GLANVILLE LOVING HIS FIRST TASTE OF THE CFL
The first thought that rushed into the football mind of Jerry Glanville when old friend June Jones called during the off-season and asked that they resume their working relationship: Why not?
Never mind that the 76-yearold Glanville had little knowledge of the Canadian Football League, and had not been in an official coaching role since 2009, when he finished his third season at Portland State.
Glanville had keen interest in working on the same coaching staff with Jones for the fourth time. It continues a working bond that began in the late 1970s when Jones, then a quarterback with the Atlanta Falcons, would sit in on the Falcons’ defensive meetings, run by Glanville, first as Atlanta’s secondary coach and later as the defensive co-ordinator.
“For 40 years we have never had a discussion or a talk or a dinner that we don’t talk football,” the colourful Glanville, sporting a wide-brimmed sun hat and mirrored Ray-Bans, said after the Ticats’ practice at training camp on Wednesday. “People say, ‘Do you golf together?’ We don’t do one thing like that.
“We have not had one conversation in 40 years that is not about football. Neither one of us could care about much else.”
The pair has had many opportunities to share their passion, and Jones as Ticats head coach with Glanville as his defensive co-ordinator is a natural fit. They’ve previously coached together with the Falcons, the Houston Oilers and at the University of Hawaii.
While Glanville had not been part of a coaching staff for nine years, he has not taken a year off, in recent years aiding schools such as Brevard College, Indiana University, Indiana State and Louisiana with their defences.
“The fun, I tell everybody, is if you still listen and you can still identify beauty, you can still identify excellence, then you just keep doing it,” Glanville said.
“I’m going to coach until I die in a practice. That would be the way to go.”
Now he’s taking on the challenge of learning the ways of the Canadian game and getting a grip on what makes it distinct from what Glanville has known his whole life in the U.S.
Through the first 11 days of Ticats camp at McMaster University, he has experienced a fairly sharp learning curve.
“The biggest adjustment is the motion and changing the formation before the snap, and the second thing is the motion running straight at the line of scrimmage,” Glanville said. “In the U.S., I’m a full-press bumpand-run defensive backs coach. Here, you can’t full-press a guy running a hundred miles an hour at you. You have to get off and you have to play different techniques. There are a lot of adjustments in the secondary.
“And being off the ball a yard changes, to me, how you attack the offensive line. You have to do it differently. These players are fun to be with because we get such effort from them.”
Glanville has a good idea of what kind of defence he will employ once the Ticats’ regular season starts on June 16 in Calgary. It’s going to sound awfully familiar to those who have followed Glanville’s coaching career from its first days.
“I hope we do what we have done in the other places we have been,” Glanville said. “We have always been a great swarming, gang-tackling, hustling team. I don’t see why that would not continue.”
Despite the challenges — or better put, because of them — It’s clear there is nowhere else the Ohio native would rather be.
“The game is unique,” Glanville said. “I love the game. I wish I would have come up 15 years ago. I didn’t know how good it was or I would have been here.”