AFM RSS Feed Follow Us on Twitter       
AMERICAN FOOTBALL MONTHLY THE #1 RESOURCE FOR FOOTBALL COACHES
ABOUT |  CONTACT |  ADVERTISE |  HELP  



   User Name    Password 
      Password Help





Article Categories


AFM Magazine

AFM Magazine


On A Mission

Maryland\'s Ralph Friedgen is determined to make his alma mater a winner
© More from this issue

Click for Printer Friendly Version          

It's 8:30 on a humid Friday morning in June, and Ralph Friedgen looks frazzled, as if he's already worked his standard 18-hour day. Sweat sits on the face of the 54-year-old, who appears out of breath when arriving at his University of Maryland office.

For the Terps new football coach, the morning has been about three hours old - and hectic at that. Friedgen chased down three of his freshmen to get them to their academic tutor on time and coordinated details for Maryland's ongoing high school football camp, among other mundane coaching-related tasks.

Doesn't sound too glamorous. But this is the job that Friedgen, a Maryland alumnus who spent 31 years as an assistant coach, including two stints with the Terps, eyed for a long time. He thus finds no qualms making the tough sacrifices necessary for a head coach.

"I'm going to get it done one way or another," he insists. "So whatever I need to do, I'm going to do."

To Friedgen, "get it done" means transforming Maryland from an annual doormat into a perennial top-20 program. Such a feat would be monumental. The Terps have had only two winning seasons in the past 15 years, 6-5-1 in 1990 and 6-5-0 in 1995, and one bowl appearance, a 34-34 tie with Louisiana Tech in the 1990 Independence Bowl.

Friedgen, who built a reputation as one of the nation's most revered assistant coaches, radiates with confidence that the Terps will one day become a national power. He wants his players, many of whom are accustomed to losing, to feel the same self-assurance. He sometimes makes his point with subliminal messages.

One day, for example, Friedgen was wearing a shirt with the emblem of the Gator Bowl, which Georgia Tech won on New Year's Day 1999 and 2000. He was the Yellow Jackets offensive coordinator at the time.

Seeing the shirt, Terps senior linebacker Aaron Thompson thought Friedgen was a Benedict Arnold and asked why he was representing Georgia Tech. Friedgen said it had nothing to do with Georgia Tech, but instead the Gator Bowl. He then hit a nerve with Thompson, saying, "You wouldn't know what that is."

The message: Get hungry about winning.

"When I came here, these kids just kept talking about going to a bowl game," Friedgen says. "That's fifth place, and I never played for fifth place in my life. I don't know if we'll do better than that, but I'm setting this program so we're going to go after Florida State. That's where we need to be thinking - try to be the best. I've always tried to be the best. Why would you want to be in fifth place? Then you don't make it, and you're in sixth place, and that's where we've been.

"My approach would be let's try to beat everybody," he adds. "Let's plan to beat them, practice to beat them, and if we do or don't beat them, let's put that one away and concentrate on the next guy. Let's take them one at a time and count them up at the end and see how we did. When you do that, you probably end up complaining about which bowl you're going to."

Friedgen's determination to right the Maryland program is largely a product of his Terrapin blood. He played for the Terps from 1965 to 1969, switching from quarterback, to fullback, to linebacker, to offensive lineman. He lettered in his final season at guard.

After graduating with a physical education degree, he began his coaching career as a graduate assistant at Maryland. Four years later, he advanced to The Citadel, where he started what would be a lengthy partnership with the offensive-minded Bobby Ross. He coached under Ross for seven seasons, the last three as offensive coordinator, before assisting Jimmy Laycock at William & Mary (1980) and Frank Beamer at Murray State (1981).

When Ross became head coach at Maryland in 1982, he named Friedgen his offensive coordinator and offensive line coach. That's when Friedgen became a popular figure in the coaching community. While the Terps used prolific offenses to earn three straight Atlantic Coast Conference titles (1983-1985), four bowl appearances and wins in the 1984 Sun Bowl and 1985 Cherry Bowl, Friedgen masterminded much of that offensive success. He also helped develop future NFL quarterbacks Boomer Esiason, Frank Reich and Stan Gelbaugh.

Ross left for Georgia Tech after the 1986 season, and Friedgen followed. Friedgen was offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach for the next five seasons. The 1990 Yellow Jackets won the national championship in the UPI Coaches poll (now USA Today/ESPN poll), setting a host of school offensive records.

