much of a social life at Tennessee. On Saturday nights during the season, if we weren't playing, I'd usually tune in one of Jay's games at Louisville on my car radio. I'd grab something to eat, maybe get a couple of beers, and just go off by myself to listen. I'd have a general idea of what segment of the AM dial the game was on, but I rarely got it on the first try. So I'd keep driving toward Louisville and driving up hills searching for the clearest signal I could find. When I found it, I'd pull over and hear the announcers call the action as Jay put up a ton of yards and a bunch of touchdowns on another opponent. Mentally I felt I was right there with him.

There was one game that Jay played that I didn't have to listen to on the radio. That was when he and the rest of the Louisville Cardinals came to Neyland Stadium in my second year at Tennessee. We were like twenty-five- or thirty-point favorites. The week leading up to that game was tough on me, hearing how our defensive coaches were going to get after Jay's ass. I had heard that kind of talk all the time as our defense prepared for other opposing quarterbacks, but none of those other opposing quarterbacks was my brother. When I talked with Jay on the phone that week and on the field in pregame warm-ups, all we did was wish each other good luck. I sure as hell wasn't going to say, "By the way, bro, the first time you drop back to pass, we're going to bring a corner from the short side to blow your brains out."

During the game, I couldn't help but root for Jay. Blood's thick, man. You want your brother to do well, even when you aren't on the same team. To that point, the last organized sport we had played together was youth baseball in Bloomington, Indiana. Jay had a couple of nice drives in the first half and it was a tight game at halftime. Ken Donahue, our defensive coordinator, was a little bit wary of the young scrapper from Tampa Chamberlain High School. But we got a lead and the Cardinals basically had no chance after that.

As kids, Jay and I were rivals. We would fight all the time, but I was so proud of him when he was tearing it up in college.

I still am. Jay is one of the top quarterbacks in Arena Football League history. When the Orlando Predators are at home or in Tampa, I'll usually drop whatever I'm doing and go watch him play. You talk about "Do you love football?" In Super Bowl XXXVII, he's in the press box on the headset with me the whole game, helping me to call plays. And then that night he's on a plane to Chicago to meet up with the Predators for the opening day of the Arena League.

Thankfully, I did take enough time for myself in 1987, just after my second year at Tennessee, to meet Cindy Brooks, who would become my wife. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. Cindy was a Volunteers' cheerleader at the time. She was a beautiful little blond Smoky Mountain girl from the hills of Tennessee. I knew all the cheerleaders. In my mind they were celebrities not just on campus but also throughout the Southeastern Conference.

Cindy had dated John Majors, son of Johnny Majors, for a long time. Then one day at work Todd Fugett, a friend and fellow GA, told me that Cindy and John had broken up.

"How do you know that?" I asked. "Because I went on a date with her."

I was totally stunned that my man Fugett could get a date with Cindy Brooks. I figured if he could do that, I at least had a chance to talk to her. About a week later I was out at a bar called The Last Lap, on the Cumberland Strip, where all the Tennessee students hang out. Cindy walked in with a couple of her friends. I went up to her and we started talking. Of course I was very nervous. She mentioned that she was having a party at her house the next weekend and she invited me to it.

"If you're serious about this, you can call me and invite me and I'll be there," I told her as I gave her my phone number.

She called me. I went to the party. We became very good friends. We started to date. I started to take a lot of heat around the office from Walt Harris and the other coaches.

Most of the heat actually came from Coach Majors, who could generate plenty of it at any given time. I never worried about the potential risks involved-about the possibility that John Majors could become upset that I was dating his former longtime girlfriend, and that, in turn, might somehow anger his father and I would be out of a job. It never happened, but I didn't care because it was worth the risk. I loved this girl. I would have sacrificed anything, professionally or otherwise, for our relationship to move forward. I knew I was in love with her.

I felt that we were going to get married, but first I had to fulfill my vision of what I needed to do to become a good coach. I had the beginnings of a quality education at Tennessee, but I needed to go apply what I learned and then I needed more knowledge.

I needed to pay a price to get it, which I knew would likely mean changing jobs and bouncing around the country.

I didn't want to be in a situation where I was luring anyone else into my vagabond lifestyle. My dad and mom were apart a lot during his coaching career, and I kind of wanted to make sure Cindy was willing to be a part of that existence. This is not nine-to-five. This is not punching a clock. This is a different way of life, and I wanted to give her a chance to make sure it was right for her, too. As a newlywed you obviously have to commit yourself to a relationship. I don't think you should get married, go on a three-day honeymoon and then go back to the facility to work all day and all night. I needed to complete my mission first-or at least get a running start on it. I was going to be like one of those monks. I was going to check in and I wasn't going to check out until I felt I was ready.

Normally, after the two-year stint as a GA you get a job and get on with your life. I was ready for the second part, but the first part proved a lot tougher than I ever thought it would be. I had trouble just getting an interview for a full-time college coaching position, let alone an offer. I thought for sure that somebody would want me on his staff. With Johnny Majors on my résumé? And Walt Harris? And Tennessee? How could I go wrong?

