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Award-winning columnist Tom Archdeacon — an old-school storyteller in a brand-new venue — writes about sports, the city, southwest Ohio and anything else that catches his fancy… or yours.Home > Blogs > Through the Arch > Archives > 2009 > August > 03 > Entry
COLUMN: Central State — Bare Heads, Big Dreams
WILBERFORCE — When you see his Central State office for the first time, everything seems to tie in…but the caps.
Behind his desk is an old picture of Alabama’s defensive end corps from the days when he was a two-time All American there. The bulky ring on his right hand is from the Crimson Tide’s 1979 national championship team.
A map of Ohio — a necessity for a new head football coach who is not from the area and needs to do some quick recruiting — is tacked up on the wall.
Not far away are photos of the two Pro Bowl teams he made as a hard-nosed NFL linebacker.
As for the old white polo shirt he wore — the one with a flame logo on the front — it was from his days as coach of NFL Europe’s Rhein Fire.
And then there were those new caps — one bearing a New York Yankees insignia, the other from the St. Louis Cardinals. A few weeks earlier the whole shelf had been filled with caps.
Is it a hobby?
“Not exactly,” E.J. Junior said with a laugh. “They’re collected from young men who wear them in the building. I’m trying to break them of that habit. I tell ‘em there’s no sun in here. When I grew up you never wore a hat in the presence of a lady and you took it off when you walked in a building. To me it’s disrespectful.
“Guys can get them back if they use their favor point. Each gets one. But that one cap there, the guy got caught twice in one day.”
CSU’s new coach said he has a similar policy with cell phones that go off in his meetings: “I either break ‘em or take ‘em.
“And I don’t let anybody wear their hips off their waist either,” he said of low-riding pants.
If the Marauders players — who meet on campus for their first preseason drills Tuesday, Aug. 4 — are wondering just who is running the show this year, Junior has two answers:
• He’s the guy who has been where they all want to be. A star of Bear Bryant’s Tide teams, Junior was taken by St. Louis — the fourth overall pick in the 1981 draft — played 13 NFL seasons for four different teams and then coached in the NFL and college.
• He’s also the guy who’s been where they don’t want to be. A few months shy of 50, he points to this hair which now sports patches of gray:
“People say, ‘You gonna dye it?’ and I say, ‘No, I earned it.’ It’s wisdom from mistakes, bumps, divorces, remarriages, drug matters. All that has become the lessons I try to teach these young men — don’t make some of the mistakes I once made.
“With me it’s live it — tell it.”
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JUST 10 WINS IN FOUR YEARS
Junior has a lot to tell and that’s why Central State athletic director Kellen Winslow has entrusted him with the difficult task of returning Marauder football, not just to the glory of the past, but to a lofty status far beyond those days of NAIA fame.
How tough will it be?
Although the team is now playing a full 11-game schedule at the NCAA Division II level, it still has no scholarships to offer, the program is on its third head coach in five seasons and CSU has lost 22 of its 32 games in the four years the school has fielded a team since dropping football for eight years.
And yet Junior is undaunted.
“Eventually our goal is to win the Division II title , become a competitive NCAA Division I-AA team and be able to play Ohio State or Cincinnati in their backyard…and beat ‘em.”
He said it without a flinch or a smile.
“You can do whatever you need to do if you believe.” he finally said.
“I think Appalachian State showed that with Michigan two years ago.”
As you listened — like those capless players — you wondered, ‘Just who is this guy?”
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LESSONS FROM BEAR BRYANT and DON SHULA
“I’ve been connected to HBCUs in some form since I was little,” Junior said of Historically Black Colleges and Universities. “I saw lots of Tennessee State games. My parents went to Morehouse and Spellman. So did my brother and sister.
“I call myself the white sheep of the family. I’m the only one who didn’t go to an HBCU.”
Recruited by over 100 football programs, he was academically gifted, as well, and had an appreciation of education.
His father was a professor and financial affairs vice president at Central State a decade ago. His mom was a high school principal in Nashville and his stepdad was a district superintendent there.
Junior chose Alabama after Bear Bryant visited his home and, as he put it “sealed the deal.”
