GROWING INTO ROLE
Being a good father and helping his teammates win motivate University of Houston quarterback Greg Ward to succeed
Greg Ward pulls out his cellphone from his pocket and beams about his greatest accomplishment. • No, we’re not talking about his 19 career wins as the starting quarterback at the University of Houston, cover-boy appearance in Sports Illustrated or status as a likely preseason candidate for the Heisman Trophy. • The screensaver on his phone reveals Ward’s biggest fan. • She’s 2 years old, with beautiful curls, a wide smile and wearing a pink dress. • Her name is Chloe. • On Saturdays, Ward is No. 1 in the football program and the Cougars’ best chance at winning a second straight American Athletic Conference title and becoming the first non-Power 5 school to play in the College Football Playoff. • The rest of the time? • Just call him “Dad.”
“I don’t play for myself,” Ward said earlier this summer, offering a rare peek into what has been a guarded and often tightly kept personal life. “I have a daughter. It’s way more important than just me.”
For all the talk of Ward’s development as a quarterback, he says the biggest change has come away from the football field after becoming a father in 2014.
“Having a daughter humbles you even more,” Ward says. “My decision-making is different. I have to be smarter. I’m a role model now. I have to look out for her.”
He talks on the phone or by video chat each day with Chloe, who lives back home in Tyler.
“She begs her mom to call me,” Ward says. “We talk a lot.”
On away games, Chloe sits in front of the TV.
When the Cougars are at home, Chloe usually joins Ward’s parents and is among the first to greet him after the game.
Ward, 21, admits it’s tough being away from his daughter, and he doesn’t see her nearly as much as he would like with classes, football and the 200 miles that separate them.
He takes advantage of the rare free time, going to Tyler when the Cougars have an open week in the schedule, during a break in mid-December, again in early January and for a couple weeks before the start of summer classes.
“His daughter is everything to him,” says receiver Isaiah Johnson, one of Ward’s closest friends on the team. “That’s his motivation. Seeing his daughter makes everything worth it.”
A serious leader
Ward walks into an interview room in the basement of TDECU Stadium. Chris Begala, a UH alum who specializes in media training, immediately greets him. They shake hands. Now it’s time to get down to business.
At the request of coach Tom Herman, Begala is here to put Ward through an intense fourhour media training session. The purpose is to make Ward more comfortable becoming a leader on the field, in the locker room, and with the national spotlight and scrutiny likely to come as the quarterback for the nation’s 15th-ranked team.
Ward sits in a chair with a camera directly in front of him. Lights are shining in his face. The rest of the room is pitch black.
Begala describes the exercise as a cross between “‘60 Minutes’ meets in-depth newspaper interview meets ESPN ‘Sunday Night Conversation’.”
“We wanted to catch him offguard,” Begala says. “We threw everything at him. We threw some easy questions at him and we threw a lot of curveballs.”
Getting Ward to become a more vocal leader has been an arduous task since Herman arrived in January 2015.
“Kind of one of those be-seen-and-not-heard deals,” Herman describes Ward when the two first met.
“Unfortunately, at a certain point humility’s great, but dude, you’ve got to take charge of this team,” Herman adds.
For his part, Ward spent the offseason studying film of star NFL quarterbacks Peyton Manning, Cam Newton, Tom Brady and Russell Wilson. He took notes how they interact with teammates, coaches, how they handle media interviews and even body language on the sideline.
Now the face of the UH football program, Ward says being more vocal is “becoming natural.” Even so, he often deflects questions about himself and instead prefers to discuss the team.
“I’m not a Ray Lewis- or Tom Brady-type,” he says. “I’m not trying to be somebody I’m not.”
For the first time, Ward was voted a captain by his teammates for the upcoming season.
“I take my job seriously,” he says.
In the spotlight
Don’t mention awards, recognitions and milestones around Ward. It’s not his thing.
Like when Sports Illustrated put Ward on the regional cover of its college football preview.
Or last November, when Herman handed Ward a letter from the Heisman Trophy Trust, naming him an official candidate for college football’s most coveted individual award. He took the letter, put it in his backpack and went to the weight room.
He also won the Earl Campbell Award, named after the Hall of Fame tailback who’s also a John Tyler High alum, as the best Texas-born Division I offensive player in the country.
“It’s not about being in the spotlight right now. It’s about winning games,” Ward says.
There has been a lot of that. Ward is 19-2 as a starter, a .905 winning percentage that is the best in school history.
Ward begins this year on the preseason watch list for every major award he’s eli- gible, including the Manning, Davey O’Brien and Walter Camp Player of the Year Award.
“There’s more stuff to be done around here, especially with my team,” he says. “That’s just going to hold me back if I keep looking back at it.”