Friedgen went west in 1992, this time following Ross to the San Diego Chargers. He was the running game coordinator for two seasons before becoming offensive coordinator in 1994, the year the Chargers went to Super Bowl XXIX.

He returned to Georgia Tech in 1997 and worked as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach under George O'Leary. Friedgen again produced extraordinary results. The Yellow Jackets offense resembled a machine, averaging 36.7 points and 444 yards of total offense per game from 1998 to 2000.

In 1999, Friedgen won the Frank Broyles Award as the nation's top assistant coach and was named American Football Monthly's Offensive Coordinator of the Year after the Yellow Jackets finished No. 1 nationally in total offense (school-record 509 yards per game) and No. 2 nationally in scoring (40.7 points per game). That year, they were led by one of Friedgen's students, quarterback Joe Hamilton, a Heisman Trophy runner-up.

Four days after Georgia Tech played its final regular-season game last season, on Nov. 29, 2000, Friedgen was named Maryland's head coach. He wasn't sure that day would ever come.

Over the years, Friedgen applied for a stack of head coaching openings, mainly in the ACC, with barely a hint of interest from the schools. Duke, North Carolina, North Carolina State and Clemson turned him down, and Maryland didn't even offer an interview after he twice expressed interest. The first time, in 1992, Maryland hired Holy Cross coach Mark Duffner, and the second time, in 1997, it was Northwestern assistant Ron Vanderlinden. They combined to post a miserable 35-64 record over nine seasons.

Vanderlinden was fired after the Terps season-ending loss to Georgia Tech on Nov. 18. Right away, Friedgen was bombarded with phone calls, letters and e-mails from Maryland alumni encouraging him to pursue the opening. Maryland Athletic Director Debbie Yow was interested, too. She phoned Friedgen, asking him if he was serious about becoming the Terps next head coach.

Friedgen turned suspicious and thought Yow's call could be a token gesture. A native of the New York City suburb of Harrison who still carries a New York accent, he responded to Yow in his customary, direct tone: "I don't need to get into this if you're not serious. Don't pull my chain. I've been down this road one other time."

Yow wasn't joking. She flew to Atlanta, met with Friedgen and his lawyer in a hotel suite and, at one point, said, "You're my guy." She then invited Friedgen and his wife, Gloria, to College Park, Md., site of the Maryland campus, for another round of interviews.

When Friedgen returned home that day, a prominent Georgia Tech athletic department booster was in his living room. The booster urged Friedgen to refuse the Maryland job, saying Georgia Tech would match his Maryland salary, and that he'd have use of a Leer Jet and a skybox for his family. Friedgen's response was immediate. "I really appreciate all that, but it's not about money," Friedgen remembers saying. "This is something I have to look into because it's been a goal my whole life. I'm very happy here, I have a great working relationship with George (O'Leary). It's just that my life isn't fulfilled."

In hindsight, Friedgen thinks "it's kind of like the good Lord was saying to me, 'You've wanted this your whole life, put up or shut up.'"

A strong sense of optimism is circulating through College Park that Friedgen will "put up." In fact, it's much more powerful than any positive sentiment that existed after the hiring of Duffner and Vanderlinden, said Jack Scarbath, a star quarterback on Maryland's last undefeated team, a 10-0 squad in 1951, and a long-time member of the Terrapin Club, the athletic department's booster organization.

"I don't mean to be facetious to those two gentlemen, but Ralph is one of us," Scarbath says. "He's a Maryland Terrapin, somebody that has played here, seen the bad times, been here for the good times and now brings his own skills and plans to the head coaching position. Whether people like it or not, they like to see one of their own succeed."

Friedgen's first test came on Sept. 1 against North Carolina at Maryland's Byrd Stadium. It was one of what will be a school-record seven home games this season.

The Terps, 5-6 last season, possess a solid block of talent, with eight returning starters on both offense and defense. Heading the list are senior quarterback Shaun Hill; senior wide receiver Guilian Gary, the Terps leading pass catcher last season (40, 568 yards); senior center Melvin Fowler, an All-ACC honorable mention; punter Brooks Barnard, a Football News honorable mention All-American; and linebackers E.J. Henderson, the Terps leading tackler in 2000 (109), Aaron Thompson (81 tackles) and Mike Whaley, a Sporting News freshman All-American. The Terps all-time leading rusher, LaMont Jordan, ended his career last year.

