by Gifford Lindheim, Head Football Coach
Santa Monica College
In 2009, I was asked to become the interim Head Football Coach at Santa Monica College three weeks before the start of fall camp. They were on probation, had no full time teaching position to offer, had won 3 and 2 games in the previous two seasons, and although the existing staff felt that they had a good group based on spring and summer practices, there were no promises as to how many of those players would stick around for a new Head Coach only weeks before the start of the season. Also, I had never been a Head Football Coach and was unsure if I would be a good one. I just had finished coaching at the University of Nevada for Hall of Fame Coach Chris Ault, followed by a successful season coaching at El Camino College, and it had revitalized me in the profession. I very much enjoyed working with the eternally energetic and positive JC coaching legend John Featherstone and had found a kindred spirit in Defensive Coordinator Matt Kirk and the rest of the staff. After deliberating for two days, I decided that I was ready to embark on a new adventure and perhaps my biggest career challenge to date. I took over the reigns at Santa Monica College.
Santa Monica College lies fourteen blocks from the beach, supports 30,000 students, and has a fine reputation as one of the top transfer JC’s in California. At one time, the football team boasted a run of outstanding teams, including the Junior Rose Bowl game in 1958. In the modern era, Santa Monica College gained notoriety for turning out such NFL players as Steve Smith, Isaac Bruce, and Chad Johnson. But in the years before I arrived, the program had slipped. In fact, in the 5 years before my arrival, the team hadn’t won more than 5 games in any of those seasons.
Being hired so late, as the interim Head Coach, I made the conscious decision to keep the entire staff together. I could have probably tried to bring in some guys late, but I decided that it was in the best interest of the program and the kids to keep the continuity of the staff. I was the outsider, and I was treated as such. I’m sure in their mind, the staff felt that either we would all be fired at the end of the season, or I would be hired and bring in a new staff. That’s not what was on my mind, but I can understand why they would think that. It definitely made things uncomfortable at times in that first year.
My goal that first interim season was to calm the turbulent waters, give players and coach’s some stability, and try and prepare the team to win some games and have some success. It was also a great opportunity for me to try and build relationships, find out the culture of the college, the athletic department, and the team. I had a plan. After many years as an assistant under diverse leadership styles, I knew what I stood for, and how I wanted to get there. However, as a first time Head Coach, I was learning how to administrate, and make decisions that were foreign to me as an assistant. For example, what’s our pre-game routine, what kind of pre-game meal are we going to eat, how do I submit the paper work for it, etc. That first season was a learning experience. One bright spot was working with Willie Roaf, who coached the O-line that season. He was a wealth of knowledge, a good teacher, and patient and positive with the kids. We sat near each other on the bus to road games and talked football. He was a warrior….and a winner. On the field, we took our licks but we were able to muster up 3 wins, matching the high for the past 4 years. The season ended, the program had moved forward, and I was encouraged to apply for the permanent head coaching position.
In March, I was officially hired as the Head Coach at Santa Monica College. It didn’t come with a full time teaching position, but I finally had the keys to the car. It was time to roll. It became clear that I had to start fresh. Obviously, I had created a list of coaches that I wanted to bring with me. That was my first priority. I had to do it without full time teaching positions to offer. But I was looking for 4 criteria: 1) the best coaches 2) guys I could trust 3) care about kids and 4) positive energy.
Hiring the best coaches in our recruiting area was critical. First, it would give me a head start in my recruiting philosophy of keeping the best players in the area at Santa Monica College. I inherited a team with mostly out-of-state players. That was not my philosophy or the philosophy of our community college higher ups. Second, even if I had to have the best coaches part of the time, it was certainly better to me than having a worse coach all the time. As the leader of the ship, I needed to be flexible. And I wanted to make it fun. After all, I didn’t have a lot to offer guys in the way of money. So here was the deal: I would put out the fires, run the team, the administration, the budget, and the recruiting. My coaches could come coach their specialty and connect with the players. There were no long staff meetings, no 3 hour practices, and no second guessing from me. As an assistant coach for all those years, I thought it was a disservice to constantly be dealing with a tinkering Head Coach. I wanted to hire good people and let them coach. My job was to be an objective eye, push the tempo of practice, to support the coordinators, and not to second guess them. In 4 years, I haven’t made one offensive or defensive play call.