Maybe it’s his quiet nature, lack of headline-grabbing comments or his generous 5-11 frame that allows Ward to go mostly unnoticed on the sprawling UH campus.
“Nobody is trying to run up to me,” Ward says almost embarrassingly “It’s nothing like celebrity status.”
More attention is likely to come for Ward, especially if the Cougars pull off a shocker and beat third-ranked Oklahoma in Saturday’s season opener at NRG Stadium. Then there’s the pressure of UH’s potential invitation to the Big 12 Conference.
“This is probably his most difficult year because there’s a tremendous amount of pressure on that team under his leadership to deliver in major ways both on and off the field,” says former UH quarterback and 1989 Heisman winner Andre Ware. “All those things are under the microscope, and he’s the guy pulling the trigger. They are in very good hands that he can handle all of what’s in front of him because of how he carries himself.”
Ware has little doubt Ward is prepared for what’s ahead.
“He has so much more he can accomplish,” Ware says.
Weight and see
eyes’ title run.
“I think he was a bit skeptical,” Herman says. “There was a little evaluating on his part. Like, ‘What the hell is this guy and his staff really trying to do?’ ”
“It was blind trust between all of us,” Ward says. “We just had to buy in.”
Finding his place
At the time, Herman was unsure what he had in Ward, who moved around positions the previous two seasons. As a freshman in 2013, Ward served as backup quarterback and also was used at receiver and punt returner. He started the first five games of the 2014 season at receiver before replacing ineffective starter John O’Korn at QB.
UH went 6-2 the rest of the way, including a memorable 3534 Armed Forces Bowl victory over Pittsburgh when Ward engineered a 25-point fourth-quarterback comeback, the largest in bowl history.
With not even a full season as a college quarterback under his belt, Ward was considered raw, and Herman even brought in an insurance policy in Utah transfer Adam Schulz.
“I knew I could fit into his system, but coach Herman was very hard on me,” Ward says. “He didn’t take a day off. That was just because he was trying to make me better each and every day. It was just extremely competitive for me every single day.”
Ward became a student of the game, spending endless hours studying film with Herman and Applewhite. With Ward at the controls, the Cougars went 13-1, won the American Athletic Conference title and finished No. 8 in the Associated Press rankings. The only loss for the Cougars, 20-17 at Connecticut late in the season, came with Ward sitting out most of the game with a badly sprained ankle.
It was during a quarterback meeting prior to the Peach Bowl that Ware saw a glimpse of how far Ward has come.
“Where Greg gives himself a chance to win is that he knows what defenses are doing before they are doing it,” Ware says. “They are going through checks and balances, and he’s finishing sentences of Major Applewhite.”
Florida State had no answer for Ward, who accounted for 305 of the team’s 448 yards in a 38-24 Peach Bowl victory.
Ward set 14 school or AAC record, including 21 rushing touchdowns, which ranked fifth nationally. He threw for 2,828 yards and rushed for 1,108, joining Clemson’s Deshaun Watson as the only quarterbacks to accomplish the 2,000-1,000 combination last season.
Maybe even more impressive: Ward finished ninth nationally in completion percentage (67.2) and threw just six interceptions.
“I think he truly has a desire to be great,” receiver Steven Dunbar said.
What separates Ward from others?
“He is unbelievably competitive,” Herman says. “He wants to be great. But he wants to be great for his team. He wants to win. He absolutely hates losing.”
If Ward is feeling the pressure of a pivotal season for the Cougars, he’s not showing it.
After all, he has a 2-year-old to keep things in focus.
“If you’re not getting better, you’re getting worse,” Ward says. “I don’t believe in getting worse.”
The hardest thing for Ward hasn’t necessarily been dodging pass rushers. It has been packing and keeping on the pounds. Back in May, Ward weighed in at 174, which didn’t sit well with Herman.
“I flew off the handle. I was mad at him,” Herman says. “I said: ‘That’s it. If you can’t manage your weight, then we are going to have to manage it for you.’ ”
A year earlier, Herman said he wouldn’t play a 179-pound Ward at quarterback in Division I college football because “it’s not fair to the team knowing that you can’t take a hit and survive a 14-game season.”
Six times a day this offseason, Ward had to text message pictures of every snack and meal to Herman, offensive coordinator Major Applewhite, Yancy McKnight, the team’s director for football sports performance, and team nutritionist Allison Franklin.
“Follow the protocol,” Ward says of ways to gain weight. “Continue to eat, drink shakes and continue to lift.”
His weight at the start of preseason camp in early August: 189 pounds.
When Herman took the job, Ward admits there were times he and the first-time head coach “did not see eye-to-eye at all.”
At Ohio State, Herman won a national championship and earned a reputation as a quarterback whisperer, using three quarterbacks during the Buck-