Do You Love Football?! (7 page)

As time went on and I began to show more and more competence and reliability, Walt started to give me more challenging assignments. The biggest was cutting up game film and splicing together specific segments according to the types of plays and situations, and whether they were sideline or end-zone views. Now NFL teams and the bigger college programs have digital-imaging equipment that makes this process a whole lot easier and less time-consuming. Back then you had to do it by hand, which took so much longer, even when you knew what you were doing. I learned how to work the splice machine by watching Mike Casteel, a graduate assistant on defense. I became instantly hooked.

Any time of day or night you could find me in the football offices at the Stokley Athletic Center watching film of our games and practices. I'd make cut-ups of pass patterns so I could see a particular play over and over and over. I'd take notes of what Walt would say to the quarterbacks during meetings, and then I'd read them while watching the corresponding play on film. Reading and watching. Watching and reading. Over and over and over.

I did it to enhance my learning. I also did it because whenever I rode in a car with Walt or whenever he invited me to his house for dinner, he would quiz me about football. Our typical conversation would start out about the weather, then maybe shift to his family, then to life in general. At some point, though, I knew Walt was going to get down to business and say, "Okay, Jon, take me through 64 Stay Meyer." It's a pass play that breaks down like this: 64 is the protection, Stay tells the full-back to stay in and block, and Meyer is a basic shallow crossing route.

"How do you coach it?" Walt would ask. "Tell me about the pattern."

The thought of that next car ride or next dinner at Walt's motivated me to make sure I also had a complete understanding of 256 Z Shack and 88 Blue and Green Rip and any other play he might ask me about. Because he was going to ask questions and he was going to find out things I didn't know and he was going to make me get the answers. It was a fantastic learning process, but I was very nervous because Walt was legendary for putting you on the spot with those questions and then humiliating you if you didn't know the answers. That was pressure. "If you're going to talk to the quarterback, you'd better know what the hell you're talking about," Walt would tell me.

"If you're going to help me on game day, you'd better know what I'm talking about."

I'd stay in the offices all day and all night if I had to, because I was on a mission. I wanted to be good. I wanted to be Walt. I wanted to call the plays. I wanted to have that big office he had.

One year Army had ripped us running the wishbone, which is a triple-option offense, and Walt told me to take the film of that game and put together one cut-up of every time they used a veer-block scheme and another cut-up of every time they used a loop-block scheme. There was just one problem: I didn't know what either scheme looked like. Walt didn't have the time to explain them to me, so I found another assistant coach who did,

Phil Fullmer. He pointed out that veer and loop schemes are two ways of blocking the point of attack and that the quarterback makes reads as he comes down the line before deciding which of the three options to use: keeping the ball to run it himself, handing it to the fullback or pitching it to the tailback. If the defensive end goes outside, the fullback gets the handoff. If the end slants inside, the quarterback will keep running down the line and read the outside linebacker to decide whether to pitch to the tailback, which he'll do if the linebacker attacks the quarterback. If the linebacker goes outside, he'll keep it and try to turn the corner. The blocking scheme revolves around how the offensive tackle on the side the play is headed gets to the middle line-backer. You can loop outside, around the end, or veer block, which means the tackle comes down inside the end. Either way, he's not going to make contact with the end because that's the quarterback's primary read.

All I had to do after Coach Fullmer's thorough explanation was recognize both blocking schemes on film, which back then wasn't easy for me. Splicing what might have taken an experienced coach forty-five minutes to do took me four hours. I didn't care. The only thing that mattered was that when Walt came in the next morning it was done. I was always nervous when he would put the film on the projector and turn it on. It meant so much to me when he would say, "It's a good cut-up, Jon."

One thing that made pulling those all-nighters a little easier for me than it might have been for someone else was the fact that I didn't require much sleep. My mom and dad will tell you that as a little kid I was always up way before the crack of dawn watching TV or playing board games that usually related to sports in some way. As long as I can remember, I've never slept too much, maybe three or four hours at the most. I've been able to stay up late and still get up early and still feel pretty fresh. It's almost always dark when my alarm clock goes off and I start my day. My wife and three boys are still sleeping as I quietly slip out the back door and head to work. Sometimes the only things awake at that hour are the wild animals outside.

