Aug. 26, 2008
Even after another 13 or 14-hour day, Larry Hoefer still calls this "fun."
The 57-year-old Baylor assistant is beginning his 35th season as a coach, including 30 at the college level. But if he's wearing down, Hoefer certainly doesn't show it.
"It's not like you go to work. It's not work in our minds," said Hoefer, who is coaching the linebackers this year after tutoring the safeties the last five years and adding defensive coordinator duties last season. "You enjoy doing it."
Before the Bears ended their 21-day fall training camp, I spent a day with the veteran football coach, starting with an early-morning workout and finishing over 12 hours later with a post-practice video session with the defensive staff.
Here's a glimpse at a day in the life of a Baylor football coach:
7 a.m.: Breakfast in the Galloway Suite. Hoefer invited me, but I figured I would sleep in a little longer and get a fresh start at 8. "You should have been up here at 6:15 with Coach Hoefer," says head coach Art Briles, when he sees me "dragging" in at 8:05.
8:05: In his office, Hoefer goes over the day's practice schedule and writes down notes of some of the key things he wants to handle in the morning workout. The coaches have stayed late the night before to work out the minute-to-minute schedule and script out every session.
8:25: On the field early for pre-practice, Hoefer sets up his station as the players go through stretching and then opening special teams drills.
8:50: "Stay square!" "Pad level needs to be lower!" With a relatively experienced group that includes junior starters Joe Pawelek and Antonio Jones, Hoefer doesn't take long to introduce the drills. They know them. But he's constantly barking out words of encouragement and instruction: "Footwork! Footwork! No false steps" "Working downhill." Since game video has shown that Wake Forest's linemen like to cut block, the linebackers work on taking on blocks and staying up.
9 a.m.: "Get a quick drink." After a short break, the linebackers work on open-field tackling. "I like it!" "Keep your pads down!" "Finish!" When freshman Fredric Plesius from Canada does it the right way, you can see Hoefer's face light up. This is the kind of stuff that keeps him going and energized.
9:25 a.m.: In a team period, the first- and second-team defense are going against a scout-team offense led by quarterback Ryan Roberts. "Attaway, men! Attaway!" After every play, Hoefer lets them know what they did right and wrong. Instead of yelling or preaching, he's constantly teaching, never close to losing control. "I think he's somebody that you can go to and ask an honest question, and you'll get an honest answer. But you also get an encouraging answer," Norwood said. "Coach Hoefer is a very encouraging person."
"Shoot, I've known him for 20-plus years," Briles said. "So it wasn't like I wonder what he's going to do, how he's going to coach, what kind of person he is. I've known him. And I've always respected the type of person he is, the type of recruiter he is and the type of coach he is. He's solid, he's intelligent and he's experienced."
9:45 a.m.: At the first full break, Hoefer grabs a quick energy drink. But even during the break, he's coaching, asking the players what they're seeing and going over the rest of the schedule. While the other coaches cluster in the middle of the field, Hoefer sticks close to the players.
9:55 a.m. : During the "Skell" or "Skelly" period, the linebackers are joined by the secondary for a 7-on-7 drill against the offense. Briles' imaginative offense keeps the defensive coaches on their toes, even in a practice drill like this. "You see quite a bit (in practice), but you can't see everything," Hoefer said, "particularly with Coach Briles' offense. They're so fast, they're going 100 mph."
10:05 a.m.: In the blitz period, the No. 1 defense goes against the first-team offense. It's funny watching the coaches. As Briles has said many times, "We're in the same locker room." But on the field, it's hard to rein in a coach's competitive nature. If one side gets an edge, the coaches have a hard time disguising their emotions. Even out here, they want to win.
10:25 a.m. : At least in fall camp, practice is not run by the clock. After a two-hour practice, Hoefer spends another 10 minutes doing a walk-through with the first- and second-team linebackers. "They're trying to get people out of their gaps. You've got to stay in your gaps." "Does that make sense?"
10:45 a.m.: As the players (and one writer) head back upstairs for an early lunch, Hoefer detours to the weight room for a 15-minute workout on the treadmill. "Coach Briles encourages that with all of his coaches," Hoefer said. "And part of that is when you're in shape, you can coach better, you can coach longer, you can coach at your very best. And that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to win." While some of the other coaches run the steps of the stadium or lift weights, the treadmill has always been Hoefer's exercise of choice. "I give (Mike Sims, assistant athletic director/athletic training) a hard time, because the defribulator is close by."
