Fighting Adversity

UL Monroe\'s Todd Berry has seen some adversity and risen above it
by: W. Keith Roerdink
© More from this issue

          
Ask Todd Berry about the coaches who’ve influenced him in his 20-plus years in the business and he’ll rattle off insights obtained from names like John Cooper, Johnny Majors, Steve Logan and even his old high school coach, L.D. Bains. But the one lesson that stood out from all the X’s and O’s and motivational techniques came from his late father, Rueben, a former head coach in the Canadian Football League and longtime mentor to the Saskatchewan Rough Riders: When faced with adversity, relish the chance to overcome it.

“That’s probably the greatest lesson that my dad gave me and maybe one of the greatest lessons in life,” Berry said.

Berry, coming off his first year as offensive coordinator at the University of Louisiana – Monroe, has faced plenty of adversity on the gridiron during his coaching career and more times than not, he’s overcome it – even been defined by it. But the spectacular turnarounds and success he helped forge in coordinator positions at Tennessee – Martin and East Carolina and as a head coach at Illinois State went array during his tenure at West Point. Berry’s Army teams went just 5-35 and he was dismissed as head coach six games into 2003, his fourth season.

“I’m really disappointed for the young athletes at Army because I really cherished my relationships with them, especially because we were so young early on and those people had to not only endure the academy regimen but the losses and the adversity, too,” said Berry. “They had to keep bouncing back with us every week and playing and we didn’t have the maturity and the athletes we needed in order to do what we wanted. And I hated it for them. I hated it for the staff.”

Berry isn’t the first successful coach to struggle at a military academy and won’t be the last. Yet it’s difficult to pinpoint one particular reason that Berry’s teams faltered. Army was entering their fourth year in Conference USA after previously playing as an independent – a status they will go back to after the 2004 season in hopes of procuring schedules more conducive to winning. There was also a change from Army’s time-honored wishbone attack to a one-back offense predicated on having a strong-armed quarterback and quality receivers, similar to what Berry employed at Illinois State. But that scheme never quite took hold. Berry chose to play some younger, albeit more talented players, over upper classman who were more adjusted to the rigors of academy life and football. And in making the jump to a high-profile I-A program, Berry had greater demands placed on his time as an ambassador or sorts for the institution. Still, it was what happened on those 40 Saturday’s over four seasons that brought things to an end.

“I’ve been around good wins and I’ve been around lots of bad losses, but it’s about looking in their eyes and that’s what’s disappointing about the Army thing,” Berry said. “It’s not what happened to me or what happened to the staff, it’s just those kids have got a real limited time period to really live a dream and we didn’t allow them to fulfill their dreams and that hurts me. That will always hurt me. I’m going to have more opportunities, but they’re not.”

Indiana University athletic director Rick Greenspan was the A.D. at Illinois State in 1996 when he hired Berry to resurrect that program and was the athletic director at Army when he lured Berry from the I-AA to I-A ranks in 2000. While he was hoping Berry could recreate the success with the Black Knights that he had with the Redbirds, he understands some of the unique circumstances that Berry faced coaching and recruiting in a non-traditional university environment.

“The kids work awfully hard, not just like others on the football field but with the military training and academically it’s a real challenge,” Greenspan said. “And it’s a very challenging place to be accepted. There’s a freshman class of roughly 1,000 and give or take 10,000 applicants a year. You have ongoing demands that are unlike almost any other institution as far as your physical fitness, your ability to run your two miles, the ability to continue to grow and demonstrate proper military presence and military bearing. There’s also the time away from home, where certainly as a freshman through your sophomore year you rarely leave the institution.

“And you’ve got the five-year requirement to serve in the Army and that means that after a short period of basic training you’re going to be deployed to one of the world’s hot spots. So you’re signing up for that with a volunteer Army and some of the expectations for what deployment has meant has changed since Sept. 11.”

Prior to his appointment at West Point, Berry had built a reputation for helping teams run a reverse in the win-loss column. The Miami, Oklahoma native was offensive coordinator for the University of Tennessee-Martin from 1986 to 1988, taking a then-Division II program that was a longtime conference doormat to a top five finish in passing offense, total offense and scoring offense. In his final season, the Pacers finished 11-2 and made it to the Division II quarterfinals and all four of his receivers, his running back and his quarterback wound up signing professional contracts.

After stops at Mississippi State and Southeast Missouri State, Berry joined Steve Logan’s staff at East Carolina University and began working his offensive wizardry with the Pirates. Once again, he played a vital role at a program not known for success on the football field and helped them to Liberty Bowl berths in both 1994 and 1995. It was under Logan that Berry became known for his creativity and out-of-the-box thinking, something Berry says Logan not only allowed, but also encouraged his coaches to do. He was also catching fire as a potential head-coaching candidate and in 1996, Greenspan hired Berry to take over at Illinois State.

“I had followed and admired from afar the East Carolina offense and I thought they were very creative and getting a lot done with, in some cases, less talent than some of the people they were playing and beating,” Greenspan said. “I thought they were very imaginative and exciting and at that point in time, I thought that was something we needed... an offense that was a little a-traditional for the time and could support a program that had really struggled to be successful.”