When I was in college I would often spend the whole night reading Rolling Stone magazine from cover to cover. Or I'd write letters to anyone I could think of. Or I'd hang out at Timothy's, a bar located three blocks from my apartment and owned by Tony Vitale, a running back who played for my father at Dayton (number twenty-seven, by the way). At one point I thought I had a sleeping disorder and I saw a lot of doctors. I'd be thinking, Man, I've got to be tired. Damn it, I can't sleep; I'm going to be exhausted tomorrow. I tried sleeping pills. I even saw a hypnotist one time when I thought about-but never acted upon-being hypnotized so I could sleep more.

Finally I met a doctor who told me, "You have nothing wrong with you. Your physical is fine. You have a gift. There aren't a lot of people who can function perfectly well on minimal sleep. You can, so take advantage of it. You need to find something to do with your free time."

I started collecting baseball and football trading cards. I had volumes of cards that I organized by each player's name and card brand. Then I'd pull out a collector's magazine to see how much my cards were worth, and I'd file the amount with each one. I'd be on my way to becoming a millionaire as I was awake in the middle of the night. I was like Rain Man. On visits to my parents' home in Tampa, I'd get up in the middle of the night and drive to the beach. I'd set up my beach chair in the sand and listen to the crashing waves from the Gulf of Mexico, or I'd just walk around thinking of something to do.

At Tennessee I had plenty to do. If I wasn't already in the office from all day, I'd come to work in the middle of the night.

If we played a game, the developed film would be delivered in big orange boxes to Stokley at about nine-thirty or ten o'clock at night. My job would be to splice together the sideline shots of each play on one reel and the end-zone shots on another. The coaches would walk in at six-thirty, seven o'clock in the morning, and everything would be done. It would be as if Santa Claus and his elves came during the night and delivered the film that way.

"That's a hell of job, Jonny," the assistant coaches would say "Yeah, you know, I don't sleep very much," I'd say.

Pretty soon Walt would pile six of those big orange boxes of film on my desk and say, "Let's look at these plays . . . Let's look at this team . . . And after you cut 'em up, we'll look at 'em." It was easy for me to get everything done in the middle of the night because it was quiet. There was nobody bothering me. I'd put my headphones on, listen to a little rock and roll and go to work. I had the best of both worlds: I learned on my own while cutting up the film and then I got to watch the cut-ups with a master. Before I hooked up with Walt I barely knew that film existed.

At Tennessee I was watching professionally made 16-millimeter footage with a sideline and end-zone view of each play. I was watching film of every practice and every drill, as well as of every game. We had 16-millimeter film at Dayton, but we didn't have the kind of budget to film anything besides our games, and the only view we had was from the sideline.

Walt probably wasn't the greatest recruiter in the world at that time, because instead of putting in all the time and travel it took to recruit, he was always in his office watching film. Sometimes he'd be checking out the latest offensive innovations that the 49ers had or Army's veer and loop schemes or San Diego State's unstoppable passing game or Alabama's unbelievable red-zone attack. The man I considered to have the greatest mind in football was always studying the game inside and out in search of something that might stimulate thought about ways he could make his own offense better. He couldn't wait to get his hands on any game or cut-up from any team he could and begin dissecting it for even the tiniest bit of information that might trigger something in his mind.

I'd never seen anyone who loved to study film like Walt did. He'd watch those reels over and over and over for hours upon hours upon hours. "San Diego State threw for nine hundred yards in three games; watch these three games," he'd tell me. "Geez, you've got to look at this red-zone attack of Alabama."

We had a defensive graduate assistant named Jack Sells who worked for Ron Zook. Ron is the greatest recruiter of all time, so as a GA, Jack was always recruiting, trying to make a name for himself as a recruiter. He excelled at that. He'd get guys to come in on visits. He'd sign guys and strut his stuff and Coach Majors loved him. Me? I was just studying film. I was going to be like Walt. Jack was going to be like Zook. In fact, the other coaches and GAs used to call me "Little Walt" and they used to call Jack "Little Zook." Both are great coaches. They were just different at that time. There are a lot of different ways to skin a cat, man.

