Roger Gruneisen seemed different from any football coach that I had grown up with.
He had long hair and was an expert on rock and roll — the first coach I ever saw play the air guitar or reference ‘The Who’ in a pregame speech. He is the only coach I know of that preferred his coaches wear collared shirts at practice.
On the surface, he was very different. But ultimately he reminded me of all the other very good coaches I had grown up with – he loved kids and he knew the game of football inside and out.
Roger played high school football at Trinity in Louisville, then at the University of Louisville for head coach Lee Corso – yes, that Lee Corso that you watch on ESPN. Roger was later the head coach at Trinity and led the program to two state titles.
I had played and coached for Larry French, and I really wanted another experience working for a great football coach. I got that from Roger when I joined his staff at Paris in 1988.
Chuck Smith had shown me that we needed to be multiple in our formations. Roger had the system to make it work. When I saw how he had his offense organized, I thought it was the greatest thing I had ever seen. To this day, our offensive system is built on Roger’s system and terminology.
On the defensive side of the ball, Roger was an innovator, although I have to admit I was not crazy about the scheme or fundamentals. Roger was installing a new defense in the summer of 1988 when I got to Paris. It was a combination of the “Confusion” defense of Bobby Redman (Chris Redman’s dad and the very successful coach at Male High School in Louisville) and what his brother Sam (the former San Diego Chargers player who also had coached for the Oakland/Los Angeles Raiders) had done at San Jose State. The base defense was from an odd front and we blitzed some or several every snap.
We were playing man coverage all over the field. It did cause a lot of problems for our opponent and several schools later adopted a version of it. The staffs at Middlesboro and Campbell County came to visit Roger and they put it in. Eventually Breathitt County and Fleming County put in what I believe was an improved version of the defense. I never wanted to run it for our base defense, but I was really glad for the experience of using it because we understood it when we faced it at Paris and then later on at Mason County.
From working with Roger, I remembered watching his Trinity teams sprint to the ball and snap it – so fast that many coaches said they were not set a full second, as is required by rule.
In 2010 we were getting ready to play our last game of the season against Greenup County. For a variety of reasons, we wanted to break from the huddle, sprint to the line of scrimmage and snap the ball before our opponent could see the formation. The week of the Greenup County game, I asked Roger to send us his Trinity videos so our kids could see it and how it works. Roger, as always willing to help anyone he could, over-nighted the video.
The kids loved watching the old Trinity videos and how they sprinted to the ball and snapped it so fast. We had a lot of fun that week working on it, and against Greenup County that night our kids did it about as well as they had watched the Trinity kids do. We played very well that night and I know Coach Gruneisen would have been pleased with them.
This column has been devoted to football items I learned from Roger, and I could add much more. He took organization and teaching to another level. But what made him a great coach was his rapport with the kids.
In all my years of being around football and coaches, Roger got along with kids better than anyone else. When he left Paris to be the head coach at Bourbon County, I wasn’t sure I would have a team. The kids loved Roger, but there was another lesson to be learned in that situation.
No player in his right mind would choose to play for me instead of Roger. It made it crystal clear to me that our only chance was to hang our hat on the team concept, that this was Paris football. At every practice, we broke it down on “Paris.” I constantly told our guys that the best football tradition and the best place to be a football player was Paris.
Even at Mason County, trying to build a tradition, we break it down on “Mason.” We don’t have the state titles in football – yet. But we are proud of the kids, players and coaches that have made sacrifices and put us on the road to that goal. Breaking it down on “Mason” is a great reminder every day that no one person, player or coach, is bigger than the program or team.
And, for the record, I have used a little rock and roll (‘Foreigner’, the Dramatics) for a Thursday pregame talk. No air guitar, but if we can ever get Coach Gruneisen in town, I am sure he will be ready to put on a show.