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want to thank you all for being here and Michael White for the invitation. It is a real privilege and honor to be a part of this great convention and speak to my fellow junior college coaches. I am a product of the junior college system. It was 1955 when I was fortunate enough to play for Compton College. We went undefeated, played against Jones Mississippi before 58,000 spectators, the largest crowd ever to see a junior college football game. We were crowned national champs after the win. I had already set my goals on becoming a coach, but the great experience I had those two seasons at Compton is when I decided I would someday become a community college coach and win a national championship. That dream has eluded me twice now. In 1974, after winning the state championship, we lost the national title because a tie had marred our record. Then this year, we lost in the final 30 seconds in the championship game against San Francisco. That was the bad news. The good news was that I might have retired had we won and I read the statistic that coaches pass on within two years after retirement. Grossmont College is a great, beautiful school on the borderline of San Diego. However, I have been there 31 years and it is a hard sell to young athletes. Our budget is low and even though we have the new Fieldturf, we have been noted as having the worst seating in all the country. I am one of the very few in California who does not have any full-time assistant coaches on my staff. But even with these problems, we have managed to win 83 games in the last decade, which included five bowl games and two California playoff berths. We have lost only three regular season games in the last four seasons. So how do we do it? Since there are not many junior college coaches here from California, I am going to share how we have done things at Grossmont. I know the old adage that you only get a few things out of each speaker at clinics. Since I have just a short time, I’ve picked out those few things that I, as a senior member of this coaching society, already know what you need to help you win. So, I have chosen a few bits of philosophy, marketing technique, offense and defense to share. There is no question the number ONE ingredient to our success is the marketing

of our players to the universities. We do this better than anyone and spend more time doing it than anyone because we estimate for every one player who gets out with a scholarship, we get two to four just like him. We have averaged twelve Division I or Division II scholarships each year over the past decade. This year, eight players have committed to Division I programs and four to Division I-AA. We expect a minimum of 15 scholarships and of our 31 sophomores, we expect 27 to be at the next level playing with some type of aid package in 2004. We do not have scholarships or housing as they do at Butler County Community College or most of you here, so we need incentives. That is why I spend more time in the off season than in season, working on football. So, what do we do? Many of the things that you do, but maybe a little better. 1. Our sophomore prospectus has a picture and is very detailed about each athlete. Every university receives a copy. 2. I have video equipment that can dub 14 games at a time. We have 30 tapes with all 2003 playoff games on one tape. It is stored and ready to package and give or send out. When a college coach phones or comes by, we send it out or give it to them immediately. The package includes a film and prospectus. If they are looking for a wide receiver or runningback, we have all the catches of our sophomore receivers and all the runs of our sophomore runningbacks on one film. All these things make life easy for the recruiters, and they are very grateful for the service. It also, of course, helps the player. However, as good as these mechanisms are in helping both the player and the recruiters, it is all for naught if the player does not get his grades. So, the one thing we do that you can take with you today is that we make sure they can accept any offer that might come their way. We expect 27 of our 31 sophomores this year to have transferable grades and a degree before this year is up. So what is the key? 1. We have an academic advisor and eligibility clerk, as many of you do, to get the student-athlete’s educational plan together and monitor the progress of each athlete.