There are a lot of different ways to scheme a front, too. It's like fishing in the Gulf of Mexico. You can use different bait for different fish and catch certain fish in shallow water and certain fish out where it's deeper. No matter which way you choose, you can have a hell of a day fishing.

On game day I sat in the press box, right next to Walt Harris. I was responsible for watching out for very specific things from the defense and relaying what I saw to Walt. Different tendencies. Reminders of what we planned to do against certain fronts and coverages. I was just an extra set of eyes for him in the box, but I never actually talked to Walt during a game. For one thing, he was on a headset and I wasn't. For another, he didn't want anything to disrupt his train of thought while he was calling plays. I communicated with him through those little yellow sticky Post-it notes. Whenever I saw something I thought Walt should know about, I would write it down as fast as I could and stick the note in front of him.

In my first year at Tennessee, we were playing Auburn, whose coach at the time was Pat Dye. Auburn was always a bitch to play-Pat's winning percentage was .721 in twelve seasons-and this game was no exception. We had a freeze play, where the quarterback would give a hard count and if he pulled the defense offside, the center would snap the ball, the quarterback would take a knee, and we'd get a free five yards. If the defense didn't jump offside, the quarterback would proceed with a different type of snap count and then run an actual play that he had also called in the huddle along with the "freeze." Auburn's defensive linemen were getting off on the count pretty fast, so I wrote down "Freeze play?" on one of my Post-its and stuck it in front of Walt. Sure enough, the next words Walt spoke into his microphone were, "Let's go with the freeze play." Auburn jumped off-side and we got a five-yard gain.

We still ended up getting beat 34-8, but I was feeling pretty good about making that small, positive contribution. I remember driving home from Auburn that night with some of the other GAs, and as soon as we made a bathroom stop, I found a pay phone to call my father. "Did you see that time Auburn jumped offside?" I said, my voice rising with excitement. "I gave Coach Harris a reminder on that play."

The next year, when we played Auburn in Knoxville, I was watching the free safety's depth on play-action passes on crossing routes. I noticed that he was pretty shallow, and I thought that it would allow one of our faster receivers, Terence Cleveland, to get to the post against him. I gave Walt a Post-it that said, "DP8 Go? Check the post." That was a shorter way of saying, "Draw-Pass 8 Go and look for the post route." Walt called the play, and Cleveland caught the ball for a big gain in our 20-20 tie.

Johnny Majors was in a pretty good mood when we watched film the next day. The moment the big pass to Terence appeared on the screen, my heart started beating fast with anticipation. "That's a good call, Walt," Coach Majors said. "That’s a good job." I would have been satisfied if it ended right there, but then Coach Harris said, "Jon called that." Coach Majors walked over to where I was sitting, gave me a pat on the back and said, "Attaboy!" That was a highlight of my career. That was one of the greatest days of my life.

I'll never forget Walt for giving me credit on that play. There are a lot of people in his position who wouldn't have done that.

There are a lot of people in his position who would have sat there and said, "Thanks, Coach."

It didn't take long for me to discover that coaching wasn't just jogging out there on the field, waving to the crowd with your sweat gear on or yelling at officials. It wasn't that at all. The most important lesson I learned at Tennessee was that you have to have tremendous respect for the game and for the details of the game. Anyone can look and act like a coach, but to actually be one means being able to recognize that this is a good play against this front; this is a bad play against this front. This is a good player; this is a horrible player. This is a defensive guy we should go after with our play calling; this is a guy we should stay away from. These are the rules of recruiting, the lifeblood of your program.

There is just so much to learn about football and there is a never-ending amount of information out there. The respect that I gained for the profession and the knowledge I was beginning to acquire only fueled me to work more hours and learn new plays. I had a wonderful feeling of accomplishment. I felt like I learned a new language. My chest stuck out a little further. I was more confident. I had a sense of belonging.