Life as an assistant coach often a grenade with pin half-pulled
Steve Devine can still see Earle Bruce crouching behind the meeting room table, eyes barely visible above the surface.
Devine had just arrived at Ohio State as an assistant under Bruce in 1983 when his boss went bad Hollywood actor on him.
“When I first joined the staff I was in charge of recruiting food for training table and I screwed up and the food was not very good,” Devine said this week, recalling his mistake with horror and hilarity. “Earle is sitting with his cup of coffee and he says, ‘Did you hear about the guy in World War II who is in the foxhole?’ ”
Heads shook. None of the assembled assistants had heard the story, because Bruce was making it up as he went.
“Earle begins acting it out,” said Devine, 71, who served two different stints under Bruce. ‘We need to make sure to get into position to attack the enemy, but we have to throw grenades.’”
With that, Bruce dropped to his knees and hid behind the table.
Devine continued. “He yelled, ‘Time for the grenades. Give me the grenade, Devine. Devine?’ And he falls down on the floor.”
The other OSU assistants were dying to laugh. Devine was just dying.
“Earle is laying on the floor and asking, ‘How could you forget the grenade, Devine?’ The other coaches are trying their best not to laugh, because they knew that everyone in that room would get a turn in the barrel,” Devine said. “Even if you had a great day yesterday, today was going to be your day.’’
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what it’s like to be a college football assistant coach.
That’s not all there is, of course. The job also comes with a sense of accomplishment when a player “gets it,” when the assistant helps strengthen the head coach’s weaknesses and when the long hours with little public recognition pay off with a win.
Make no mistake, assistant coaches know exactly where they stand, even when sometimes they are not sure if it will be on the sideline.
Kerry Coombs has been around the game long enough to realize that an assistant coach is only as good as a fantastic looking stat sheet. Even then, assistants mostly toil in obscurity until things go wrong. In that way they are the offensive linemen of football, noticed only when flagged for holding or, in Coombs’ case, penalized for a porous defense.
“You always knew if things went well you would not get the credit, and if they did not go well you were going to get shillelaghed,” said Devine, who serves as a volunteer assistant coach at Marysville.
It’s easy to root for Coombs, almost as easy as criticizing him when the Buckeyes defense gives up yardage by the acre. Coombs is an Ohio guy who lived out his dream to coach at Ohio State — under Urban Meyer from 2012-17 — then left for an assistant job with the Tennessee Titans before returning to the Buckeyes as defensive coordinator under Ryan Day in 2020. He is part dynamic recruiter, part motivational cheerleader and part of a coaching change he probably never saw coming in August.
But he likely saw it after Ohio State failed to defend the same scoring play three times against Oregon two weeks ago. Coombs has chosen to make his lucrative living — $1.4 million a year — in a results-driven business. And the results have not been there, going back to at least the national championship game against Alabama.
Given the numbers — through three games Ohio State ranks 118th out of 130 in FBS defense — something had to give. That something was someone. Coombs was stripped of his defensive play-calling duties last week and moved from the field to the press box coaching booth for Tulsa. Presumably he will be coaching from upstairs again on Saturday night when the Buckeyes play Akron.
Day decided his assistant required assistance. But is it enough?
“Why aren’t we trying to help him? Why are we making his family miserable?” Devine said, defending his peer. “The words that are out there travel faster than the truth. Maybe our recruiting class wasn’t as good as we thought?”
Perhaps, but the class was recruited primarily by assistant coaches. It’s like blaming the bland apple pie instead of the one who baked it. Plus, there is the money issue. Always the money issue. Some say a hefty paycheck should not matter, should not impact public perception, but of course it does.
Before earning two Super Bowl rings (2008 and 2012) as a college scout with the New York Giants, Devine coached at Toledo, Washington, Ohio State, Bowling Green, San Diego State and Ohio University.
In other words, assistants need suitcases, because sooner or later they’re “later.”
“The neat thing about great head coaches is they know everyone has a bad day at the office once in a while,” Devine said. “I’m fortunate Earle was one of those guys.”
Still, Bruce knew how to toss a grenade.
“The hard but kind of funny part was we would meet as a staff on Sunday mornings and we knew how we had done by how many doughnuts Earle brought,” Devine said. “If there were 10 assistants in the room and he thought eight coached well, eight doughnuts.” And if no doughnuts? Kaboom. roller@dispatch.com