11:35 a.m.: After his workout and a quick shower, Hoefer grabs lunch from upstairs and is one of the first in the defensive staff meeting room, waiting to review the video from the morning practice. Session by session and drill by drill, the coaches go over the video. I could sit there and watch it all day and never see the mistakes that make the coaches groan and moan in agony. "Where's he going?" "He's better than that!" But what gets me is the give and take of the coaches. Instead of a dictatorial approach, Norwood listens to every voice in the room. In addition to Norwood and Hoefer, there's line coaches Theo Young and Chris Achuff, cornerbacks coach Kim McCloud, assistant director of operations/defensive quality control Casey Horny and graduate assistant Reed Heim.
At one point, the line coaches seem to disagree about how to handle a certain pass rush. But ultimately, it's worked out. Problem solved. "I can't step in there and feel that I know all the answers," Norwood said. "Because I don't. The reality is that there's going to be times where there's some storms. There's times when it's rough. And it's my hope that we'll be able to hold tight together in those times also. We've only got each other. So we have to respect each other, believe that each person wants the other's best and we're really trying to do it together as a team."
Since this is Norwood's first stint as a defensive coordinator, he doesn't hesitate to draw on Hoefer's knowledge and experience. "Larry, what do you think about this?"
"We're listening to each other and we're open and we're a staff that will work well together," said Hoefer, the only coach retained by Briles. "There's not any egos that think that they have all the answers. We all know there's more than one way to do things."
1:40 p.m.: After the two-hour video session with the rest of the defensive coaches, Hoefer arrives in the team meeting room early for a special teams meeting. Instead of naming one special teams coordinator, Briles has divided the duties among all the assistants, and Hoefer is responsible for the punt return team. In addition to showing them practice video, Hoefer also reviews some Wake Forest game film to prepare for next week's season opener.
2 p.m.: These guys watch more film than Siskel and Ebert. During a 50-minute position meeting with the linebackers, Hoefer goes over the video again and shows them some more stuff on Wake Forest. Running the computer for the video replays is student assistant Josh Bookbinder, who's the grandson of former Baylor coach Grant Teaff. At the start of each meeting, Hoefer has one of the 14 linebackers stand up at the front of the room and tell the rest of the group about himself. True freshman Rodney Chadwick is from Carthage, Texas, "which is about 30 minutes from Shreveport"; he has two brothers and two older sisters; his middle name is Elton; and his major is kinesiology. "The whole thing is trying to get a healthy respect for everybody's background and where they come from, and don't be judgmental." I miss Antonio Johnson the next day, but the sophomore from Waco High was apparently beaming as he told the players about beating some guy named Robert Griffin in the 110-meter hurdles back in ninth grade. Griffin, of course, earned All-American honors this spring, finishing third in the 400-meter hurdles at the NCAA Outdoor Championships, and narrowly missed a spot in the finals of the U.S. Olympic Track Trials.
2:55 p.m.: I think Larry works on Tom Coughlin time. The old-school New York Giants head coach actually beIieves, "if you're on time, you're five minutes late." So Hoefer's back on the field and ready to go, long before the start of pre-practice. With few exceptions, the afternoon practice is almost a carbon copy of the morning workout.
4:15 p.m.: As the stadium loud speakers start blasting out rap music, the players are visibly "jacked up" as they head off to a team period against the scout offense. This is clearly not Hoefer's brand of music, but he's got an ear-to-ear grin on his face. "We do it late in camp to get them pumped up," he said. And it does the trick. The players are dancing and singing along and have a little extra skip in their step. Hoefer, though, never changes. It's a little tougher to communicate over the noise, but he still gets his points across. Not once did I see a player ignore or disagree with him. But he patiently listens to every question, whether it's coming from Pawelek or a walk-on like Sam Shalala. He treats them all like first-stringers.
"Some of the young guys, they just need more game experience," Hoefer said of a group that's considered the deepest and most talented position on the team. "But we're giving them all the reps we can right now. And we're trying to interchange it a little bit, too, at different positions. We've got some solid depth at those spots."
5:30 p.m.: Dinner. If these guys go hungry or thirsty, it's their own fault. They put out a spread that would be fit for an army of kings. There's everything from chicken and potatoes to sandwich meats, salads and enough cookies to choke a horse. Sodas are nowhere to be found, but there's gallons and gallons of Gatorade and water.
6 p.m.: At a time when I'm ready to curl up in some corner and take a nap, the coaches gather back in the defensive staff meeting for another video session. There's more moaning and groaning and even the occasional argument. But they get through the video of the afternoon workout and start looking ahead to the next day's schedule. That's right, boys, we've got to do this all over again.
8:25 p.m.: I can't tell you for sure what time Coach Hoefer left that night. But the stadium was close to empty and only a handful of cars remained in the parking lot as I left the stadium. My guess is that he took some Wake Forest video home with him just to take one more look. And I can honestly tell you that I had no problems falling asleep that night.
