Do You Love Football?! (5 page)

Then I come along and I'm getting a 2.0 and the teachers are calling my mom asking, "What's wrong with Jon?" There wasn't anything wrong with me. I struggled, but I wasn't dumb. Among the many things my mother understood quite well is that all kids, even siblings, are not the same. "Jon is different from Jim," she told my high school teachers. "He's doing the best he can. He's just not as good at algebra and geometry and social studies and chemistry."

Looking back, I probably could have applied myself more, but I hated those subjects. I hated every second I was in those classes. The only reason I liked going to some of them was maybe because I would be in there with a friend or a girl I liked.

I just had to grit my teeth, suck it up and find a way to get through it. I really had no choice but to get through it. My dad gave me more than a few lectures in which he pointed out that if I were serious about pursuing a career in coaching, I needed to go to college. And if I wanted to go to college, I had to pick up my grades in high school.

"Get your act together, son," he told me.

I played every sport, but football was always my favorite. I was a five-nine, 175-pound high school quarterback who couldn't throw the ball very well and who wasn't very fast. But I threw for a fair amount of yards. In fact, not long after the Super Bowl somebody told me that one of my passing records at South Bend Clay was broken during the 2002 season. Another thing that got broken was my neck. It happened on a late hit I received as a junior. That put me out for the rest of the season, and for a while I had to wear one of those big collars. I hated that thing. Jay would look at me and say, "Nice neck." Maybe that explains why the collar would conveniently disappear whenever my parents weren't around and reappear when they were.

My favorite player at the time was Doug Flutie. We were about the same size and pretty close in age, so I wanted to be like him. I saw him doing his thing at Boston College and for a fleeting moment I thought maybe I, too, could play at Oklahoma or one of those bigger schools. When I started seeing these guys at Notre Dame-how big and how fast they were, how they threw the ball and how I threw it-it was pretty obvious I wasn't going to get a scholarship to any major college. Still, I loved to play. I figured I could land a spot on some small college team, and if nothing else I'd at least have a lot of fun.

I was worried about my SAT score, but much to my surprise I ended up with a 1030, which is pretty darn good, especially for someone like me and with no preparation. It's amazing what you can do when you're motivated. I knew I had to do well on the SAT-while also picking up my grades a little bit-just to get into college and keep that coaching dream alive.

I wanted to go to a school where I would have the best chance to play quarterback, and to play right away. I was recruited by Dayton and I had visited Dayton. My intention always was to go to Dayton, but I felt maybe I had a better chance to play as a true freshman at an even smaller school. That was the main reason I enrolled at Muskingum College in New Concord, Ohio. I actually started a couple of games there as a freshman. After one year I decided that New Concord wasn't for me. It was a little too small. It was hard to get there and hard to get out of there. I called the guy who had tried to recruit me to Dayton, asked if there was any way I could transfer to UD, and I did.

I knew I'd probably be sacrificing playing time because it was going to be a much more competitive situation. Although Dayton was a Division III program at the time (it has since moved up to Division I-AA non-scholarship status), it had just won a national championship and had Division I facilities.

Without being disrespectful to Muskingum, Dayton was just a lot more like the programs I wanted to be in. Whether or not I could play there, I wanted to find out.

Whenever my brothers or I would visit my parents in Tampa during Thanksgiving or Christmas break, my mom-who taught second, third and fourth grades during her career-would ask us to stop by her class and see her kids. I'd read a segment of a book or just talk to them. She told her students all about her sons and what kind of little boys we were when we were their age. Making those visits was something we would do not only because our mother wanted us to, but also because it felt good to have a bunch of kids so excited to see us.

One time I watched my mom teach for a day. She was always very, very prepared and seemed very, very thrilled to be with her students-maybe even when that really wasn't the case. Maybe she didn't feel all that cheerful on a particular day, but she was always on her game, always on fire.

"Hello, kids!" she would say, greeting her class with the brightest and cheeriest voice you ever heard. "How's it going?"