Friedgen is deploying the pro-style offense he masterfully used to exploit defenses in his previous coaching days. It features eight schemes and an equal amount of passing and running. In adhering to one of his constant philosophies, he's molding the offense around the players' talent, not the other way around. Stocked with talent at the linebacker position, he plans to play a 3-4 defense with a lot of blitzes and stunts.

Hill, who completed 73 of 126 passes for 778 yards and six touchdowns last season, likes what he sees in the new coach.

"The thing that makes him so impressive is his variety on offense," Hill says. "He knows how to coach and teach every type of passing and running game. That's what makes people put him in the category of an offensive genius."

Friedgen's coaching staff, which consists of seven new faces, is one of the most seasoned in the nation. The staff has 59 years of experience and 22 on the head-coaching level. Two ex-head coaches are Terps offensive coordinator Charlie Taaffe and defensive coordinator Gary Blackney. Taaffe, a two-time CFL coach of the year, led the Montreal Alouettes to the 2000 Grey Cup finals. Blackney coached Bowling Green to a 60-50-2 record over 10 seasons, including the only bowl win in school history.

"I'm smart enough to know that I need experienced head coaches I can bounce things off of," Friedgen says. "I'm 54, and I've got maybe 10 years (of coaching) left, so I don't need to be making rookie head coaches' mistakes. I got these two guys as sounding boards. Decisions could go one way or another, and I use them and their experience in that light. That wasn't by accident, it was by design."

Why hire an offensive coordinator when Maryland already has one the game's most brilliant offensive minds?

"For years, people said that one reason I wasn't getting a head coaching job was that I didn't have head coaching experience," Friedgen says. "When I got the job here, everybody wanted to know if I was going to be the offensive coordinator. That's ironic. Then, they were shocked that I hired an offensive coordinator. I would have probably done it myself if I wasn't a first-year head coach. I just think there's a lot on my plate to get this program going without having that extra burden."

Ultimately, Friedgen would love for the Terps football program to achieve the same glory as the basketball team, which earned its first appearance in the Final Four this year, and the woman's lacrosse team, winners of seven straight NCAA championships. He attended many basketball home games last season and often was part of raucous sellout crowds of 14,500 at Cole Field House. He wants to see the same fervor at 48,055-seat Byrd Stadium, which averaged turnouts of 34,130 last season.

"When we win, we'll start filling that place up," Friedgen said. "As I said to the Terrapin Club people, if I had a hot stock tip with a company that had great potential, a good CEO, you'd want to know the name of that stock and you'd want to buy it. Maryland football's a hot stock tip. If you come and get in the stands, you can help me get this company where it's supposed to be. We get Byrd Stadium like Cole Field House, and we're going to win a couple more games every year."

Will it be "a couple" or "a lot"? Stay tuned. With Ralph Friedgen in charge, it promises to get interesting in Terrapin country.


"it's kind of like the good Lord was saying to me, 'You've wanted this your whole life, put up or shut up.'"

Friedgen File
1969-72

1973-76

1977-79

1980,94-96

1981

1982-86

1987-91

1992-93

1994-96

1997-2000

2001-Graduate Assistant

Assistant Coach - DL

Assistant Coach - OC

Assistant Coach - OC

Assistant Head Coach

Assistant Coach - OC/OL

Assistant Coach - OC/QBs

Assistant Coach - Running Game Coordinator/
H-Backs/Tight Ends
Assistant Coach

Assistant Coach - OC/OL

Head CoachMaryland

The Citadel

The Citadel

William & Mary

Murray State

Maryland

Georgia Tech

San Diego Chargers

San Diego Chargers

Georgia Tech

Maryland

Michael Richman is an Associated Press sports correspondent who reports on the Redskins and other teams in the Washington area. His e-mail address is mrichman@erols.com.






NEW BOOK!

AFM Videos Streaming Memberships Now Available Digital Download - 304 Pages of Football Forms for the Winning Coach



















HOME
MAGAZINE
SUBSCRIBE ONLINE COLUMNISTS COACHING VIDEOS


Copyright 2024, AmericanFootballMonthly.com
All Rights Reserved