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2. We have study halls and coaches who act as tutors. But, what we have introduced in the way of a “contract” has worked wonders in our relationship between instructors and our coaching staff. I have never had so many thank-yous as I received from instructors who taught football players after we introduced these contracts. Two instructors, who had never seen a football game in person, became big fans and never missed a home game. About one-third of our players are above average students, another third just get by, and the final one-third are at risk. The atrisk athletes are the ones we send out the contracts to. Basically, the contract has a picture and information on the athlete. If they are missing classes, not doing assignments, or fail a test, we want a phone call. We will take care of it, whether it is discipline or tutor the athlete. It has been 100 percent effective. Our second most important ingredient to winning is the marketing of our successes, both on the field and in the classroom. This brings the recruits in! I will guarantee it won’t be kept a secret when our 15plus scholarship papers are signed. I can assure you they will know all about our last decade of wins and post-season accomplishments, as well as our great history of collegiate and pro successes. Alumni from Brian Sipe, who was a quarterback for the Cleveland Browns, or Brad Daluiso, a kicker for the New York Giants, to our recent draftees, Larry Moore, offensive lineman for the Washington Redskins, Kevin McCadam, defensive back for the Atlanta Falcons, and Akili Smith, quarterback for the Cincinnati Bengals. We also will picture the four playing in the PAC-10 and the eight other active Division I or Division II players. We do the regular things, such as phone calls, campus visits, home visits, but one of those “few things” you can take with you is our marketing practices. We send out a recruit newsletter, which is an eight-page brochure to introduce ourselves with emphasis on the present day successes. If you have not had a lot of success, emphasize what you can. For example, “we were 5-5 with our losses being by a combined total of 12 points.” Then place a big picture of Joe Smith, who is headed to UCLA. One thing I have picked up is from Missouri, who is the ultimate “postcard sender.” It is inexpensive and productive.

We send postcards about every two or three weeks with pertinent data about our school, cheerleaders, the beach, academic honors, and of course, up-to-date player successes. It is hard work, hour upon hour. I am the editor of all this, but I get some great assistance from our college’s word processors and the photographer. But it works and gives the recruits a big picture of what we can do for them as student-athletes. We want them to know that we are here to build a future for these athletes. Griffin Defense-Offense Because of a lack of commitments and players changing schools in the last hours, by necessity we in California have to take very seriously keeping our offense and defense simple. Defense In 2003, our defense shut out three teams and kept seven under 15 points. We not only have players rolling in and out, but we also had seven different coordinators in 10 years until I decided to take over in 2001. I kept it simple for both coaches and players. We are a generic defense: Okie-Eagle-Bear Pro (“slide”) over from Okie – Nickel and Dime. They are all derived from the 34 and anyone will know the alignments after a few days. Our blitzes are called what they are: AA-Inside, linebackers blitzing A gaps, etc. Our secondary is in coverages 1-2-3-4-5. We feel if we can line up correctly, we can get the job done. The best thing we have done is eliminate a lot of our chalk talk and spend more time walking through (every day for 15 minutes before practice) our alignments versus offensive sets. Offense Our 2003 offense was typical of the past decade of accomplishments. We averaged 485 yards and 45 points per game. We passed for 4,420 yards and ran for 2,559. We keep this as simple as possible here also. We have kept away from numbers on the run game since 1970 and it has been fine. We zone block up front, and like the defense, we use descriptive terms. Dive left, option left, power, stretch, load; plus three or four more plays so that we might give a little more time and sophistication to the passing game.

Front page of Grossmont’s first recruit brochure. But what we do best is our practice organization. Repetition is what it is all about. Every day, we work an hour’s worth of passing drills. Fifteen minutes of 7 on 7, 10 minutes of 11 on 11, thuds, plus 10 minutes of two-minute drills. But to be honest, I looked at the San Francisco game and saw pass after pass being completed and wondered how that was happening against that great perimeter? I still don’t know, so I asked two quarterbacks who took us to an undefeated season in 1998 against all junior college competition (lost one to the Air Force junior varsity) and a Potato Bowl Championship. They are both successful coaches now and

both are looking for graduate assistant jobs at the collegiate level. Both of these players know the passing game as well as their coach. Bryan Halsey and Josh Schmidt will now give you the keys to our offensive successes. Grossmont College Offense The Grossmont College offense is very explosive. This past season, we averaged 485 yards per game and scored at least 46 points in nine out of 14 games. It is a very fun and entertaining offense to watch, but yet it is very simple. It is a multi-formational offense that exploits the weaknesses in the opposing defenses. One thing that

