Do You Love Football?! by Jon Gruden, Vic Carucci Read Free Book Online

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    Although I never had her for a teacher-with my dad gone all the time with football, my mom left her job for a while to raise us and then returned when we got to sixth and seventh grades-her approach with her students would go something like this: "You got an eighty-seven on that test. That's a good job. Next time get a hundred . . . Ninety-three! Nice job. You're getting there. You're going to get a hundred next time, aren't you?"
    There really isn't a whole lot of difference between that and the way I might communicate with a player, like Keyshawn Johnson, who just helped us win a Super Bowl: "You played pretty good, Keyshawn. You had a heck of a year. Now you've got to be the most dominating sonofabitch ever. You can do that, can't you? You want that, don't you, Keyshawn?"
    If there was an elementary schoolteacher who worked more hours than my mom, I'd like to meet him or her. She was grading papers until long after we went to bed. She was up at five o'clock in the morning every day, showing up for work two hours before her students got to class. I know, I know. Like mother, like son. A lot of the assignments she gave her students were creative assignments, which usually meant a lot of extra work for her. She had them writing hardbound books that she would sew together herself. The extent that my mom went to was far beyond the call of duty.
    I probably worked out way too much for a third-string Division III college quarterback. I'd lift weights. I'd run. I'd carry a big bag filled with twelve footballs outside and throw them at different targets in my backyard-an old tire hanging from a tree branch or my T-shirt or the nylon mesh ball bag that I'd place in various spots in the grass. I'd make different kinds of throws-on the move, three-step drop, five-step drop, all the different setups that a quarterback does. My parents were in Tampa then. It gets really hot down here in the summer, especially when you're lifting and running and throwing three, four, five hundred balls a day like I was. I was devoted to it. As you can tell by now, if I was going to try anything, it would be full throttle. You don't get anything in life being half-assed.
    But I never could get enough football. In the early 1980s, my brother Jay and I would hang out with my dad for about a month at the Bucs training camp. We would throw wide flares and check-downs to the backs during their individual drills or when players would be in town during the offseason working out voluntarily and there wasn't a quarterback around. I'll never forget throwing passes to James Wilder while Hugh Green covered him one-on-one. I'd throw a weak little pass and Hugh would say, "You'd better put some popcorn on that ball!" I would go around at night with my dad on bed check. When the Buccaneers made Blair Kiel, my old friend from Notre Dame, an eleventh-round draft pick in 1984, I spent even more time around One Buc Place in the summer hoping that Blair would make the team. He did for one season.
    Being with my dad in that NFL environment was a lot like being with him during those years when he was at Notre Dame. I was having the time of my life. I felt I was on top of the world.
    That is, until Phil Krueger, who was an assistant to then team owner and president Hugh Culverhouse, started chasing me out of practice. For some reason Phil just didn't like me being around the team. In 1982, my dad's first year with the Buccaneers and my freshman year at Dayton, I was visiting my parents on Christmas break. The NFL had a strike-shortened schedule that year and we were getting ready to play the Bears in what would be the last regular season game. If we win, we're in the playoffs. If we lose, we're out. If we make the playoffs, my dad gets a $6,000 playoff bonus, which means Mom's going to get a new screened-in porch. The Friday before the game, I went over to One Buc Place to watch practice, and Phil Krueger kicked me out. So I went up on the roof of the Hall of Fame Inn,