Free Do You Love Football?! by Jon Gruden, Vic Carucci Page A

with.
    I could help them call the plays. I could teach them how to use the snap count and how to audible to a run or a pass. I could teach them the formations and protections and where they were supposed to go with the ball against the blitz. I was able to speak like an educated quarterback guy, and I liked that feeling.
    I could get on the board or put acetates on the overhead projector and walk the quarterbacks through the different patterns.
    I was able to do actual coaching with the scout team and the jayvee team. I got to be more productive on game day with Walt in the press box, more comfortable around him and maybe less intimidated.
    The quarterback I spent the most time around was Sterling Hinton, a freshman who was on his way to becoming a starter by the end of my second year with the Volunteers. In the spring game he made a couple of right calls on audibles that we had worked on together. It was the first time that I could actually say I helped to accelerate a player's growth, and there was no better feeling in the world. I also spent a lot of time around Jeff Francis, the starting varsity quarterback, and Randy Sanders, his backup, who now is the offensive coordinator at Tennessee.
    I'd be the buffer between Walt and the quarterbacks, because Walt was hard on those guys. He was just on their asses about everything-from carrying out their play-action fakes properly to looking someone in the eye when they shook hands.
    "Everything you have to give, that's what we expect here," Walt would always say. "Don't let that be your claim to fame.
    We expect that. That's part of the program."
    Whenever the quarterbacks screwed up he would let them know. He was like Coach Knight in some ways. He was helping these guys become real men and great technicians and the best quarterbacks they could be, but he was always on their asses.
    Mine, too. And we loved it. At night we'd go out for a beer and ask one another, "What did he call you today?"
    I didn't have much of a social life at Tennessee. On Saturday nights during the season, if we weren't playing, I'd usually tune in one of Jay's games at Louisville on my car radio. I'd grab something to eat, maybe get a couple of beers, and just go off by myself to listen. I'd have a general idea of what segment of the AM dial the game was on, but I rarely got it on the first try. So I'd keep driving toward Louisville and driving up hills searching for the clearest signal I could find. When I found it, I'd pull over and hear the announcers call the action as Jay put up a ton of yards and a bunch of touchdowns on another opponent. Mentally I felt I was right there with him.
    There was one game that Jay played that I didn't have to listen to on the radio. That was when he and the rest of the Louisville Cardinals came to Neyland Stadium in my second year at Tennessee. We were like twenty-five- or thirty-point favorites. The week leading up to that game was tough on me, hearing how our defensive coaches were going to get after Jay's ass. I had heard that kind of talk all the time as our defense prepared for other opposing quarterbacks, but none of those other opposing quarterbacks was my brother. When I talked with Jay on the phone that week and on the field in pregame warm-ups, all we did was wish each other good luck. I sure as hell wasn't going to say, "By the way, bro, the first time you drop back to pass, we're going to bring a corner from the short side to blow your brains out."
    During the game, I couldn't help but root for Jay. Blood's thick, man. You want your brother to do well, even when you aren't on the same team. To that point, the last organized sport we had played together was youth baseball in Bloomington, Indiana. Jay had a couple of nice drives in the first half and it was a tight game at halftime. Ken Donahue, our defensive coordinator, was a little bit wary of the young scrapper from Tampa Chamberlain High School. But we got a lead and the Cardinals basically had no chance