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truly makes our offense run is our offensive coordinator, Mike Jordan. He has done a tremendous job with play calling, knowledge of the sport and enthusiasm. One of the things that I believe helps out our offensive players is that during practice, we make them play defense. Quarterbacks will play safeties; wide

receivers will play corners and outsided linebackers; runningbacks will play inside linebackers. This allows our players to understand where the defense will be on different coverages. Quarterback Drills During individual time, our quarterbacks

will go through a warm-up routine. This routine will change each day, but these are the drills that we emphasize: option-pitch, shoulders square to the line of scrimmage, footwork fundamentals (quick feet, etc.), three-step drop (throw to both sides), fivestep drop (throw to both sides), and rollout (throw on the run).

Crossing Drill This drill involves the quarterbacks and wide receivers. You have one quarterback (or you can use more, if you have them) facing another quarterback, about eight yards apart to start. The receivers are split into two groups and are about 15 yards apart. The wide receiver line begins with the first person stepping out and becoming the defender. Basically, the defender just stands there with their hands out, but this gives the receivers a chance to work on their release move. The quarterbacks always throw to the same side (though each day you can throw opposite). It starts as the quarterback says “go” and takes a three-step drop and gets the ball to the wide receiver quickly. Once the receiver catches the ball, he turns up-field to the other quarterback and hands the ball off to him. As you can see, the wide receivers are running toward each other, but they will never hit because the ball gets there early enough and they turn it up right away. Once you have done the three-step drops, you can move the quarterbacks back a few yards and widen out the receivers a little bit and get a five-step drop going. This drill does many things, including working on quick release and accuracy for

the quarterbacks, release move, catching and turning it up-field for the receivers. Short Passing Game The short passing game is all threestep drops and it is very simple. Basically, we want the quarterback to only have to read one defender on each side. It is mostly the flat defender, whether that is an outside linebacker or a defensive back. These are high percentage passes that should be completed 75 percent of the time or more. We want to take what the defense is giving up. The defense can only cover so many zones. We want to figure out which zone is weakest and throw there. For man coverages, usually we will pick our best match up. All of these routes are good against zone or man, it is just up to the quarterback to figure out which wide receiver to throw to. The short passing game that we throw the most of is our hitch/quick slant combination, quick slant/quick out combination, fade/quick out combination, fade/quick slant combination, and our hitch/quick corner combination. These can all be run out of mutiple formations. There are a few adjustments to some defenses, such as a hard cover-two look, but you can stay on any of these combinations. There are obvi-

sously variations that you can come up with, but this is our short passing game at Grossmont. Four Vertical Another passing series that we will run a lot of is our four verticals. This allows us to stretch the field and hopefully make a big play. With four verticals, you have your basic reads: in a cover-three look, the quarterback will read the free safety and throw to one of the hash routes. In a cover-two look, the quarterback will read one of the safeties and throw the hash or sideline route. In a cover-four look, one of the inside recievers will bend their routes and try to run away from the safety. Also, in each of these coverages, the runningback will hook up over the middle about five yards deep for a dump off. If the linebackers get too deep, just dump the ball to the runningback. Against man coverage, we believe out recievers can beat their defenders and so the quarterback makes his same reads on the safeties. The quarterback should always know his match-ups and pick the weakest defender. This has been a brief explanation of the Grossmont College passing game. Obvisouly, there is more that we can get to, but I do thank you for your time.

Caution Your Team About Player Agents A problem for all coaches is the proliferation of agents and would-be agents who seek to make agreements with players prior to the completion of their eligibility. The activity of these people has increased, and it is imperative that all of the consequences of making an agreement with an agent are known by your players. Contact with players by agents almost always is done without the knowledge of the coach. Some agents openly admit they will continue to make contacts and agreements with players before their final season has been completed. This could lead to forfeiture of games. Some agents are advising players not to risk injury by playing. Your players must be warned about this problem. Do it more than once.