Glanville coaching Hamilton’s defence

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This article was published 28/06/2018 (2633 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

HAMILTON — Jerry Glanville, the man in black and the guy who used to leave football tickets at will-call for Elvis Presley and D.B. Cooper, has landed in the CFL as the defensive co-ordinator of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.

If you like his famous appearances on NFL Films, you’d probably like the 76-year-old coaching legend even more in person. He has stories — lots of them.

Here’s a sampling of some of his responses to questions from some reporters from Winnipeg Thursday afternoon:

• On accepting an offer to coach in Canada after a lifetime in the NFL, minor pro and the U.S. college ranks:

“People wanted me to come as a consultant. I’m not interested in that. I want to coach. If a consultant isn’t on the field, coaching, I don’t want to have anything to do with it. So June (Ticats head coach Jones) called and said, ‘Come up here and be my defensive co-ordinator.’ We’d just been together two years ago.

“Everybody said are you worried? I’m scared to death of the 12th man, and then I found out I get 12, too. The way everybody came with pain and reservations I thought they got 12 and I got 11. I don’t care if they have 14 if they let me have 14.

“It’s a different game. It isn’t the 12th guy, it’s the motion coming at you. So some defences I would run, where the linebacker would take the tight end, who’s stationary. Here they’re back 10 yards and running, so you have to take those defences out.”

• On his first exposure to the CFL:

“I went to college in Bozeman, Montana, Montana State, and I was 17 years old,” he said. “Come the weekend they said, ‘Come on, we’re going to watch pro football (on TV).’ (It’s) 1959. I said, ‘Who’re we watching, the Lions, the Vikings or the Packers?’ They said, ‘We’re watching the Blue Bombers.’ From Montana, they were all Blue Bomber fans. So I became a Blue Bomber fan in 1959.”

“And I ended up with Bud Grant, years later. Bud and I went to Iraq for the NFL to visit the First Cavalry.”

• On joining the Ticats, whose black and gold colour scheme suits his Man in Black persona to a T.

“That was excellent. I did not know that at the time. Just think if I’d have gone to somebody wearing orange. Oh my God.”

• On his practice of wearing a cowboy hat during practice:

“I’ve had all kinds of skin problems. When I was the coach of the Houston Oilers (the doctor) gave me a cowboy hat with the four-inch brim and said, ‘Wear this or don’t come back.’ But since then I’ve had my ear cut off and my face worked on. We were so bad when we started. We were outside 17 hours a day and didn’t put on lotion, didn’t even wear a hat. Every young coach I see now, I say, ‘I’ve got two rules. Lotion and a hat.’ You never think it’s going to happen to you.

“You’d love my doctor. They took my right ear off, there was a tumour the size of an almond, and they put it back together. And I called him back and said, ‘I’m shaving, and my left ear is lower than my right ear.’ He goes, ‘Tilt your head. I’ll see you tomorrow,’ and hung up.”

• On rookie Winnipeg quarterback Chris Streveler:

“I wish I’d seen the kid in college, I like him so much. ’Cause I bet it was fun. Plus I heard he’s got two degrees. I’ve got two or three but they were all honourary. So tell him I’m ahead of him.”

mike.sawatzky@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @sawa14