Do You Love Football?!: Winning with Heart, Passion, and Not Much Sleep

by Jon Gruden, Vic Carucci, Vic Carucci (With)

Overview

When Jon Gruden asks his Tampa Bay Bucs, "Do you love football?!" it's to remind them why they pull on their shoulder pads every Sunday morning. It's not about the money or the fame; it's about their passion for what they do.

And passion is something that has fueled Gruden's entire career. From his college playing days and his climb through the coaching ranks — from college to assistant coaching jobs with the NFL's elite teams, to his first head coach job with the Oakland Raiders, and finally, with the Tampa Bay Bucs — his meteoric rise is unparalleled. Underneath it all, though, he's just a humble, hardworking, no-nonsense guy who has no hobbies: "I'm not a scratch golfer. I don't know how to bowl. I can't read the stock market. Hell, I have a hard time remembering my wife's cell phone number. But I can call 'Flip Right Double X Jet 36 Counter Naked Waggle at 7 X Quarter' in my sleep."

Now, in this motivational memoir, Gruden provides insight into what makes him tick. Do You Love Football?! is an intimate look at his life as a player, coach, and head coach, as well as the principles that have made him the hottest coach in the NFL.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780060579456
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	08/10/2004
Edition description:	First Perennial Edition
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	359,656
Product dimensions:	5.31(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.57(d)

About the Author

Jon Gruden lives with his wife and three sons in Tampa, Florida.

Vic Carucci is the national editor of NFL.com and the coauthor of a number of bestsellers, including Do You Love Football?! with Jon Gruden and Sunday Morning Quarterback with Phil Simms. He lives in East Amherst, New York.

First Chapter

Do You Love Football?!
Winning with Heart, Passion, and Not Much Sleep

Chapter One

"Do You Love Football?"

As far back as I can remember, I've lived and died on every game day. I don't think I can ever recall a time when football -- in one form or another -- didn't have a major influence on everything I thought, everything I said, everything I did.

High school. College. Pro. Our family was moving around with each coaching job my dad held at all three levels. Or I was playing quarterback in high school. Or I was hoping to see the field as a college quarterback. Or I was changing coaching jobs myself in a never-ending quest for knowledge and improvement.

Football really is all I know. Other than going to the beach once in a while and watching the waves, it's really the only interest I have outside of my wife and our three boys. I'm not a scratch golfer. I don't know how to bowl. I can't read the stock market. Hell, I have a hard time remembering my wife's cell phone number. But I can call, "Flip Right Double X Jet 36 Counter Naked Waggle at 7 X Quarter" in my sleep.

I love the competition of the game. I love the players who play it. I love the strategy, the variables. I love the smell of the grass, the sound of the stadium. I love the thrill of victory. I like to see how we respond to the adversity that a loss brings and to the sudden changes that we have to deal with, whether it's a fumble, an interception, a fifteen-yard penalty, or something worse, like our right tackle suffering a broken ankle. What's the weather going to be like? What kind of crowd will we have?

Football is the ultimate team game. There are just so many people who play a role. There are trainers, managers, coaches, players, fans, media. It's just so exciting. I consider myself fortunate to have been able to see it at such close range for so long.

The game day experience is what really gets me juiced. I'm up at 3:17 A.M. most days, and that includes the morning of a game. Home or away, we stay at a hotel the night before, and I'm always waiting for the newspaper guy to make his delivery to my room at five-thirty. At breakfast I'm waiting for the eggs to come out, even though I don't eat very much. If we're on the road I'm waiting for the first bus to the stadium to arrive at the hotel (for home games I usually catch a ride with Bill Muir, our offensive coordinator and line coach).

Once I'm at the stadium I sit at my locker and for the next three, four or five hours before kickoff I go over my sideline sheet, which contains the offensive game plan, minus the diagrams. We probably carry about 125 passes and maybe 30 runs into each game, but the typeface on the sideline sheet has been reduced small enough so that they all fit on both sides of an eight-and-a-half-by-eighteen-inch piece of paper that I laminate and can refer to while I'm calling the plays from the sideline.