Although I never had her for a teacher-with my dad gone all the time with football, my mom left her job for a while to raise us and then returned when we got to sixth and seventh grades-her approach with her students would go something like this: "You got an eighty-seven on that test. That's a good job. Next time get a hundred . . . Ninety-three! Nice job. You're getting there. You're going to get a hundred next time, aren't you?"

There really isn't a whole lot of difference between that and the way I might communicate with a player, like Keyshawn Johnson, who just helped us win a Super Bowl: "You played pretty good, Keyshawn. You had a heck of a year. Now you've got to be the most dominating sonofabitch ever. You can do that, can't you? You want that, don't you, Keyshawn?"

If there was an elementary schoolteacher who worked more hours than my mom, I'd like to meet him or her. She was grading papers until long after we went to bed. She was up at five o'clock in the morning every day, showing up for work two hours before her students got to class. I know, I know. Like mother, like son. A lot of the assignments she gave her students were creative assignments, which usually meant a lot of extra work for her. She had them writing hardbound books that she would sew together herself. The extent that my mom went to was far beyond the call of duty.

I probably worked out way too much for a third-string Division III college quarterback. I'd lift weights. I'd run. I'd carry a big bag filled with twelve footballs outside and throw them at different targets in my backyard-an old tire hanging from a tree branch or my T-shirt or the nylon mesh ball bag that I'd place in various spots in the grass. I'd make different kinds of throws-on the move, three-step drop, five-step drop, all the different setups that a quarterback does. My parents were in Tampa then. It gets really hot down here in the summer, especially when you're lifting and running and throwing three, four, five hundred balls a day like I was. I was devoted to it. As you can tell by now, if I was going to try anything, it would be full throttle. You don't get anything in life being half-assed.

But I never could get enough football. In the early 1980s, my brother Jay and I would hang out with my dad for about a month at the Bucs training camp. We would throw wide flares and check-downs to the backs during their individual drills or when players would be in town during the offseason working out voluntarily and there wasn't a quarterback around. I'll never forget throwing passes to James Wilder while Hugh Green covered him one-on-one. I'd throw a weak little pass and Hugh would say, "You'd better put some popcorn on that ball!" I would go around at night with my dad on bed check. When the Buccaneers made Blair Kiel, my old friend from Notre Dame, an eleventh-round draft pick in 1984, I spent even more time around One Buc Place in the summer hoping that Blair would make the team. He did for one season.

Being with my dad in that NFL environment was a lot like being with him during those years when he was at Notre Dame. I was having the time of my life. I felt I was on top of the world.

That is, until Phil Krueger, who was an assistant to then team owner and president Hugh Culverhouse, started chasing me out of practice. For some reason Phil just didn't like me being around the team. In 1982, my dad's first year with the Buccaneers and my freshman year at Dayton, I was visiting my parents on Christmas break. The NFL had a strike-shortened schedule that year and we were getting ready to play the Bears in what would be the last regular season game. If we win, we're in the playoffs. If we lose, we're out. If we make the playoffs, my dad gets a $6,000 playoff bonus, which means Mom's going to get a new screened-in porch. The Friday before the game, I went over to One Buc Place to watch practice, and Phil Krueger kicked me out. So I went up on the roof of the Hall of Fame Inn, the little hotel that was right next to the practice field, to watch the rest of the workout. Krueger sent a security guy to chase me out of there, too.

At the time, that was all I had outside of school-being a Bucs fan. I would wear my orange Bucs sweatshirt, my dad's Bucs coaching hat, and the Bucs turf shoes that I had gotten from kicker Bill Capece, because his were the only ones small enough to fit me. I thought of myself as a helper for the team.

Those were my guys. I loved them. And Phil Krueger wouldn't let me stand there for an hour. My dad couldn't say anything, of course, because Phil was the boss. I'm still mad at Phil for that.

One day in the summer before my sophomore year, I had walked in the house after working out for the fourth time that day. I was sweating. I was flexing. I was looking and feeling like a real stud, man. My brother Jay, who is three years younger, was getting ready to become a junior at Chamberlain High School, where he played quarterback. Jay is tall, six-two. He's about two hundred pounds. He has much more of the physical attributes that you want from a quarterback than I ever had. That's why I got so upset when I found him lying on the couch, watching MTV while munching on microwave popcorn and drinking soda.