As he speaks of the legendary coach, Junior does so with a mix of wondrous appreciation…and relief.
“When I think of Coach Bryant, I think of the discipline, the character and the class. He did everything with class. And he made ever player better.”
Of course he also has those memories of survival. He told of one of Bryant’s torturous practice sessions — called Gut Check — where he was left on the field during a marathon scrimmage for over 100 straight plays.
“We survived that and I remember during the ‘79 title game (against Penn State in the Sugar Bowl) Marty Lyons looking at us in the huddle and said ‘Remember Gut Check? Anybody tired?’ None of us were.”
Junior’s pro career took him to St. Louis — and Arizona when the Cardinals moved there — then to Miami, Tampa Bay and Seattle.
Early on — in February of 1983 — he nearly derailed his life when he was sentenced to two years in prison for cocaine possession, given three years probation and suspended for the first four games of the season.
He went on to become part of the NFL’s Drug Advisory Committee, had his greatest years as a pro right after that, became an ordained minister and formulated some lessons that still guide him today.
“I don’t hide from that,” he said. “It was a mistake I made and thankfully God stepped in early in my use. Had I gone deeper into it, I could easily be dead or in prison.
“So now I use it as a teaching tool. When young guys are tempted to do drugs I can say, ‘Been there — don’t do it.’ There’s no such thing as recreational drug use. It’s like taking a .357 Magnum, putting in one bullet, spinning it and firing at your head. I remember Len Bias, Don Rogers, a lot of guys who didn’t walk away from drugs.”
The lessons he learned on the field came from coaches like Bryant, Don Shula and Sylvester Croom, then a young Tide assistant whom he now calls his mentor.
He also credits Keith Allen, the head coach at Southwest Baptist University, with whom he coached the past three seasons after serving as Seattle’s linebackers coach and the Dolphins’ Director of Player Development.
“Ironically, back in 1999 I had written a memoir to God that I wanted to coach in the NFL for several years and be the head coach of a historically black college by the time I turned 50,” he said. “I was worried I wouldn’t get there on the last part.”
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A DIFFERENT TEAM THAN LAST YEAR?
When Winslow called in March and asked that he apply for the CSU job — after Al West and some of his staff had been fired following the 2-7 season — Junior thought the AD was joking:
“I know he’s a practical joker, so all I could say the first five minutes of our conversation was ‘Are you kidding me?’”
The two men had first gotten to know each other in 1978 when Alabama came from behind to beat Winslow’s Missouri team thanks, in part, to a blocked punt by Junior. Later, they met on opposite sides of the field as pros.
“The way he tells it, his DNA is under my fingernails,” Junior laughed. “But I’m here to tell you, my DNA is under his. His San Diego team usually got the best of us.”
Junior accepted the job sight unseen and now has put together a staff that includes four former NFL players, including offensive coordinator Ben Coates, the 10-year NFL tight end, who made five Pro Bowls, was a Super Bowl XXXV champ with Baltimore and coached tight ends with the Cleveland Browns.
Junior said 90 players — some returnees, others who were newly recruited or have just showed up on campus with the proper grades and film — have been invited to Tuesday’s camp. Several other players will be given try-outs when school starts Aug. 17, just 12 days before CSU opens at West Virginia State,
Junior believes the team will be more disciplined than he said it was a year ago. He’s also told his players they need to be in better physical shape and mentally tougher:
“I tell the parents ‘I’m gonna love your kids up when they do right, but when they do wrong, I’m gonna fuss ‘em up and down.’”
And that’s why, at CSU these days, caps are stacking up on the shelf and young, bare heads are now filling with football dreams.
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Comments
By flipper
August 4, 2009 9:03 AM | Link to this
More like big dreams, air heads.By DRM
August 3, 2009 10:56 PM | Link to this
I think Central St. will turn around and be the program that it once was with great leadership. I think that leadership is now in place. With Kellen Winslow as AD and E.J Junior as head football coach, it’s only a matter of time. These men played the game with all they had and left it on the field. Marauder football is on it’s way back. It wont happen overnight, but it will happen soon. I wish the athletic programs all the best. LET’S GO!