National Post (National Edition)
Football is life for Ticats coach
Beneath Jerry Glanville’s graduation photo from Perrysburg High School in Ohio, the words on the yearbook page speak volumes about his future.
“Life without football is not life,” it read.
“That was in 1959,” said the well-known 76-year-old rookie defensive co-ordinator of the CFL’S Hamilton Tigercats. “I guess it’s kind of turned out that way.
“You know, if you get sentenced, you’re getting life, or is it 50 years? I’ve been this way for 55 years of football. It’s been my whole life. You get sent to prison, you either get 50 years of life. I got both.”
And he got the football life — still crazy after all these years, and all his hijinks — that he dreamed about as a kid.
“The owner (Bob Young) asked me, ‘How do you like it here?’ And I said, ‘This is the best job I’ve ever had.’ The owner here is a smart guy. He said, ‘I bet your next job will be the best job you’ve ever had. And we had a good laugh about that.’ ”
June Jones was a rookie quarterback with the Atlanta Falcons in 1977 when Glanville coached the team’s secondary. The two hit it off right away. They were, different as they may be, football savants. They talked the game and then they talked it some more.
“We’ve never had a conversation in our life that wasn’t about football,” said Glanville. “That’s been going on since 1977. He’s never asked me if I wanted to eat vegetables or wanted to go golfing. I don’t ask him about anything. All we talk about is football. We know each other’s football beliefs. I know what he’s going to do before he does it, and he knows what I’m going to do.
“Do we socialize and have a great off-the-field relationship? I never see him. He never sees me. But when we walk in here, we go to work.”
Jones and Glanville made a deal years ago. If Glanville got a head coaching job, he would hire Jones as his offensive co-ordinator. Turned out the opposite happened. When Jones was brought to Hamilton last season to replace Kent Austin, he reached out to Glanville to join his coaching staff as defensive co-ordinator.
Glanville, knowing very little about the Canadian Football League, its rules, the “mind-boggling motion” still said yes.
It didn’t matter that he’ll turn 77 before the playoffs come in the fall. This is football. This is what he lives for, what he knows. He coached for 20 seasons in the NFL, parts of nine seasons as a head coach, all dressed in black, with sunglasses on, coaching with attitude, leaving tickets for the late Elvis Presley, letting officials who made bad calls know that NFL stood for “not for long,” getting into feuds with almost everybody he played against, including the great Chuck Noll.
He loves the fact he’s coaching in Hamilton, even if he didn’t know before this year about the kind of town he’s now calling home and the kind of hard-nosed football the Ticats are historically known for.
“This is the Hammer,” he said, enjoying his expressions. “And we’re going to drop the hammer on you.”
This is how Glanville’s defences play. On the edge. Aggressive. Some would say dirty. When he was hired as head coach in Houston, Noll tried to hire him as a defensive co-ordinator in Pittsburgh. Noll said to him, ‘Get a look at the sideline because we’ll be kicking your butt twice a year.’
“Well, lo and behold, we beat them twice a year. And he was such a competitor that it got to him. We got into it after a game or two.”
The majority of players on the Ticats have no idea who Glanville is, the giant figure he has been. Almost half the team wasn’t born or were in diapers when he was fired in Atlanta after four seasons with the Falcons. They don’t know about his background, racing NASCAR or doing television, or his short-lived time as coach of a Hartford USFL team where he served as general manager and coach, the team folding before it ever played a game.
“I don’t think they have any idea who I am and I don’t tell them,” said Glanville. “It’s old news. This generation, anything past the last two text messages is deleted anyway. I don’t get caught up in that. I live in the moment.
“All I know is, when my feet hit the ground when I get up in the morning, I start running. I don’t walk to brush my teeth. I keep going. I can’t wait to get here. I’m here around 6:45 a.m. and not home to 9-10 at night. I love this job.
“I tell everybody, ‘Preachers preach and coaches coach.’ And I’ll be coaching when they put me in a box. That’s who I am.”