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AFM Magazine

AFM Magazine


A Whole New Ball Game

Coaching in alternative leagues
by: Richard Scott
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Warren Moon carved out a pro football career in the Canadian Football League before the National Football League finally came calling and gave him the chance to be one of pro football’s all-time most productive passer.

Kurt Warner found success in the Arena Football League and NFL Europe before becoming one of the NFL’s best passers and a Super Bowl winner with the St. Louis Rams.

Brad Johnson laid the foundation for an NFL career with Minnesota, Washington and Tampa Bay by gaining valuable playing experience in NFL Europe. Now he, too, owns a Super Bowl ring.

In fact, as the NFL season begins, 29 former NFL Europe quarterbacks were competing for roster spots.

And then there’s Tommy Maddox, who resurrected a dead career in the Xtreme Football League and now starts at quarterback for the Pittsburgh Steelers.

And those are just the quarterbacks who used alternative leagues to further their careers. What about the linemen, the receivers, the linebackers, the backs, the kickers?

And what about the coaches?

It turns out players aren’t the only people in the football business who have used their time and effort in alternative leagues such as the CFL, NFL Europe, AFL and the defunct XFL to improve their knowledge, experience and resumes.

Go back to the days of the World Football League and the United States Football League, and alternative leagues have always provided coaches with a chance to improve their career stock and their chance of advancement.

Look at the NFL or Division I-A college football today, and the coaching profession is filled with coaches who worked their way up the ranks through a wide variety of paths.

Current New Orleans Saints head coach Jim Haslett worked in the World League of American Football as the defensive coordinator of the Sacramento Surge in 1991-92. His defensive line coach, Sam Clancy, started his coaching career with four seasons with NFL Europe’s Barcelona Dragons.

Indiana University hired head coach Gerry DiNardo after he put his career back on the map with a season in the XFL, coaching the Birmingham Bolts. Oregon State coach Mike Riley, the former San Diego Chargers head coach, was a head coach in both the CFL and the WLAF.

Current Georgia Tech coach Chan Gailey coached the WLAF’s Birmingham Fire before becoming the head coach of the Dallas Cowboys and serving as the offensive coordinator for the Pittsburgh Steelers and Miami Dolphins. In fact, both general managers, the equipment manager and the public relations director for the Fire all went on to NFL careers.

The examples go on and on, but the lesson remains the same for young coaches.

“I think a coach needs to do what he has a good feeling about, what gives him a good taste in his mouth, what he feels like he needs to grow and get better,” said Houston Texans wide receiver coach Kippy Brown, a former XFL head coach. “You need to look at it and say ‘will this make me a better coach?’”

Joe D’Alessandris

Joe D’Alessandris’ career path reads like something from Rand McNally, with 10 pro and college stops in 1996. Twice in his career he left college jobs for a chance to coach in the CFL.

“I figured if it was an opportunity for the players to grow,” said D’Alessandris, who now coaches the offensive line at Georgia Tech, “it was an opportunity for me to grow.”

D’Alessandris was coaching at UT-Chattanooga in 1989 when he joined the CFL Ottawa Renegades. He was coaching at Texas A&M when he left for the CFL Memphis Mad Dogs and a chance to work with Pepper Rodgers in 1995. Each time, he moved with a purpose in mind.

“Going to the CFL was a tremendous opportunity for me,” D’Alessandris said. “I got to learn a whole new game. I was 36 and all of the linemen that I had to coach were probably two years younger than I was. They were all Canadian guys. I had a veteran lineman who was 34. One was 32. One was 30. The rest were young guys. So I got to learn a lot from older players, and that was great. Working with an older man really taught me some lessons.”

During his one CFL season with the Memphis, D’Alessandris coached Bill Lewis, a 10-year NFL veteran who came out of retirement after playing with the Oakland Raiders.

“I learned a lot from him by picking his brain about the things he learned in his years with the Raiders,” D’Alessandris said. “I got to see and observe a lot of things that brought him success.”

The experience in the CFL also showed D’Alessandris that those older players had no desire to quit learning or improving.

“In the year we spent together, Bill was able to learn from new things I was teaching at the time,” D’Alessandris said. “I learned that at the professional level, you can still develop. There’s no doubt about it. They’ve matured, so what you’re teaching them are new skills and techniques and fundamentals to keep them playing as long as they can and as good as they can. The older, seasoned players still want to be coached, they still want direction and guidance because it’s their job.”

In all, the CFL turned out to be a beneficial opportunity for D’Alessandris.

“At the time, it was the second-best professional football league,” D’Alessandris said. “You had the NFL and the CFL and I had aspirations of becoming an NFL coach, so I knew the best way to get experience was to take advantage of the opportunity to coach in a pro league.

“I went up there to learn how to be a pro coach and it was a great learning experience for me, because I was still teaching fundamentals, still teaching technique, still learning a new scheme. It was a passing league, you only had three downs, so I had to learn a lot about pass protection. Plus, a pro job is different from a college job. In the pros, that’s all you do. You go into the office, and it’s strictly football.”

His desire to learn the pro game also led to two years (1991-92) with Gailey and the Birmingham Fire in the WLAF. In the WLAF, the precursor to the NFL Europe, D’Alessandris worked with younger players with little or no pro experience. Most went straight from college to NFL training camps, waived and then looking for another shot at the pros. While different from the CFL, it turned out to be another positive experience for D’Alessandris.

“It was all about teaching and development,” D’Alessandris said. “They were hungry because they wanted to make the NFL, so we spent a lot of time on fundamentals. It was a league where you were able to take guys with some skill but they needed to play, they needed repetition, they needed to grow. A lot of them were able to go back to the NFL and make clubs and play a few years.”

On paper, D’Alessandris’ career path might seem like a long and winding road, but it’s all served a purpose. He’s coached with a variety of styles, schemes, coaches and players, and learned something valuable from every step on that path.

“I have no regrets,” D’Alessandris said. “It’s all been positive for me. Those opportunities provided the opportunities I have today. I think we all look back and wonder if we made the right moves – that’s human nature. But I know this, when I close the door behind me I’m walking forward and opening a new door and ready to grow and learn 100 percent.”

Al Luginbill

Geographic stability marked the first two-thirds of Al Luginbill’s coaching career, with jobs at Pasadena City College, Arizona State and San Diego State. The most recent third, however, has taken him to Amsterdam of NFL Europe, Los Angeles in the XFL and Detroit in the Arena League.

“I’ve moved more in the last 10 years than I did in the previous 25,” Luginbill said, laughing. “But I’ve had a blast and I’ve learned so much. Every stop has had a different twang to it.”

Luginbill’s odyssey began when he was dismissed at San Diego State in 1993. In 1995 returned to coaching as the head coach and director of football operations for the Amsterdam Admirals, a job he enjoyed for four of his five years.

Luginbill was happy working with hungry free agents in the NFL Europe until the league changed and the rosters became almost totally filled with developmental players supplied by NFL teams. That meant coaches were forced to play who they were told to play, and Luginbill soon lost his desire to coach in the league.

“ I really enjoyed the experience,” Luginbill said. “The league had some wonderful people in it. If the league had stayed like it was the first four years, I’d still be there.”

The XFL gave Luginbill a chance to work with eager free agents again. Even though the league didn’t fulfill its promises and lasted only one year,

“It was all free agents, and it was the best coaching situation I’ve ever been in,” Luginbill says.

The Arena League offers more of the same, with most players on one-year contracts, some just fighting to keep their jobs, others trying to improve their stock with other teams and hoping some NFL team will give them a shot. It’s a fertile ground for feisty players, and Luginbill loves it.

“I like working with pros, the guys who makes his living playing football, the guy who plays to put food on his table,” Luginbill said. “Everyone needs to find a niche and I really want to be in a position where we as coaches are held accountable and responsible for deciding who plays on the field.”

Even if that field is just 50 yards long, 85 feet wide and surrounded by sideline barriers, with just eight players on each side of the ball. The game might look more like basketball than football at times, but Luginbill has learned that it’s still football, and it’s worth coaching and playing.

“I didn’t do this, but I wish I had: in my opinion, the best thing a young coach can do is get into and work in as many situations as possible so you can see different ways of doing things,” Luginbill says. “Coaching in the Arena League does take you out of the normal cycle because of our schedule (January to June), but coaches are making a better living in this league now and coaches are paying more attention to technique and fundamentals and details, so you’re seeing more good teachers come into this league. More coaches are considering it as a career instead of just regarding it as a part-time scenario.”

It’s a situation that leaves Luginbill with few regrets about his career choices.

“I have thoroughly enjoyed most of the past few years. I’ve traveled the world because of football, met so many different but great people, be in so many big football games, had so many wonderful experiences,” Luginbill says. “And I’m as excited today as I’ve ever been about being in the game.”

Kippy Brown

From 1978-2000, Kippy Brown assembled a strong resume of experience through college coaching stops at Memphis State, Louisville and Tennessee and NFL stops with the New York Jets, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Miami Dolphins and Green Bay Packers.

What he didn’t have on that resume was head coaching experience. That’s why a job offer from the XFL’s Memphis Maniacs was a no-brainer for Brown.

“The one thing I had not been was a head coach and I think most every coach who gets into this business has aspirations of being a head coach,” Brown said. “I hadn’t had that opportunity, and when the XFL gave me that I thought it was the best thing I could for my career.”

Brown knew it was something of a risk to join a league built mostly on promises and potential, with few real guarantees, but he also the XFL it as a calculated risk.

“The thing about the NFL is, especially if you do a good job and you build up a good reputation, it’s not going anywhere,” Brown said. “I knew it could still be an option for me.”

Unfortunately for Brown and the other coaches in the league, the XFL folded after only one season. Brown returned to the NFL as the wide receiver coach of the Houston Texans with no regrets.

“I saw coaching from a little different perspective, being a head coach and being involved and in charge of everything, from meals to travel to schedules and everything else,” Brown said. “I’m a better coach for it.

“And to be honest with you, I needed that opportunity. Having never been a head coach before, there are always questions in the back of your mind about ‘can I do this, can I handle this?’ Now I know. If I get an opportunity to interview for a head coaching job, I think that will help me.”

Being black in a league where blacks hold only two head coaching jobs, Brown knows he must do all he can to show he’s ready to become an NFL head coach.

“I think people in the NFL got a chance to see what I can do and what kind of style of football I like to coach,” Brown said. “It was a good league, it was well run and we did a good job with our team. One thing I’m really proud of is that we didn’t have any off-field incidents, even though we had to work fast to put together a team from scratch. We took a lot of pride in that. I think it showed I could manage a football team.”

Tommy Condell

Tommy Condell won’t turn 32 until this fall, but he’s already coached in the CFL, the Arena League and three different levels of college football, in addition to a short stint as a personnel evaluator for NFL Europe.

Two years ago, he was the fourth-youngest coordinator in Division I-A as the offensive coordinator at Louisiana-Monroe. Last year, with a true freshman quarterback, he led the Indians to nearly 100 more yards per game than they gained the previous season.

Condell would be the first to admit his career is a product of all those experiences in some way or another.

“It’s helped me, first and foremost, to become a better teacher,” Condell says. “When I went to the CFL, I was only 25 years old, and I had to become a good teacher and I had to learn how to do it a short amount of time. We only had X amount of time for special teams, so I learned how to become a more efficient teacher there.

“Another thing it helped me do was become a better communicator. I was dealing with pros and it was different coaching pros, and that experienced taught me how to communicate at different levels.”

Condell’s unique career path began with a professional desire to learn as much as he could from every possible experience.

“When I first got started, all I wanted to do was work with a pro team every summer,” Condell said. “It didn’t matter what I was doing. I just wanted to go and help out and learn the game.”

The first year he tried to get involved in the pros, he sent out several feelers through letter and phone calls and got no responses. The second year, he got a response from the Albany Firebirds of the Arena League. All he asked for was a place to stay, but he made the most of the opportunity and turned it into a full-time offseason job during his time away from his G.A. job at Illinois Wesleyan.

After a fall at McNeese State, Condell sought an NFL internship again the next year, but when it didn’t happen he jumped on a CFL opportunity with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. The team didn’t even offer to pay for his flight, so Condell flew in as a guest coach and eventually became the special teams coordinator.

“I got my foot in the door and took advantage of it,” Condell said. “I learned a lot from their head coach, Joe Paopao, a great offensive coach. I also got a chance to meet a lot of NFL coaches, too, because I got to go to the Senior Bowl and meet a lot of people. That helped me out a lot, too.

