CHAPTER 15

Looking for Work and Finding a Girl

CHUCK AMATO, WHO HAD BEEN a coach at FSU, told me, “When you get in the coaching business, it’s a job like any other job.”

I would come to discover that as a player, you don’t see things like you do when you are a coach. Because as a player you play or practice, and then you go back to school. You might have an hour meeting from time to time, then you would go home. A coach goes and watches more film after practice. A player tries to absorb strategy with little input. When you’re a coach, you’re trying to invent a strategy and get it ingrained into your players.

Bill Arnsparger turned over special teams to me my second year, and I helped the defensive backs coach, Mike Archer.

I have a lot to thank Coach Arnsparger for, since he gave me my first job forty-five days after I played my last college football game. The reality is that his wife, B.J., picked the graduate assistants out of the résumés that they had. I guess all the bridge nights that my mother shared with B.J. over the years helped me get my foot in the door.

Coach Arnsparger pushed me and gave me opportunities, advice, and often a hard time. He would write down everything in a spiral-bound notebook—a very detail-oriented man. Bill coached from 1950 to 1994, forty-four years of service and leadership to young men and to the game of football.

We won a Southeastern Conference Championship under Coach Arnsparger in 1986 and earned a spot in the Sugar Bowl against Nebraska.

To that point, LSU had gone 0–3 in bowl games with Coach Arnsparger at the helm. Going into this game, we were ranked No. 5, and Nebraska came in at No. 6. It was the third time in five seasons that the two teams had met in a bowl game. Nebraska had won all three games.

Adding to the storyline for that Sugar Bowl, Coach Arnsparger announced after our final game of the regular season against Tulane that he would be leaving LSU to become the athletic director at the University of Florida.

Sitting next to Coach Arnsparger on the bus before that Sugar Bowl game gave me my favorite memory of him. We talked about life, football, the upcoming game, and our futures—his as the Florida athletic director and mine as a full-time coach. I wished him good luck at Florida. I also told him that I could never root for the Gators.

We lost that bowl game, 30–15, and Bill moved on but continued to be my mentor and friend.

LSU selected the defensive coordinator, Mike Archer, to follow Coach Arnsparger as the head coach. Since we had just won LSU’s first SEC championship since 1970, the administration thought the best course of action would be to hire from within the staff to maintain continuity in the program.

Mike’s leadership skills were far different from Bill’s. Mike was carefree and engaging to everyone. He kept things light and very loose. He had great rapport with his players.

That’s when I got my first full-time job coaching the inside linebackers. Two years later, I coached the defensive backs. We had winning seasons in Archer’s first two seasons as the head coach, including an SEC championship in 1988.

Nevertheless, LSU had losing seasons in 1989 and 1990, prompting the school to fire Archer and his staff—including me—with two games to go in the 1990 season. In the coaching business, you’re only as good as your last championship. I became a member of John Gruden’s fictitious club, the FFCA—Fired Football Coaches Association.

I wanted my parents to hear from me before the news reached Florida. I called Dad and confirmed the rumors. I told him I needed to find a job. Then jokingly I asked him if he needed a partner. Though we both laughed, that wasn’t the last time that we would discuss that possibility.

During my period of unemployment, I became a “professional” golfer—at least that’s what I teased. Since I still had a contract with LSU that paid me through July of 1991, I played golf every day in Baton Rouge while I looked for my next job. Didn’t that constitute being a professional?

Following a golf game, fate entered my life at Superior Grill in Baton Rouge on a Thursday night in February of 1991.

While talking to a friend, I noticed a striking woman as she walked by. Upon her return, she passed us, and I pointed her out to Mike Clegg, my friend who was an LSU booster. Mike said, “You want to meet her?”

I responded quickly, “You bet.”

Through Mike’s introduction, we joined the table where she sat along with seven or eight women. We remained at their table the rest of the night.

I had an instant attraction to Mary Gayle Hamilton.

After talking at the table, we talked more in her car. I learned that Mary Gayle’s mom had cancer and was not doing well, so she was going through a tough time in her life.

We went out about a week later, sharing dinner at a bar. The next morning I left beignets, coffee, and flowers at her door, along with a note that explained the beignets and coffee were for her and the flowers were for her mom. She’d said that she couldn’t find the right guy. She didn’t like the way most guys treated girls. She wanted to find a Southern Gentleman. That made the last line of my note easy:

Chivalry is not dead!

We began dating regularly while I continued to look for work.

Since Dad was the singer and the creative one in the family, and Mary Gayle was an interior designer and completely creative, they hit it off immediately when they first met. Two peas in a pod. Dad wasn’t a man of many words, but the wink and the smirk told me he approved. They would always have something special between them.

At least my personal life appeared to have a future at that point, even if my professional life didn’t seem so promising. I couldn’t find a job. I didn’t have a lot of coaching friends because the LSU job had been my first, and I stayed there six years. My situation caused me to think about whether I should stay in coaching.

I interviewed with Jackie Sherrill, who had just accepted the head coaching job at Mississippi State, and Bill Belichick, who just became the head coach of the Cleveland Browns. I didn’t get either job, and at this point it was almost May.

Looking outside the box, I tried everything to find coaching jobs, and I even considered jobs not within the coaching ranks. That prompted me to reach out to Jack Nicklaus.

I’d always had a good relationship with Jack, so I called him and told him my situation.

He’d just opened up Golden Bear Sports Management, an endeavor that also included Steve. We talked, and they were interested in hiring me. I felt as though I’d found a perfect fit if I was going to get out of coaching. But my heart told me I wanted to remain on the sideline.

I also considered going to work with my father. After all, Dad had been a successful businessman and now was on his own as a food broker.

I wrote to Dad, telling him how I admired what he’d done in the food service business and that if I could learn the business from him, I would look forward to it. Dad considered my proposition but expressed to me his opinion that he thought I might be better served by continuing to chase my dream. His advice reinforced what my heart and gut were telling me to do—stay in coaching.

The only way at that time to stay in coaching was to volunteer at a top program like USC, Oklahoma, or Notre Dame.

Notre Dame had hired Gary Darnell to be its defensive coordinator prior to the 1990 season. He’d been the interim head coach at the University of Florida in 1989, and before that the Gators’ defensive coordinator. Bill Arnsparger had been the Florida athletic director, so Gary knew Coach Arnsparger. And via a Coach Arnsparger connection, I got an interview at Notre Dame in May. They offered me the last open volunteer position on head coach Lou Holtz’s staff!

I talked to Dad about the offer. Being Catholic, both of us had always dreamed about me going to Notre Dame. Keeping emotion out of the conversation, Dad assumed the voice of reason, presenting different considerations regarding the job. An important question for me pertained to how coaching would affect my relationship with Mary Gayle. He definitely could relate to my concern, but he reminded me, as he often did, to keep my priorities in order. Dad also asked me questions about the people I’d be with at Notre Dame. “What’s Coach Holtz like? Who are the other coaches?” Dad wanted to be objective and present some of the possible pitfalls, but deep down we both knew this was an opportunity of a lifetime.

South Bend became the next stop.