To say the Redbirds struggled was like saying it was cold at the “Ice Bowl.” Illinois State had not won a conference championship since 1950 and was on the verge of dropping football as a sport. So you can imagine the stunned looks of disbelief when Berry came in and started talking about national championships on his first day on the job.

“I said at that time that I want to be around people that really aspire to do great things. I want to be around teams that really want to do great things. And for us the ultimate goal is to win the national championship,”

Berry said, transported back to that moment. “Now is that realistic this next year? Maybe, maybe not. But I want you to start thinking in those terms that this is where we want to end up because if you’re the right type of athlete and the right type of person, then you want to be as good as you can be. And you want to be a part of people who want to do special things.

“We want winning seasons. We want to win at home. We want these other things. But more than anything, I want you to start thinking about these things and I think it’s really important for the psyche of a new program to come in and start talking about this is what we ultimately want to accomplish.”

While Berry’s Birds didn’t win a national championship, in four years he completed one of the greatest turnarounds in NCAA history. After going 2-9 and 3-8 in his first two campaigns, Berry led his team to an 8-4 mark in 1998, their first-ever postseason playoffs and a national ranking at year’s end. The following year he guided Illinois State to an 11-3 record, the best in school history, their first Gateway Conference title and the semifinals of the 1999 I-AA playoffs, where they fell 28-17 to Georgia Southern. Under Berry’s direction, Illinois State established or equaled more than 100 individual and team records on game, season and career levels. The Redbirds were ranked in the top 25 for 19 consecutive weeks and his players garnered 73 individual postseason awards. Berry was the 1999 GTE Region 4 Coach of the Year, a two-time Gateway Conference Coach of the Year honoree and a two-time finalist for the Eddie Robinson Award, given to the top I-AA coach. He was also named to the AFCA Board of Trustees.

Now Berry, 44, is hoping to resurrect those winning ways at ULM, under Head Coach Charlie Weatherbie, a man who’s resume boasts some turnarounds of its own, snapping 12-year losing streaks at both Utah State and Navy. Weatherbie coached against Berry twice while at the helm of the Midshipmen, but knew Berry way back when he was a quarterback at Tulsa and later an assistant coach at Oklahoma State, Weatherbie’s alma mater. Now the two are hoping to pool their penchant for turnarounds at Monroe.

“I just feel really, really fortunate for the opportunities that have already been presented to me,” Berry said. “One of the things I really enjoy about my job is I think sometimes as a head coach, maybe even more so at the academy just because of the other things that are going on there at those places, you get to the point where you don’t get to spend any time with the players and the staff. And that’s really what makes it fun. It’s the relationships that you develop and having success and facing adversity together. Those are what make the game, in my opinion, really special. For me right now, I’m back with the kids; I’m back around the staff. I would like to be a head coach again at some point in time. I enjoyed being a head coach. But it’s been somewhat refreshing to just kind of get back and it felt like I really needed it.”

And after eight years in charge, Berry thinks he’s a far better assistant than he ever was. And without a doubt, Weatherbie is excited to have a coordinator at his disposal that not only excels at the position he was hired for, but also understands all the intricacies that go along with running a team.

“You get to bounce some things off him and I think it’s important to have those guys around who’ve been where you’ve been and know what you’re going through, they kind of know the routine.” Weatherbie said. “I think after I’ve been a head coach myself I would be a much better assistant than I was before I became a head coach because I know what to expect. So I think it’s a big plus for me to have somebody with his experience.

“I ask him about things all the time, whether it be how to handle the team in certain situations, or discipline or whatever it may be. I try to get everybody’s input, but you try to listen to the guys that have been there before and done it.”

And when it comes to “been there, done that,” Weatherbie and Berry are determined to get ULM back on track. The school formerly known as Northeastern Louisiana captured four Southland Conference Championships between 1983 and 1993, including a Division I-AA National Championship in 1987 when Stan Humphries quarterbacked the offense. But wins have been few and far between since moving up to the I-A level in 1994, where they operated as an independent prior to joining the newly formed Sun Belt Conference in 2001.

But in 2004, ULM posted three straight wins for the first time since 1993.

And despite starting three true freshman on the offensive line, Berry’s spread orientated, shot-gun heavy offense showed some sparks led by playmaking juniors Steven Jyles at quarterback, Mason Denham at running back and Drouzon Quillen at receiver.

“I’m really fascinated with the ability to be able to run the football out of that formation and I’ve always liked to throw the football,” Berry said.

“We’re still trying to find ourselves a little bit. We’ve got to be very careful with how much we do with our offensive line and so that forces you to really have to think about how you structure. You can’t just go up and run the best 20 plays in college football, you really have to have a system that helps protect the young people up front and that’s been a lot of fun to have to deal with that.”

So just how long will it take for Berry and the Indians to reach Sun Belt supremacy?

“Why not now?” Berry said, much as he did eight years ago in Normal, Il.

“That’s the way we have to get our players thinking. Why think that we have a good young football team and we’re going to do it next year or the year after that? Let’s do it now.”

NEW BOOK!

Digital Download - 304 Pages of Football Forms for the Winning Coach