I needed coaches I could trust. It was important that I had guys that I could work with that I felt comfortable with their morale fiber. I want to be around good people. Also, although there was no reason to think that we could win with a program that was down and a first time head coach. I was looking for guys who could see my vision and be my extension, even when I wasn’t in the room. I hired an Offensive Consultant that I had worked for previously. His resume was lengthy with success, and we had had a lot of success together. I hired him even though I knew that I could only get him for half the practice. But he’s got the best feel of any play caller I’ve ever been around. And I trusted him. We modified the practices to optimize his time and expertise. I put around him assistant coaches that knew his scheme already as well as David Banuelos, an Offensive Line Coach that had been a JC head coach previously. He did the breakdowns. On Defense, I hired Steve Garcia. Steve gave me my first college coaching job when I was 23 years old. I learned defensive football while working for him at Whittier College for 5 seasons. Steve is an old school, football coaching grinder. I trust him implicitly. I hired other coaches who were connected to SMC and were coaching at high school’s around the area.
I’ve always believed that in order to be a good coach, you have to care about kids. Kids will run through the theoretical wall for you if: 1) you have knowledge that can help them get better and 2) know that you care about them. It transcends all ethnicities and age gaps. In today’s society, kids are different. They want to know how and why? You can coach a kid as hard as you want if they believe that you can make them better and you care about them.
Finally, I was looking for guys who exuded positive energy. Sure, there were obstacles. Plenty of obstacles. But I wanted guys to preach what they can be, what we can be….not what we aren’t. And of course, nobody wants to be around negative energy.
We went into that first spring as a new staff with plenty of issues. I was hired in March, so I really hadn’t had a chance to recruit the way I wanted to. We brought 140 guys out to spring, most of whom we had no idea who they were or if they had even played football before. It was quite a group, to stay nonetheless. But we were going to try and uncover every rock. We needed to upgrade the talent on the roster. Meanwhile, I hit the local HS’s, trying to re-establish relationships and trust with people and programs who had stopped trusting Santa Monica College. I had to sell them on our vision, one of football excellence, academics, and character growth.
With holdovers from the previous year and players we recruited from half a recruiting season, we embarked on our first full season together. Our goal was to establish an identity on both sides of the ball, and to be fundamentally sound and competitive in the conference. Personally, I viewed .500 as the goal to show the community and our players that we were headed in the right direction.
As a program, the staff was feeling each other and me out. I was very clear in my vision. There were plenty of obstacles out there. But I wasn’t going to deal with negativity. We were going to plow forward, stick to the plan, care about these kids, coach them hard and with positive energy. With all these new kids, we had a short amount of time to figure out what they could do, what they couldn’t do, and who were the best guys. After all, almost the entire roster was new along with the staff evaluating them. We had to sort through a 4 way QB competition that probably set us back a game or two. We finally settled on a guy in Week 2, only to see him have a season ending knee injury in Game 3. Then, we lost our 2nd starter for the year in Week 9, which cost us a chance to go .500. Although there were highs (beating the eventual conference champs), there were also games where we didn’t look very good. We still weren’t at a point where we could execute consistently on both sides of the ball. We made strides that first year; however, we weren’t fundamentally sound enough. We needed to block and tackle better, and be able to line up and execute the X’s and O’s on both sides of the ball. Our special teams also needed to improve. And we still had some character issues on the team that we needed to shed.
Moving into Year 3, I finally had a full off-season and a settled staff. We went through some growing pains together the previous season, but I was very clear what we had to do to get better. We had to do a better job coaching fundamentals, bring in better talent, with better football IQ’s, who had better character. We had a nucleus of returners and we were starting to make headway in the community. This would be my 1st year with a roster of just players we had recruited. We scoured the local HS’s, we recruited every captain on every high school team in our area. We recruited every undersized, overlooked, but talented player who I thought had a winner’s mentality. After all, LaDamian Tomlinson and Dwight Freeney weren’t the prototypes either. We discouraged out of state players who were contacting us by the hundreds, unless they were our type of person, our type of player, and were players who could be self sustainable in the community.
We had a much better spring. The schemes and philosophy were the same, there was staff and player continuity (for a JC), and although the returning players weren’t sure if they could win big down deep, they knew and we knew that we were improving. We were working hard and starting to believe in “SMC Family”, our approach to team building. Our roster was turning around. Our depth was improving, our talent was getting better, but did we have enough star talent?
We started the pre-season playing much better football. We settled on a QB, who knew the system. He was calm but competitive and a winner. He was efficient, and a great extension of our philosophy. Although the other young players we recruited were clearly talented, we were still making too many mistakes to win every week early in the season. We finished the pre-season schedule 2-2, which was the same pre-season record as the year before, and I was concerned if we could get over the hump and believe in each other enough to become a champion. I still felt that we might be a year away from challenging. Before the BYE, we lost a tough one out in the heat in San Bernardino. I was curious how the team was going to treat the BYE after a close loss. On the ensuing Monday, we had 100% attendance and the guys were running harder than I’ve ever seen. We created a week of competition practices and the players responded. Maybe we did have something for this year?