I have columns for different situations -- first-and-ten, first-and-fifteen, second-and-one-to-five, second-and-six-to-nine, second-and- ten-plus, third-and-short (one to three yards), third-and-medium (four to six yards), third-and-long (seven to ten yards), third-and-extra (beyond ten yards) -- and the calls I can make in each of them. I have columns for different spots on the field, such as the "red zone," which I break down into plus-five, plus-ten, plus-fifteen and plus-twenty, with five or ten runs and passes in each. I have columns for goal line, short yardage, play passes, nickel passes, nickel runs, nickel blitzes, Cover Nine (our term for two-deep zone). I might even have a Keyshawn Johnson column, and at some point I'll look down at it and say, "I've got to get him involved. I've got to get him going." Okay, okay, I've got to get him the damn ball.

I prioritize the calls that I've gone over with the staff and the quarterbacks the night before the game, but when I get to the stadium I say to myself, Okay, what if I use number one? What if I use number two? Do I really like number three? What if they start playing a lot of Cover Nine? Do I have enough Cover Nine throws in the game plan? I'll make notes to myself on the sideline sheet, which also has the first names and numbers of each of the officials (just in case I have any reason to have a nice chat with them during the game) and the names of three of the most important people in my life -- my sons, Deuce, Michael and Jayson. I'm usually feeling pretty guilty late in the week when I'm at the office working on the game plan instead of being home with those guys and my wife, Cindy. Seeing their names helps me to maintain a little sense of balance when I need it the most, such as in the middle of a game when the running battle between your head and your heart can easily tilt you too much in one direction or another.

I take different colored Sharpie fine-point pens -- red, blue, green and black -- and use certain colors to highlight sections of the sideline sheet and to write notes. Using these colors is the only thing I'm superstitious about. I'll say, "Ah, the green pen's in a slump; I'm getting it out of here. I'm using black and red this week." If we kick somebody's ass, if we play a really good game, I'll say, "I'm going to stay with red for the next couple of games. Red's hot." It's silly, I know, but you don't want to mess with the mojo.

Do You Love Football?!
Winning with Heart, Passion, and Not Much Sleep. Copyright © by Jon Gruden. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

Table of Contents

1	"Do You Love Football?"	1
2	Doing It the Knight Way	15
3	Notre Dame, Dan Devine, and the Best and Worst of Witnessing Greatness from the Inside	25
4	If You Can't Throw the Perfect Pass, Draw the Perfect Circle	39
5	Whether You're Cutting Film or Cutting a Rug, You Can't Volunteer Too Much for Knowlege	55
6	Finding Harvard in San Francisco	81
7	When Opportunity Calls, You Answer on the First Ring	107
8	"Boy Wonder or Boy Blunder?"	137
9	If the Head Coaching Jacket Fits, Wear It	165
10	Who's Chucky?	177
11	Changing Teams Doesn't Mean Changing Expectations	197
12	Validation	217
	Acknowledgments	245

Editorial Reviews

Gruden traces his transformation from pigskin letdown as a player to gridiron triumph as a Super Bowl-winning coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He avoids charges of nepotism (his father was a successful coach and trainer in his own right) simply by chronicling his own determination. He devotes a good deal of space to the importance of assembling highlight reels for the team to study-and captures all the wacky vocabulary of offensive and defensive plays, "Waggle Right Double Out Waggle Right Drag Hook" being just one of many. Gruden gleans wisdom from the colorful likes of Bobby Knight, Bill Walsh and other legendary coaches with whom he has worked. Players, too, are sketched vividly and personally-from Steve Young and Joe Montana to Randall Cunningham and Ricky Watters. It's not often that one reads about what it's like for a gifted QB like Young to have to just cheer on while another gifted QB like Montana leads a team to glory. But it's Gruden's own portrait that emerges most sharply: he's the scrappy private who almost imperceptibly becomes field commander. An insomniac who has the face of "Chucky," he's also funny and self-deprecating, telling such stories as George Seifert balling him out for sharpening the famed 49ers coach's playwriting pencils. The point of it all is that football isn't about winning, but about learning how to win. B&w photos. (Sept.) Forecast: The timing with the beginning of the football season couldn't be better. How his team performs before and during the book's rollout may also have an impact. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly