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Buried Treasure

In a state dominated by Alabama and Auburn, UAB\'s Watson Brown is proving that numbers can be deceiving.
by: Richard Scott
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It's so easy to be wrong about what you see on the surface. So easy to dismiss the dirt on the surface and ignore the treasure below. Sometimes it takes a little more time and effort to dig for what really matters, for something precious, for the truth.

When it comes to UAB head coach Watson Brown, it's easy to see the record and miss the point. It's easy to see his .378 winning percentage and draw knee-jerk conclusions. It's easy to see those 112 losses, compare them to 68 wins and one tie over 16 seasons and make rash assumptions.

For Brown, the treasure isn't in the championship rings he doesn't own or wear on his fingers. It's somewhere deeper, somewhere beyond the numbers and the records.

Brown has never taken the easy route in his coaching career, and anyone who really knows him, anyone who's ever been past the surface, knows there is a deeper, permeating truth that goes beyond wins, losses and careless judgments.

You want the truth about a man? Go ask his brother. In this case, go ask Texas head coach Mack Brown. Mack knows the truth about Watson. He knows the good, the bad and the ugly, and he knows there is so much more to Watson than records can define.

"He's taken some tough jobs and done a good job with them, and the record doesn't come close to reflecting the jobs he's done at those places," says Mack, Watson's younger brother by less than a year.

Cincinnati, then an anonymous I-A program with awful facilities and a rat-infested locker room, pre-Conference USA. Rice, when renegade programs ruled the Southwest Conference. Vanderbilt, the only private school in the SEC, and this was before the 85-scholarship limitations took effect. Tough jobs that dimmed the luster of what was once considered one of the hottest young coaches in the business. Tough jobs that helped shape the direction of a coach who is once again considered one of the best coaches in the business, thanks to the blooming success of a UAB program that was little more than a dream just 10 years ago.

"In a lot of ways, he could be considered the ultimate coach," Mack says. "In his last year at Vanderbilt, he graduated 22 out of 22, and that was still so important to him. And when he left Vanderbilt, a lot of people would have been stubborn and said, 'I'm not going to go back to being an assistant coach. I'll get a head coaching job or nothing.'

"But he loves college football and he wanted to coach college football, so he went to Mississippi State and then he went to Oklahoma and paid his dues and started over. Then he started over with a I-AA job (UAB) that was moving to I-A, with as tough a schedule as anyone in the country, trying to get into a new conference. He hasn't been scared of a challenge, and I've always appreciated that about him.

"A lot of young coaches want it to be easy. They want to be a head coach, and they want to be a head coach now. They say, 'I've been a coach four years - I'm ready.' Watson had to go back and pay his dues. Those young coaches should go and talk to Watson and he would tell them he has made some mistakes because he took jobs where he had no chance to win.

"But he's also fought through it, he's done it right. He's never been involved in a (NCAA rules) violation. He's always had good academics and high graduation rates. He's always been good to the kids. He's always cared more about kids than winning. And in the long run, when he lays down to sleep, he'll know he's been a success because he's been good for kids and good for college football."

Could he be a little prejudiced? Maybe. Less than objective? Likely. You want to convict a brother of loving admiration and respect, then go ahead. Or, you could pick up the phone and talk to others who know the truth.

"It is a bottom-line profession, but Watson is a unique individual,'' said SEC Commissioner Roy Kramer, who was Vanderbilt's athletic director when he hired Brown in 1986. "Even with those records, he has the respect of the coaching profession.''

"Ain't no doubt in my mind: He's a damn warrior,'' says Pat Dye, the former Auburn coach who hired Brown as an assistant at East Carolina in 1974. "He's been at the toughest places in the world to win. My hat's off to him. He's fought the battles and built a program.''

He's done more than just build the UAB program. He's taken a program with no tradition, limited resources and an antiquated, cavernous inner-city stadium and turned into a winner worthy of challenging for a conference championship this fall. He's taken a program that played its first NCAA football game in 1991 (at Division III) and given it a foundation for success and high expectations.

Don't look now, but Brown is a winner, with a 7-4 record in 2000, coaching a team that didn't enter Division I-A until 1996 and spent the last five years playing road games at Nebraska, Tennessee, Auburn, Virginia Tech, Arizona, Missouri, Kansas and Maryland - and LSU, where the Blazers won 13-10 last season.

Before you start thinking this is another one of those sweet redemption stories that seem so popular these days (Allen Iverson, Kerry Collins, Latrell Sprewell, etc.), know this: there's no redemption here. No comeback. No drama. The truth is that Watson Brown never really went away. He's always done a good job. The only difference is that people are noticing again.

"I talk to a lot of athletic directors and coaches all over the country, and the thing I see happening is that they're all finally starting to understand what Watson really has accomplished," says Mack. "They're seeing how someone can go through as many tough years as he did in those tough jobs and still be considered one of the top coaches in the country."

People in college football first noticed him back in 1968, when the local high school hero from Cookeville, Tenn., turned down every major power in the SEC, including Alabama and coach Paul "Bear" Bryant, to take on the challenge of playing at Vanderbilt. He's got a thing for challenges, this guy, but it didn't keep him from leading the Commodores to a legendary upset of Alabama in 1969. He went on to a successful playing career at Vanderbilt and then followed his grandfather, long-time Tennessee prep coach Eddie "Jelly" Watson, into the coaching profession as a Vandy graduate assistant.

One day he was on his way to the office of former Vandy coach Steve Sloan to talk about his future in the coaching business when Sloan just happened to step out of his office with a message for Brown: Dye was looking for coaches at East Carolina and wanted to know if Brown was interested. Brown immediately drove down to Tuscaloosa, Ala., where Dye was completing his last days as an Alabama assistant under Bryant. Dye and Brown spent two hours together, and Brown was on his way to East Carolina. At age 22. It was that easy. Too easy, if you ask Brown.

If you've come this far in the story, you'll notice we haven't heard from Brown himself. But what's a man supposed to say about himself without being suspected of of arrogance or false humility? Somewhere in between those extremes, an honest man can look in the mirror and take stock of his life and his career and tell the true story, without flinching. If you want to take Mack's advice and seek Brown's wisdom about the lesson he's learned the hard way on his path up and down the coaching ladder, here's your chance. It's a wild ride, so hang on. ...

"I had a job laid out for me, and I hadn't even earned it," Brown says of his first assignment at East Carolina. "It came from being a good player, from playing in the SEC, from having a name. It was too easy. I'm 22 and I'm coaching quarterbacks my own age.

"But I lucked out because I was coaching for a great guy. All of the philosophies I believe in today come from Coach Dye. Every head coach philosophy I have came from my two years with Coach Dye, and still do to this day. But it was still too easy for me."

It got even easier when he left ECU after just two years and became an offensive coordinator at Division II Jacksonville (Ala.) State in 1976. Before he knew it, he was 24, running his own offense and the Gamecocks were winning a national championship in 1977. From there, he left to become the quarterback and receivers coach for Rex Dockery at Texas Tech, and the Red Raiders went 7-4. One year later, he became a 27-year-old head coach at Division I-AA Austin Peay State. His teams went 7-4 in 1979 and '80, and he then moved on to Vanderbilt, where Brown served as offensive coordinator for a Commodore team that set 57 school records in two seasons and went 8-3 and earned a bowl bid in 1982.

It didn't take long for Brown's name to find its way onto those lists athletic directors keep in the back of their heads.

"It was just so easy in those early years," Brown says. "We never had a bad team, we were always successful everywhere I was. I thought this business was easy and I thought I was really good. From that point on, I started taking the wrong jobs."

Brown's career path took its first wrong turn in 1983, when he became the head coach at Cincinnati. The Bearcats went 4-6-1 and beat defending national champion Penn State 14-3 in a game that put Brown's name in lights, but the job was not the right move for two reasons.

First, Brown had been just inches away from becoming Ray Perkins' offensive coordinator at Alabama when he decided to visit both Army and Cincinnati about their head coaching vacancies. Brown quickly realized he didn't want the Army job because it was too far north for his own liking, and went straight to New Jersey to visit Perkins about the Alabama opening. The job was offered and Brown was on his way to Alabama, until he returned to Nashville and received a call from Cincinnati. The next day, he flew to Cincinnati and became the head coach.

"That's how crazy it was," Brown says. "In just 24 hours, I go from being the offensive coordinator at Alabama to being the head coach at Cincinnati."

Second, Brown soon came to the conclusion that Cincinnati was not a good personal fit for his young family. He was ready to go after less than one year on the job, and with his name circulating throughout the business, Brown turned down overtures from Stanford and Minnesota to become the head coach and athletic director at Rice.

"My family didn't want to go North and I didn't want to go West, and Rice was in the South, " Brown recalls, "so I went to Rice. I went there for the wrong reasons.

"I made a lot of my decisions based on personal things, and I think that was a mistake at that point in my career. When I was that young, I needed to make my decisions for more professional reasons. At my age now, at 51, I can make decisions totally for family reasons. But when I was younger I needed to make decisions for more professional reasons. That doesn't mean decisions that would hurt my family, but I needed to take the right job for my career at that point.

"But I went to both Rice and Vanderbilt for personal reasons, and those were two places I shouldn't have gone at that time in my career."

After two seasons of 1-10 and 3-8 at Rice, Brown followed his heart to Vanderbilt. Coaching at your alma mater might seem like a glorious and noble honor for a coach, but not if alma mater isn't prepared to win. Despite the obvious disadvantages inherent in the job, Brown did manage to go 4-7 and 3-8 in 1987 and '88, but he went 1-10 in three other seasons and found that his old school wasn't as loyal to him as he was to his alma mater.

At that point, Brown owned an 18-69-1 record and a .171 winning percentage as a Division I-A head coach, and his stock had fallen off the board. His desire to coach, however, had not slipped, and he was more than willing to return to the profession as the offensive coordinator at Mississippi State. Two seasons later, he took the same position at Oklahoma. After two years at Oklahoma, UAB came calling with the kind of challenge that scared many coaches.

Former UAB athletic director Gene Bartow, who first brought sports to UAB's urban commuter campus in 1977, was smart enough to see beyond Brown's record. He made the phone calls, he dug past the surface and found a man capable of handling a tough assignment: take UAB's fledgling program and build it into a I-A winner in a state where Alabama and Auburn rule like religious zealots.

"I thought Watson would get the job done,'' Bartow said. ''I didn't think there was any question.''

If anyone else had any questions, they would be answered by Brown's resilience and vision for the program. First, non-existent facilities and resources were replaced by sparse facilities and limited resources, but it was a step in the right direction. Then, in 1996, Brown and Bartow managed to convince Conference USA to add UAB as a football member for the 1999 season, the first year UAB had 85 players on scholarship. Brown and his coaches spent the next three seasons recruiting all the untapped talent that Alabama, Auburn and Georgia either overlooked or couldn't take in a 300-mile radius, scheduling every tough opponent willing to give them a chance and help UAB build a reputation.

Instead of fluffing up the record with meaningless wins over anonymous opponents, Brown knew UAB had a better chance of establishing respect and credibility by taking on big-name opponents. However, the Blazers did more than just travel to places such as Auburn, Nebraska and Tennessee and pick up a paycheck. They gave their more established opponents fits and established a set of expectations that came to fruition last season when the Blazers earned their first winning record as a I-A program. In fact, UAB is one of only four C-USA teams (along with Louisville, Southern Miss and East Carolina) with a winning record in conference games over the past two seasons.

"I don't think there's any way that we could have thought that we'd be any better than we are at this point," Brown says. "I'm not sure if I thought we could be as good as we've been at this point. We've been really lucky, but I'm also proud of what we've done. We've taken care of business here, and except for maybe three games (over six seasons), we've played well week in, week out, whether it was Nebraska or Tennessee or Auburn or Virginia Tech or whoever we've played."

UAB's first winning season in I-A also happened to be Brown's first winning season as a I-A head coach, but Brown passed off the achievement with less ego than the moment probably deserved, remaining true to himself throughout the media and fan attention that suddenly marked his new status as a "winner." In the offseason, at least three Division I-A programs called Brown to measure his interest, and several schools called Mack Brown to see if his brother might be a willing candidate for one of the many available job openings.

For the first time in his life, Brown moved slowly and purposely through those murky waters. Eventually, he decided to stay put at UAB, where he has a vision and fire for the kind of fundraising that will produce a new on-campus stadium and football facility, as well as the realistic goal of earning the program's first bowl bid and winning a conference championship.