“The Xs and Os are different, but in every league, whether it’s the CFL or the Arena League or whatever, it’s all about how you manage people and getting the players to play the way you want them to play.”

After the Winnipeg experience, he spent some time with NFL Europe helping the league evaluate players for the draft, but it was just enough to convince him he wanted to get back on the field. That opportunity came at Stephen F. Austin, calling plays for a high-scoring offense as the receivers coach and passing game coordinator. At that point, his former McNeese State boss, Bobby Keasler, brought him to Louisiana-Monroe as special teams coordinator and tight ends coach.

One year later, at age 30, Condell found himself as ULM’s offensive coordinator, on the fast track to bigger, better opportunities.

“One thing I’ve learned from the coaches I’ve been around and the experiences I’ve had is that it’s important to keep your contacts up and always try to establish new ones, no matter where you’re at,” Condell said. “There’s so many people in the business you can learn from and so many people who are willing to help you.”

Mark Criner

Mark Criner was 34 years old and coaching in his seventh season at Division I-AA Portland State when his father, Jim, offered him an opportunity to make the jump to the pros as defensive coordinator of the XFL Las Vegas Outlaws.

The opportunity to coach with his dad was too good to pass up, but so was the chance to show what he could do at a higher level of football. Jim Criner revived his head coach career in NFL Europe following a college coaching career at Iowa State and Boise State, so Mark knew what an alternative career could do for a coach’s career. He also spent some time talking to current Carolina Panthers head coach John Fox, who coached in the USFL, and Fox encouraged him to make the move.

“It was special to be able to coach with my father,” Mark Criner said. “But I saw the XFL as a new league that seemed pretty secure at the time, and it was a chance to coach professional athletes.

“ I had heard about how much fun he had had coaching pros and how a lot of them still want to be coached, even more than most college players, because they’re always trying to get that extra edge and reach that next level. This is their living, and they worked a lot harder than I imagined. I really enjoyed coaching those guys.”

Criner learned up close and personal that it’s a significant jump from I-AA, even a successful program such as Portland State, to pro football.

“You’ve really got to know your Ps and Qs,” Criner said. “Anytime you’re in coaching, you always want to make sure that your stuff is the right thing, that you’re doing the right things.

“It was a step I really wanted to take in the coaching profession, and it really turned out to be a good move for me.”

That was true for Criner even when the XFL folded. He’s now the linebacker coach and co-defensive coordinator at Cincinnati.

“It was a good move for a lot of coaches,” Criner said. “Most of those guys have moved on to good jobs. A lot of USFL coaches went on to the NFL, and so did a lot of those XFL coaches. It gave a lot of players and coaches some good opportunities.”

Alternative Leagues Coaching Quiz

Several successful NFL and NCAA coaches have honed their skills in alternative leagues, such as the Canadian Football League, United States Football League, Arena Football League, NFL Europe (World League of American Football) and the Xtreme Football League. Can you match the coach with their former alternative league?

1. Marv Levy
2. Bud Grant
3. Jack Pardee
4. Joe Tiller
5. Mouse Davis
6. Larry Kuharich
7. Gerry DiNardo
8. Jim Mora
9. Doug Williams
10. George Allen
11. Lindy Infante
12. Woody Widenhofer
13. Don Strock
14. Jim Haslett
15. Chan Gailey
a. Birmingham, 1991-92 (WLAF/NFL Europe)
b. Rhein, 1995 (WLAF/NFL Europe)
c. Arizona, 1984 (USFL)
d. Philidelphia/Baltimore, 1983-85 (USFL)
e. Tampa Bay, 1993 (Arena)
f. Calgary, 1974-82 (CFL)
g. Winnipeg, 1956-66 (CFL)
h. Sacramento, 1991-92 (WLAF/NFL Europe)
i. Oklahoma, 1984 (USFL)
j. Jacksonville, 1984-85 (USFL)
k. Scotland, 1995 (WLAF/NFL Europe)
l. Birmingham, 2001 (XFL)
m. Detroit, 2001 (Arena)
n. Birmingham, 1995 (CFL)
o. Montreal, 1973-77 (CFL)
ANSWERS: 1) o. 2) g. 3) n. 4) f. 5) m. 6) e. 7) l. 8) d. 9) k. 10) c. 11) j. 12) i. 13) b. 14) h. 15) a.





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