"Why don't you get off your ass?" I yelled. "Go outside and work out! You're a bum! You're a BUM!"

If my scolding didn't get through to him, I figured Jay would take one look at me, see the benefits of all of my hard work and dedication and just be shamed right off that couch. He wasn't.

So I kept harassing him. I kept challenging him to do what I was doing-to invest the time and effort into making himself a better quarterback and a better athlete.

Finally Jay looked up at me and said, "You wanna race?"

"Yeah, I'll race you," I said.

I assumed it would be no contest. I was a college quarterback who was lifting, running and throwing three and four times a day. Jay was a high school kid who hadn't been off that couch all summer. We would go once around the block in our neighborhood, which was a mile. We were neck-and-neck while jogging practically the whole way. Then as we approached the final two-tenths of a mile, up Old Saybrook Avenue, Jay just left me.

He just disappeared like a shot and must have beaten me by 150 yards. I couldn't believe it. When I finally caught up to him he was doing the Rocky Balboa thing in the driveway, running in circles with his arms in the air. I was crushed.

Jay knew I couldn't throw a wet football very well because I have small hands. His hands are big, and he can throw beautiful spirals whether the ball is wet or dry. So at times when it rained he'd go outside with my bag of balls, take them out and start wiping them in the wet grass. "Hey, Muscle Boy!" Jay would yell to me in the house. "Hey, Slappo! You want to come out and throw some footballs? You can't, can you?" He wouldn't let up. He would just kill me and I didn't have much choice but to take it.

Jay would go on to become first-team all-state at Chamberlain. He would go on to the University of Louisville, where he was the all-time leading passer for a while for Howard Schnellenberger. Those were heights I knew I would never reach.

The athletic gap separating Jay and me just served as another reminder that if I wanted to be involved with football beyond college, I'd better take a good look at coaching-that is, after I made as much of a contribution as possible at Dayton. In three years I attempted a grand total of fifteen passes, completing six for thirty-six net yards with one interception. But I did rush for a touchdown in each of those three seasons. The commitment was driven purely by my love of the game.

I wasn't on an athletic scholarship, because Division III schools don't have any to give. From my freshman year my dad made sure that when I came home for the summer I was going to work to help pay for my education. One of the greatest jobs I ever had was the two months I spent working at Hooters on Hillsborough Avenue in Tampa, Florida. That was the second one in the entire chain. I called myself an "independent contractor," because I did a lot of different jobs. I shook wings-mild, medium or hot. I shucked oysters. I changed the kegs of beer. I wiped down tables. I mopped floors. Whatever they needed me to do. As a very proud Hooters alumnus, I still hang out with Ed Drosti, the main man in charge of the franchise, and the rest of the Hooters gang.

I had no problem with the thought of hanging up my helmet and cleats after my final game at Dayton. I knew I was never going to play this game professionally. I had learned at a fairly young age, in humbling fashion, that I was pretty average at best. I felt satisfied and fortunate that I had the chance to play a full four seasons in college. No regrets. No looking back.

Maybe other guys in that same situation would have kept chasing the dream of making it to the NFL as a player, would have looked around for a tryout camp somewhere, would have wasted a lot of time and energy and money pursuing something that was never going to happen-something that would leave them feeling frustrated and unfulfilled. I just kept my eye on what I felt was a much more realistic target, coaching, without worrying about the road not taken.

In the Dayton football media guide, players had to list their ambition in life. I put down that I wanted to be head coach at Michigan by the time I was thirty-nine. Don't think I'm going to reach that one. Why Michigan? Because at that time I was still that divorced-from-Notre Dame, pissed-off kid, so I wanted to go to Michigan and kick the hell out of Notre Dame. I really wanted to be the head coach at Notre Dame, but at that time I just couldn't make myself state that as an official goal.