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The great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
My first job was as assistant coach for Doug Dickey at Florida. (Gold chains were popular in 1978!)
I had just been cut from my third NFL team. It was 1977. My wife, three kids, and I were driving north from Miami in two separate cars, uncertain of what future awaited us. We had no game plan. Professionally, I was at a crossroads. Geographically, we were going back to the place we knew best—our home in Gainesville.
Nine years in San Francisco with the 49ers, one year of playing for the expansion Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and now cut by the Denver Broncos and Miami Dolphins. After ten years in the National Football League, obviously my options as a player were about finished, unless I wanted to try semipro football in Jacksonville. Reality had begun to set in, but it came as no surprise that I was about done playing football. Although I knew the end had been coming, I guess I’d just never given a thought to what I’d do for a real job.
Back then, communication wasn’t what it is today. There were no cell phones or emails or faxes. So the news of one team cutting you and another team picking you up traveled at a snail’s pace. The Denver Broncos had released me during the 1977 preseason. I drove back from Colorado to Florida not knowing that Don Shula of the Miami Dolphins had already telephoned University of Florida associate athletic director Norm Carlson about my status. When I reached Gainesville, I was pleased when Jerri told me the news. Of course I was pleased, thinking that finishing up my playing career in South Florida wouldn’t be so bad, since I played at Florida and was actually born in Miami Beach. Happily, Jerri packed up the kids and we headed to Miami, where we rented an apartment. Lisa was ten, Amy eight, and Steve Jr. six.
After the Dolphins’ last preseason game, however, Coach Shula decided they were going with two quarterbacks—Bob Griese and Don Strock. I called Jerri and said, “Guess what! I got released. Let’s drive back to Gainesville.” So off we went up the highway.
Jerri merely saw this as another adventure. She was well qualified at instant mobilization. In less than a day, she was able to take our three children out of school in South Florida, return their textbooks, and pack up for Gainesville. We loaded the two cars and hustled out of South Florida, starting the 335-mile trek north, windows down, with the ears of the family dog Jippy flapping in the wind.
Some wives might have come apart under such emotional pressure. Having her as my navigator and partner for the past fifty years has been beyond wonderful. She’s not only the love of my life and the mother of my children, but my best friend, my roommate, and my adviser. And the best wife that a football player or coach could ever hope to have.
“This is not a race!” Steve Jr. blurted out as we sped up the Florida Turnpike. Turns out he was right. I was pulled over and got a speeding ticket.
Philosophically, I suppose speeding tickets remind us not to get ahead of ourselves and that timing in life is everything. That’s certainly been the case for me. A large measure of my success has come from being in the right place at the right time—although it might not have felt that way at various times. The conviction that you will ultimately find your niche in life can stem only from your faith. Even though I struggled with finding my path at times, I’ve always believed there was a higher power involved. As one of my favorite coaches, John Wooden, once said: “We may not know where the paths may lead, but we know they are directed somehow.”
Me as a coach? Only when I was done with the NFL and had moved back to Gainesville after a year out of football as a spectator at Florida Gator games did it dawn on me that coaching might be my true calling. In fact, I hadn’t yet arrived at the conclusion that I might even want to be a coach, let alone that I could be successful at it. Turns out there was a bigger plan.
We moved back into our house in The Valley, a subdivision on Hogtown Creek, and started our so-called normal life. I needed to find that job. I’d had exactly one offer, from Gator alumnus Whit Palmer Jr. He knew I needed work. This was something in sales at Dixie Lime & Stone Co. in Ocala. I told Whit I wanted to wait and see what happened with football. When a player gets cut they tell you to wait a month and see how things shake out. So for a while I held on to a flicker of hope that an NFL team might call during the 1977 season.
Thankfully I was in good physical shape after ten years in the NFL, because I played the equivalent of only about two seasons during that time. That’s why, as I’ve told many people, backup quarterback in the NFL is the best job you could have.
While waiting to see if a team would call, I played a lot of golf with my buddies at the Gainesville Country Club. One Saturday I went to watch the Gators play, where, unknowingly, I would be glimpsing my future. The stadium was not yet named the Swamp, or even Ben Hill Griffin Stadium. The University of Florida was my home turf, where eleven years prior I had played my college football career and had been fortunate enough to be an All-American, win a Heisman Trophy, and participate in two major bowls.
Sitting in the stands instead of playing on the field or watching from the sidelines seemed to give me a fresh perspective, and it piqued my interest. That season I saw maybe five or six games, including Florida–Georgia in Jacksonville. I must admit: The notion of my becoming Head Ball Coach at my alma mater and winning a national championship one day certainly seemed unrealistic at the time.
The circumstances of our life have as much power as we give them.
—David McNally, The Eagle’s Secret
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ONE DAY at the country club, I was talking to my friend Henry Gray, a lawyer from Gainesville. “Steve, what do you think you want to do?” he asked. And I said, “If I could get into coaching somehow, I think that’s something I’d like to do.” My first inkling was, “Well, if I can be on a team coaching, that’s something that sounds like fun and not so much hard work.” That’s when the desire to become a coach really hit me.
