Looking Back: Tom on Jon Gruden

Posted Feb 1, 2012 by The Tampa Tribune

Updated Feb 1, 2012 at 07:09 PM

It is always a challenge to hire a new pro football coach, to find the right fit, the right background and the upbeat, can do, winning attitude. So we have the very highest expectations of the Bucs new Coach Greg Schiano, just hired after a successful run at Rutgers.

Tom wrote a very good comprehensive piece on Coach Jon Gruden below, who was brought in a similar situation and went on to win the Super Bowl.

What fun that was!

Hey Coach Schiano, do the same. - Linda

Brainy Bunch

Kathy and Jim Gruden have not just been the parents of their three sons, but three sons who are all brainy and successful. Yep, it is that Gruden Family with boys, Jim, Jon and Jay. Jim is a chief of radiology, Jim a quarterback and Jon the coach of the 2003 Super Bowl champion Buccaneer_. This look at that admired family was prepared before that Super Bowl victory.

TAMPA-The Gruden Family, now even more important to Tampa, is one long on brains, football, male genes and the right stuff whose macho members will declare the leading lady the real star.

That would be Kathy Gruden, wife of Jim, mother of sons Jim, Jon and Jay, grandmother of six more boys, recently retired favorite teacher at upscale Berkeley Preparatory School here who quit at the suggestion of the sons to take care of her grandkids, all boys.

That will get a little easier now that her second son, Jon, has accepted the head coaching job of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and he’ll be heading back this way from Oakland and the Raider coaching job from which the Buc owners are paying a bigtime ransom to tree him.

“When Jim and I were married I was a giant Cleveland Indian fan,” she said recently, “so big I told my uncle I planned to have nine boys so I could have my one team. Well, I have these three sons and now six grandsons, so I got my team.”

Husband Jim college coached all over the place, at Dayton for John McVay, for Lee Corso at Indiana, for Dan Devine at Notre Dame. Then, husband Jim

in 1982 came to Tampa more than a decade ago to coach Buc running backs (James Wilder) for the late John McKay, then made this wonderful place in which we live the Gruden Family homestead, despite coaching at other NFL spots, including serving as a scout for the Forty- Niners for the last 10 years. Know this, when Ray Perkins, now moved back to Tampa as well, became the head coach of the Bucs, the Gruden daddy, Jim, was released, The father then and went to the Niners for the scouting career, but continued to make Tampa his home. In time, Gruden son Jon became the head coach out at Oakland where Ray Perkins had become an assistant coach. Perkins, of course, left for other jobs, and in time back to Tampa, where irony surfaces again with Jon Gruden now moving back to take over the job Perkins once had.

But, now let’s move to the Gruden sons, to more football and more brains.

Eldest son Jim, 40, was a doctor-scientist in a big job in radiology at Atlanta’s Emory University, then in Arizona. He was the valedictorian of his South Bend., Ind., high school, a summa ##### laude graduate of Notre Dame and a 4.0 man at the University of Miami medical school. He had one B at Notre Dame-in Catholicism.

Jon, the Buc coach to-be, 38, was a quarterback at Dayton, but not in the pros. He is a computer whizbang, a workaholic, a human memory bank. He became the offensive coordinator for the Philadelphia Eagles Davis hired him to be the head coach at Oakland. He got into the pros because of his computer work and application of that knowledge to coaching, because of his innovation.

Youngest son Jay, 33, best known to us hereabouts, was a Billy Turner quarterback at Tampa Chamberlain, and a good one. He won a scholarship to quarterback for Howard Schnellenberger at the University of Louisville, before being the best Arena Football quarterback in the business. Four times he quarterbacked Tampa Bay Storm to championships, for Fran Curci, then for Tim Marcum, moving to Orlando to coach and administer there, successfully. Someone might, just might, come back to Tampa now, with good wife Sherri, former Buc marketing expert. Might, just might be a spot for him with the Bucs, now.

Now, in the Family Gruden, Jay has always complained his two brothers got all the brains, but, this young man has done well in this family of achievers, and of no-trouble sons. No trouble, at all. Honest.

“Not one minute,” said their dad. “Cops never came to the door. Principal never punished them. Never were smart-alecs to us. And, they’re smart, too.
Lucky, aren’t we?”

I’ll say.

But, Corso, now a top-notch ESPN college football analyst not only says papa Jim was the best recruiter “and a terrific influence on the sons, but in my mind, it was their wonderful mother who deserves most of the credit,” getting no argument from anyone.

Now, this is not to suggest any comparison of any kind, but clearly the Bucs have a brilliant young man as the new head coach.

Hear his dad on second son, Jon: “He installed the computer system at the Niners, and then at Philadelphia. He uses them wisely and extensively, I mean, he did that at the other places and now he did at Oakland. Jon will work all night. He needs only three or four hours if sleep. He’s no-nonsense,” his dad said. “He hires strong people, gets along with players and never, ever forgets anything. Even now, he can recite every player we had when I coached for Corso at Indiana, recite their names, numbers and positions. He’s an elephant. Yet, he listens. Not a spout-off. He never played pro ball, but football he has on the field and in his mind all his life.”

There’s another thing.

Jon Gruden is a popular choice, young, gifted, and out of that superb Gruden Family.

Oh, sure, Steve Spurrier would have been a top-notch choice. And we still don’t know why there was no publicly-acknowledged pursuit of him. No, Bill Parcells would not have been a popular pick. And no, neither would Marvin Lewis, or the Maryland coach, or perhaps any of the others, except Steve Mariucci of the Niners. Not really. But, Jon Gruden is a dandy land, despite the cost.

Dandy. Won’t have to mend fences, or win over the fans. He’ll have them going in. Big problems: Offense, quarterback, O-line, players to fill needs to be lost with draft choice penalties.

Of course, nothing mattered, because young Gruden performed beyond all expectations by going to and winning the Super Bowl so very quickly in 2002. No one ever questioned his selection by the Malcolm Glazer ownership nor his work habits again.

The suddenness of it? Well, …well, it ... well, do you hear what I hear, a small male chorus (The Gruden Family Choir) over at One Bucko Place singing that George Gershwin show tune:

“They all laughed at Christopher Columbus when said the world was round…” And a bit later, “ooh, ooh, ooh. . . . whose got the last laugh now?”

With the background humming male chorus, the Glazer Men’s Choir, working the background music.