"I didn't pursue any of the jobs that pursued me this year," Brown says. "I didn't leap at any of them. This is really the best job I've had. Now, that may say something about some of the jobs I've had, but at the same time I've got the best opportunity to win here of any of the jobs I've had. We've got a lot of work to do here, especially in terms of facilities, but we're going to make things happen. I'm excited about the future here."

Through it all, Brown has managed to leave his win-loss record where it belongs: in the past. It's never blitzed him in the middle of the fourth quarter, with the game on the line and his team trailing. It's never followed him home on those long Saturday night flights or bus rides after a loss. It's never sat next to him and taunted him on Sundays when he watched film after a loss. It's never reared its ugly head during those Tuesday practices that can make or break a team.

"Confidence has never been a problem for me," Brown says. "I can be 0-8 and still think I can win that week. I've never been out there doubting whether or not I could do this."

The record is what it is. Brown would have to win a lot of games for a long time for it to transform into something impressive on paper. What Brown does not ignore are valuable lessons lying like hidden treasures below the surface.

"I dug my own grave," Brown said. "I took two private school jobs at Rice and Vanderbilt that, at the time, were not good jobs. I shouldn't have taken them. I had made a promise to myself that I was going to be a head coach by the time I was 28, and that was stupid. That was a mistake, too. When I look back, there's no doubt that if I could do it over again I'd do things differently.

"Fans don't understand the profession, and that's common knowledge. Coaches know that. Sometimes the press doesn't always care to look into and investigate what's really going on. But at the same time, I'm the one who made the decisions and I'm the one who has to live with my mistakes. I can't blame the press or the public for that. If anyone wants to say my record is awful, they're right.

"But I still know how good of a job I did at those places, and that's all that matters. At the same time, I'm not a big ego guy. Never have been - when things are really good or really bad. The only time I was really hung up on myself was when I was 27, 28 and I thought I could whip the world, and I learned real quick that I can't. It's not how much you know, it's the kind of players you've got."

It's enough to make you wonder. What would have happened if Brown had played at Alabama instead of Vandy? What if he had come to Alabama as Perkins' offensive coordinator. Would he have become the Crimson Tide head coach when Perkins left to become the head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers? What if he had turned down the Rice job and stayed at Cincinnati one more year and taken a better job? What if Brown had the Texas job now, instead of his brother?

Brown doesn't spend much time asking those questions, but Mack Brown does. Mack is quick to insist that if the two changed jobs, college football fans would recognize Watson as one of the most respected coaches in the game today.

But we'll never know for sure, will we? And that's OK with Brown. Yes, if he could do it all over again, he'd do it differently, but there are some things he'd never change.

"If I had to do it over, I'd be a coach, no doubt," Brown says. "My reasons might be different than a lot of people's but, I coach because I enjoy the kids. In fact, if I had to it over again I'd probably coach in high school. I think you can mold a high school kid even more than you can a college kid. I enjoy that relationship with the players - seeing them grow, develop, be successful, get a degree and come back and be proud of being part of the program.

"That's number one for me. I enjoy that more than game day. That's what keeps me in the business. That may sound corny, but that's true. That's me."

Yes, it might sound corny - on the surface at least. But dig a little deeper, sift through the dirt and you'll find something that really matters, something precious. You'll find the truth - a truth that says something more about the man than his win-loss record.

"That's the way I feel," Brown says. "Yes, you have to be concerned about wins and losses, because if you don't win, you don't eat. And I want to win as much as anyone. I understand it. But that's not first and foremost on my mind when I wake up in the morning. The players come first, and I don't think that will ever change."

The Brown File
Collegiate Coaching Experience
1973Graduate Asst. CoachVanderbilt
1974-75QB CoachEast Carolina
1976-77Off. CoordinatorJacksonville state
1978Quarterback CoachTexas Tech
1979-80Head CoachAustin Peay
1981-82Off. CoordinatorVanderbilt
1983Head CoachCincinnati
1984-85Head CoachRice
1986-90Head CoachVanderbilt
1991-92Off. CoordinatorMississippi State
1993-94Off. CoordinatorOklahoma
1995-presentHead CoachUAB






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