With all that enthusiasm from the BYE week, we still came off the BYE struggling in the 1st half of our 1st Conference game of the year. It was a pivotal game, a winnable game, and although I’m very even keeled most of the time, I blew our team up at halftime. We came out in the 2nd half, made enough plays to win the game, and we were able to move forward. I breathed a sigh of relief but I still didn’t believe we were ready. I was wrong.
We started to get hot. We were still making mistakes, but we were also making big plays throughout the game each week to win. And we were taking care of the football. Our plus/minus was impressive. We were also starting to play harder through more of the game. The guys were beginning to believe, and our experience and philosophy as a staff was helping them learn how to finish games. The wins were not blowouts. Sometimes we were up, sometimes we had to come from behind in the closing moments of the game. Each game had a different storyline and a different hero. We ended up winning 6 in a row on our way to our first Conference Championship since 2003. It was one of the most joyous season’s of my life. We had brought the program back, it was my first Championship as a Head Coach, and my vision and philosophy was validated. I felt best for the players and coaches who had believed in what we were trying to accomplish and trusted me. We were all champions together.
I was invigorated by the win, our players were starting to get recruited all over the country, and I was excited to go recruit more players who fit our system and were our type of people. I was also feeling very challenged to try and repeat as champions. Were we just a flash in the pan? Was it luck? The true test of any greatness is being able to do it again. And so we went back to work, refining things that were working, and eliminating aspects that didn’t work.
The off-season was exciting. The core group of players were back, specifically the QB and the star RB, who happened to be 5’6, but had all the talent, character, and heart of any player I’ve coached. The majority of the staff remained in tact as well, and I felt the continuity of staff and philosophy was paying dividends. This off season, we didn’t have to try and convince the players that we were creating a winning culture. We were there. We had the swagger.
Entering my 4th season as Head Coach, I was determined. I felt confident in our approach to the program, the kids, and the game, but I wanted to prove that we were here to stay. We were more efficient in our practices, more polished in our performance, and more demanding of what we wanted. We were 90% local players and we cared about each other. I kept reminding the coaches why we were successful. You have to recruit good players and good people, care about them, and coach them well. You also have to remind a team that’s won already that each game needs to be played one play at a time and one game at a time. We refuse to talk about the next game until it’s time to prepare for them. The players laughed (but knew I was serious) and the reporters shook their head, but I refused to move past the next opponent, even as reporters started to anticipate big games on the schedule. We also had one more obstacle. I would have to sit out the 1st game of the season with a self-imposed penalty because of a fight that took place in the handshake line at the end of our Bowl game. Being away from my team for Game 1 was one of the most difficult Saturday afternoon’s I’ve ever experienced.
We lost our 1st game of last season by 3 points. We had a chance to win the game, but dropped a potential winning TD with less than 3 minutes to go. The players were upset that there wouldn’t be a perfect season. I was just disappointed that we let one slip away. With a tougher pre-season schedule, we were at risk of going 0-3. We went on the road in Week 2, threw a fake punt for a TD in our 1st possession, and never looked back. We executed well. We played hard. We were going to be fine.
We were moving along early in the schedule when I almost screwed up our bid to go Back to Back with an arrogant fake punt call late in the game in Week 1 of conference. I promised to be aggressive on special teams, but this was a terrible decision. The defense bailed me out with a 4 down stance and we won the game. I apologized right there on the field to the team after the game, and I promised never to make a stupid call like that again. It was humbling. The guys were happy we won, hugged me, forgave me, and we went back to work building momentum. I think it was important to take responsibility, especially since we spend a lot of time asking them to. We were clearly a better team than the year before. Midway through the year, we put a 68-0 win on a team that had beat us just 2 years before and danced on our field in celebration. We didn’t try to beat them by such a large margin. It just happened. And although it was the most perfect performance that we’ve had in this era at SMC, winning by that margin is a curse. Each game is a new energy, and players start to feel entitled to points and big wins. They can start to get selfish as well and forget how much one has to sacrifice just to win, much less a blowout win.
I was right. We followed the 68-0 win with a close win over a gutty but inferior Conference opponent. Before that game, the opposing coach, whom I have deep respect, basically told me that two other teams in our conference they had already lost to were better than us but he wished us luck. Although I couldn’t argue with his opinion, which was probably true, it lit my fire. It reminded me that if we didn’t win the Conference again, we were just another flash in the pan. I thought about him through every one of those following games, which included a 26 point second half comeback win against one of the teams he mentioned, and winning the championship on the road against the other team he predicted would beat us. We won 9 straight games and claimed the Conference Championship again! We were Back to Back Champs for the first time at SMC in over 30 years. I was selected Coach of the Year for the 2nd season in a row, and we had fulfilled our potential as a team for the year. We had arrived. We had changed the culture.