George Perles at Michigan State was the first coach that gave me responsibility as far as being a coordinator. I learned a lot from that experience.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I wound up through a wild set of circumstances getting into coaching. I went in and volunteered with Don Coryell, who was a big part of my past, great coach. A lot of people say he was one of the greatest coaches ever. He was very good in high school, college and pro. Another guy on that staff was named John Madden.
I think there is a lot of experiences you have in coaching, and if you learn from the experiences as you go through them, whether it's as a coordinator or position coach, a quality-control coach, a head coach, whatever it might be, and you learn from those mistakes you make.
Teaching players during practices was what coaching was all about to me.
I feel like I've been very blessed to have some great mentors through the years, starting with Don James, who was my college coach, who really inspired me to want to be a coach, which is not something that I really had in mind.
I knew that when I resigned from the University of Texas that I would never coach again.
My first career was as a coach and a teacher.
My first assistant-coaching job in football was at William & Mary in 1961.
I'm sure that had I not been a coach, I would have been some form of a teacher.
Bill Belichick was probably the most organized coach that I've ever been involved with.
My first assistant-coaching job in football was at William & Mary in 1961. The pay wasn't much, so to get $300 more per year, I agreed to coach the golf team. I didn't even know how to keep score, and really, my main job was not to wreck the van on the way to tournaments.