“You can accomplish a lot if you don’t care who gets the credit.”
This Blanton Collier quote is posted in our weight room. During my eight years in Paris, I really enjoyed meeting people that knew Coach Collier. His daughter, Kay Collier McLaughlin, wrote ‘Football’s Gentle Giant: The Blanton Collier Story.’ Coach Bill Arnsparger also talks a lot about Blanton Collier in his book, ‘Arnsparger’s Coaching Defensive Football’. Most of what I know about Coach Collier comes from the stories I heard while in Paris and from both of those books.
Blanton Collier was a Paris High School and Georgetown College graduate and was probably known best as a basketball coach until World War II. When he was stationed at Great Lakes Naval Base, he met Paul Brown, the coach of the Cleveland Browns. Through that relationship with Coach Brown, he became an assistant for the Browns, then the head football coach at the University of Kentucky, and ultimately, the head coach of the 1964 NFL Champion Browns, where he coached Hall of Famer Jim Brown – who many consider the finest running back in the history of the NFL.
At Kentucky, he was the head coach between Paul “Bear” Bryant and Charlie Bradshaw. He was the last coach to leave UK with an overall coaching record above .500. He also had a winning record against archrival Tennessee. Collier’s UK staff included coaching greats Bill Arnsparger, Don Shula, Howard Schnellenberger, John North, Ermal Allen, Leeman Bennett, Chuck Knox and Ed Rutledge. Collier and his staff were fired and he went from UK to the Browns.
“Coaching the eyes” is probably the most apparent or direct way that Coach Collier has impacted our program and me. He was much more direct and specific in coaching the eyes, where a lot of coaches make assumptions as to what happens and what their players see.
In our off-season program, we talk about training the eyes. We define being an athlete as using one’s feet and body to respond to a visual cue. We will say, “eyes to brain to feet.” That has to happen as fast as possible. The faster an athlete can do this, the better he or she will be.
If you were to come in and see us playing tag in the gym in the winter, you might think we have lost our minds — but we are training the eyes and the reaction right afterwards. That is why in most drill work, I prefer that there is a reaction to a stimulus as opposed to simply executing a drill or technique.
Blanton Collier is also considered a pioneer in the area of using video (or “film” as we used to call it) for coaching. He used video to break down his opponents and evaluate his players and their techniques. Since the “golden age” of the NFL in the 1960s, it has become common at all levels of football to use film/video as a coaching tool.
About three years ago, our football program began to use Hudl, a website and program that makes it much easier to use video to coach your team. I couldn’t begin to list all of the ways that Hudl can help a football team, coach or player. I have been around football my entire life, and I consider Hudl to be the best teaching tool for football in my lifetime.
Blanton Collier is the one that started all of football on this path of intricate video breakdown and use. I can only imagine what he would think of it and how much he would use it and enjoy it today.
Coach Collier’s character and philosophy continue to influence the game. The Blanton Collier Sportsmanship Group’s “mission is to provide standards, guidelines and education on the ethics of coaching for coaches of all levels of competition.” In an era where dictatorial coaches were seen as the norm, Coach Collier was different.
According to the Blanton Collier Sportsmanship Group website, Jim Brown said, “I was prepared for his genius – but I was not prepared for his humanity. I relate to Blanton as a sanctuary of mine – one of the men that I hold above all other men, because he treated me with respect as a human being, dealt with my mentality, and enabled me to further my life in a positive manner.”
One of the greatest honors and best experiences in my lifetime has been to follow in Coach Collier’s footsteps as the head football coach at Paris High School. That time and opportunity will always mean more to me than words can describe.
And it gets better: the first place I saw Stephanie, my wife to be, was at Blanton Collier Stadium. Of course, that had to be the place I asked her to marry me. Yes, “romance” is my middle name!
This article was originally printed in the Maysville Ledger Independent. It was editted by Zack Klemme who is now with the Ashland Daily Independent.