Grinch already stealing the show

Coaching reputation becoming legendary for Grove City native.

It was just a spring practice, but Alex Grinch had seen enough.

Grinch, the Grove City native hired last week as an Ohio State assistant football coach, had just started as Washington State’s defensive coordinator in 2015. He was in charge of turning around a dreadful defense. That spring day, he didn’t like what he was watching. He let his players know it.

“He took every practice like it was preparing for Alabama,” said Jeremiah Allison, who was a senior linebacker and captain for the Cougars that year. “I thought he was pretty much crazy. He never really screams, but when he gets mad, he gets mad.”

The Cougars got the message, and it wasn’t long before they fully bought in.

“He made people want to run through a wall,” Allison said. “We felt we (had) let him down. He set the tone for the season.”

The Cougars’ defense did improve under Grinch.

“I know it sounds clichéd, but it was night and day,” Allison said. “Before he was there, we were last in pretty much every category you could think of.”

Ohio State’s defense doesn’t need an overhaul, and Grinch’s role hasn’t been defined, at least not publicly. But the Buckeyes jumped at the chance to hire the 37-year-old and are paying him handsomely — a team-high $800,000 base salary — with the expectation that he will make a significant impact.

Those who know Grinch well describe him as serious, competitive and even-keeled.

Brian Cross was coach at Grove City in the 1990s when Grinch played safety for the Greyhounds.

Student of the game

“He was a very cerebral player,” Cross said. “He knew where everybody was supposed to be in the secondary, and he got everybody where they were supposed to be.”

Grinch was a standout, but not quite Division I material. He enrolled at Division III powerhouse Mount Union in Alliance. Grinch saw from the first day of practice that he had entered a new world. The Purple Raiders, under legendary coach Larry Kehres, recruited in volume.

“This is one of my favorite stories about him,” said Scott McIntire, who was an assistant football coach at Grove City and remains close with Grinch. “He said, ‘Coach Mac, I lined up at safety and I’m the 17th guy — and there were five guys behind me.’”

Grinch was undaunted. He worked his way up the depth chart and overcame injuries to become part of three national championship teams. Vince Kehres, then an assistant who has succeeded his father as head coach, remembers seeing Grinch spend plenty of extra time in position coach Jeff Wojtowicz’s office watching film.

“Back then, you had to come into the football offices to watch film on your own,” Vince Kehres said. “There weren’t any smartphones. You couldn’t share video on the Internet.

“It was clear that he was a football junkie and a guy who would be good at this if this is what he wants to do.”

Grinch did. His uncle, Gary Pinkel, was the head coach at Missouri, and that’s where Grinch began his coaching career, as a graduate assistant in 2002. From there, he worked at New Hampshire on the same staff as Chip Kelly, then went to Wyoming and back to Missouri.

Turnover ‘paydays’

By the time he arrived at Washington State, his defensive philosophy was in place.

“What he preached to us was turnovers — takeaways equals victories,” Allison said. “That was his motto, and we believed in him and the process.”

Grinch termed takeaways in practice “paydays,” and players brought the candy bar with that name to practice. When a player got a turnover, he got a Payday.

The season before he arrived, Washington State’s defense forced only eight takeaways. In Grinch’s three years, the Cougars averaged 25 per season.

“On Saturdays, he’d have so much energy,” Allison said. “I’d be like, ‘Maybe we should just suit you up and you can get out here and play with us.’ He’s a players’ coach. He’s like the Pete Carroll of the defensive side of the ball.”

Given their coach’s surname, it’s not surprising that Cougars players came up with a line derived from Dr. Seuss for their turnover prowess.

“How coach Grinch stole the ball,” Allison said.

Perhaps the most important job of any Ohio State coach’s job is recruiting. Allison said he marveled at Grinch’s ability to attract players from across the country to remote Pullman, Washington.

“You’ve got to take a boat, train, plane and probably a chariot and horse — and don’t forget the tractor,” he joked. “The fact he could bring players in from Louisiana and Missouri — guys want to play for him because they respect his philosophy — that shows he’s a hell of a recruiter.”

Grinch’s journey has taken him from one side to the country to the other, with plenty of stops between them. Now he’s coming home.

“I think Ohio State got a great coach in Coach Grinch,” Allison said. “He’s going to do remarkable things.”