Henry was very good friends with Florida coach Doug Dickey, ex–Gator quarterback and SEC championship coach at Tennessee. They had gone to high school together at P. K. Yonge in Gainesville. Coach Dickey asked for me to come see him, maybe thinking a former NFL quarterback could share some new thoughts on the passing game, despite the fact that the SEC was predominantly defense- and run-oriented back then. Florida was operating out of a wishbone, but a new trend was emerging. Everybody wanted to start throwing the ball.
I’d been around a lot of good coaches and some not-so-good coaches. I was about to discover that coaching could be challenging. And rewarding. You always hear that if people can’t wait to get to work every day, then they have the right job.
Back then, once their careers were over, NFL players didn’t consider coaching to be a glamorous profession. Coaches didn’t make a lot of money. They supposedly had to work until midnight—a lot of hours. I could not see myself doing that, but when you don’t have a job and you need one, your thinking changes. Today the money is better, and lots of former players want to get into coaching! So times have changed.
We all want to make our family proud of what we do. My prime motivation was the need to support a wife and three kids. I’d lost some of my fire because I hadn’t gotten to compete much in the NFL. I not only needed to find a new career, I needed to regain the passion that I had lost somewhere along the way in the pros.
Just getting that first job is sometimes very tough. You’ve got to find somebody who believes in you and what you might stand for as a coach. So I was fortunate to have a connection with Coach Dickey, a former Gator quarterback who knew something about me, and to land a job at my alma mater. I will always be thankful to him for hiring me as the quarterback coach for the 1978 season. But I had a lot to learn. And I was about to find out a lot about how much I didn’t know—especially about the new recruiting rules. I don’t think Coach Doug Dickey realized how green I was, because I didn’t realize it myself.
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THE NCAA RECRUITING regulations had changed dramatically since I’d been recruited in 1963.
Offensive line coach Kim Helton and I flew down to Miami to check out a running back at Carol City High School. We rented a car. Went to the high school. The recruit talked to us awhile. I said, “You got a ride home?” He said, “No.” I said, “Come on, hop in, we’ll give you a ride.” First NCAA violation.
We stopped at a Burger King. I bought him a Coke and maybe some french fries. That was another violation.
We drove the recruit home. The Tennessee coaches were also coming by—they met with him awhile and we waited. Then we met with him awhile and went to a sports bar with former Gator player and assistant coach Jerry “Red” Anderson, the Carol City high school coach and a friend. I paid for his. That was another violation.
I came back to Gainesville and was turning in my receipts when one of the ladies in Administration said, “You know you’re not supposed to do this!” And my friend on the coaching staff also said, “You can’t do that! You can’t pay for stuff. It’s against the rules.”
I said, “Nobody told me! And everyone did it for me when I was in high school! Well, my bad, then. I’m learning!” And then I added, “Well, what CAN we do?”
Luckily we didn’t suffer any consequences for my missteps. Clearly there was a lot for this rookie coach to learn.
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ANOTHER THING I learned early was the necessity of giving every player a chance. One of the first players you have to settle on is your quarterback. And then give him the ball. My first quarterback was Johnny Brantley of Ocala, whose son John IV later played for the Gators from 2007 to 2011.
Picking the quarterback who would become the centerpiece of our offense was a critical decision. Teaching him proper fundamentals, good judgment, and leadership were all vital, but mostly what I wanted to see from our quarterbacks was commitment and courage. Over the years, as they would progress—or not—I was never afraid to make changes on the fly. Just like in baseball, when one pitcher isn’t getting it done, you have to bring in another guy.
Brantley could take his steps properly and get the ball out on time, which was key to timing routes that would become the staple of our offense. During spring football, however, Brantley had been playing baseball. Cris Collinsworth was even playing a little quarterback. That summer we moved Cris over to wide receiver. We were pretty ugly. The spring game score was something like 6–0.
In fall preseason, Johnny finally came around. One thing I’ve always coached is to take your steps and throw the ball. If you’ve got an area to throw it, you gotta throw it over there on time. Teaching that is a lot harder than people think. You can tell a guy to take seven steps, hitch, and fire it right in there, but they want to hesitate. Johnny had no hesitation. He’d take his steps and let it go. He actually played very well from about the third game on, and he became the starter. Meanwhile, Collinsworth had his best year at Florida as a receiver, catching ten touchdown passes in 1978.
You want to see the players you coach play well. You want to prepare them as best you can. Teach your players to execute at a high level. Watch your team and players become successful. That’s what it’s all about.
After the 1978 season, the Gator program was struggling and Coach Dickey was in the hot seat. We lost to LSU, Alabama, and Georgia, but we were decent. Then we lost our starting quarterback to injury. And we lost our last two games of the season to rivals Florida State and Miami to finish 4-7. Because we didn’t win enough, we were all fired.
—
CHAPTER ONE of my coaching career was in the books, but what now? I had no idea. It became clear, however, that if I was going to coach I needed to figure out my own way of doing it.
I had stepped out on the pathway as a coach and with that came a great deal of uncertainty. Mostly things would just fall in line, but not without an ensuing struggle. No coach gets to say where he’s going to live and work forever. It’s a nomadic profession. You wind up going wherever fate and the game take you. Jobs are hard to come by. When you’re out of work, you have to hit the road again.
Looking back, I can see that every experience was preparing me for a lifetime in sports. It began when I was growing up in East Tennessee. There was one clear message: As a young boy I was taught that in life there are winners and there are losers. I just always thought there were alternative routes to winning.