After we beat Indiana in the Peach Bowl at the end of my second season, I stayed in Atlanta-along with the rest of our coaches-to attend the annual American Football Coaches Association Convention. Walt introduced me to everyone he knew ("Hey, you got anything for this guy?"), but I couldn't get a sniff. I left telephone messages at colleges all over the country.

No one would return my calls.

Finally Walt lined up an interview for me at East Tennessee State. I thought I did well, much better than I had done with Walt a couple of years earlier, because I was more knowledgeable and felt a lot more confident. But the job went to someone else. I went back to Tennessee feeling totally depressed.

Although my GA status had expired, Coach Majors offered to keep me on as a "volunteer" coach. Not a lot of GAs received that opportunity, so I felt good that the people in charge of one of the top college football programs in the nation thought I brought some value to their staff- especially when I didn't have any other options at that point. There still wasn't any pay involved, but Coach Majors lined up part-time work for me in what then was the new Thompson-Boling Assembly Center and Arena. I would help straighten up around the facility, set up chairs for concerts, that sort of thing. I wasn't going to give up the hunt for a full-time job coaching football, though.

I knew there had to be another school out there willing to give me an interview. Sure enough, with Walt's help, I found it Southeast Missouri State University, a Division II program looking for a quarterbacks coach.

I made the six-hour drive from Knoxville to Cape Girardeau, Missouri, and was right on time for my 8 A.M. appointment with Bill Maskill, the head coach. I found out later that even though Bill thought I came across well in the interview, he needed to do a little research before pulling the trigger. He called my high school coach. He called my college coaches, who told him I was a "football junkie." Then he made what, from my perspective, was the best call of them all-to Gary Horton, who once again came to the rescue.

"Billy, if you don't hire him, in two years you will wish you did," Gary told him. "This guy will climb the ladder."

That was all Coach Maskill needed to hear. At twenty-four years old, I officially became a full-time college football assistant coach. I had a $15,000 a year salary. I had a business card.

I had everything I could ever want at that stage of my life.

The only problem was that I was hired in April and I wouldn't start getting paid until July 1, when my one-year contract took effect. Southeast Missouri State didn't have enough of an athletic budget to pay me any sooner than that, but I wanted to start coaching right away. I was ready to get together with Phil Meyer, the offensive coordinator, and begin working on the offense that we would be installing for the 1988 season. That meant, from April until July, I had to work a part-time job that the university arranged for me with the Cape Girardeau Public School System. For $6 an hour, twenty hours a week, I was part of a crew that went around town ripping up old carpeting being replaced in schools. It was a bitch of a job, but I had to eat and pay the $150 a month rent for the efficiency apartment I moved into after briefly living in a room that the university paid for at a Budget Motel.

Cape Girardeau gets pretty hot in the spring and summer. It gets even hotter when you're on the top floor of a four-story building, ripping out carpet. Sometimes we had to take chisels and dig the rubber padding off the floor. After a while my hands looked like they were just rotted out. As I ripped through those carpets I kept reminding myself of the only reason I was putting myself through so much abuse. It wasn't for any short-term survival. I could get a job anyplace I wanted for that. It was for the future, for Coach Gruden. I'd be on my hands and knees, ripping and chiseling, and telling myself, Just keep at it, Coach Gruden. You're getting there, Coach Gruden.

But the job wasn't finished after you pulled up all the carpet and whatever was left of the padding. Far from it. You had to toss those pieces out of the windows, then go outside, pick them up, throw them into the back of a dump truck, and haul the pile to the dump. Talk about a nasty place. You'd see dead dogs and stinky-ass stuff everywhere.

I'd go home, take a shower and go to the office where Phil Meyer and I would talk about our offense. Phil also had worked with Walt Harris at the University of Illinois, so with that in common we were able to communicate very well.

Phil let me put in a lot of good pass plays that I had learned at Tennessee. Remember, I was Mr. Splice, so I had all of this beautiful, 16-millimeter practice film and game film that came with me from Tennessee. I had cut-ups, I had notes, I had all kinds of stuff for our quarterback, Jim Eustice. When you coach a quarterback you've got to explain what you want him to do. I could very easily explain those passes and those protections to Jim because I had explained them to Sterling Hinton at Tennessee.

Jim threw for 1,800 yards in leading us to a 5-1 record in what was then called the Missouri Intercollegiate Athletic Association, tying us for the conference championship. That was a one-win improvement in our MIAA record the previous season, as the program continued an upturn over some dreadful years from 1980 to 1985. Jim's performance kind of gave me momentum as a quarterback guy. Your players-how well they play, how many games you win-really distinguish a good coaching job from a poor one. I felt I helped Jim. He had some talent, but he was a junior college transfer who hadn't played much before that year and maybe, among the other coaches, he wasn't the most well liked prospect on the team when I got there. He didn't have much mobility. He made questionable decisions. But at the end of spring practice, he had done enough things right to begin winning over the whole coaching staff. When the games started, he got better and better and better.