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Home > Terence Moore > Archives > 2008 > October > 22
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Bill Curry getting head start on Georgia State football
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
You’re Bill Curry, and you’re highly energetic (translated: you can’t stand doing nothing). But you’re the coach of a Georgia State football team that won’t have its first kickoff until 2010.
This waiting can’t be good.
So why is Curry sounding like a 68-year-old kid on Christmas morning? Well, he already is opening some of his gifts. Most strikingly, there was last week’s tryout that drew 55 participants. Said Curry, “It was unbelievable. I didn’t think we’d have more than 10 kids. We turned a bunch away, because they didn’t get there in time to sign their disclaimers and all. So I’m going to have another tryout.
“I found a long snapper. I found a punter, and there were two or three guys who could really run and catch. Two or three big guys. And there were a whole bunch of folks that are just really fired up about football coming to Georgia State.”
There also is an upcoming pep rally, where Curry will announce his recipe for tailgating to the crowd. Plus, he wants folks to know that he will give two scholarships to walkons. He laughed, adding, “So there are all kinds of exciting, fun things going on that I’ve never done before.”
Yeah, but you’re Bill Curry, and since you left home in College Park to star at Georgia Tech during the early 1960s, you’ve always been within a chinstrap of live football games in a mighty way. You were a splendid enough NFL center to start for two Super Bowl teams. You were an assistant coach with the Green Bay Packers. You spent 17 years as the head coach at Georgia Tech, Alabama and Kentucky. You later became an ESPN analyst for more than a decade through last season.
No, this waiting can’t be good, especially with Bulldogs and Yellow Jackets prospering all around you, and with NCAA limits on what you can do at Georgia State right now. So Curry spends his current Saturdays doing what?
“I’ve had Saturdays where I have sat and charted exactly what games I’ve wanted to watch, and I’ve studied four or five football games from start to finish,” Curry said. “I’ve also, for the first time in my adult life, driven to Charlotte, N.C., to attend a fall baseball game where my 11-year-old grandson was pitching. Then I left there to go to a football game where my 9-year-old grandson was playing center for his team. And then I left there to go to a junior high game where my son — the dad of those two boys — coaches the junior high football team in his community.
“To experience that, it was one of the nicest days of my life. I’ve never been able to do that before — ever.”
Curry also travels the nation as a motivational speaker, and he has a recently published book that he will sign at Georgia Tech on Saturday before the Jackets’ homecoming game against Virginia. Still, his primary focus involves trying to find ways to make “2010” not sound so distant for Georgia State football.
For instance: Curry received permission from the NCAA to spend an entire game day with another coaching staff. That will complement what he did earlier this summer, which was send his Georgia State assistant coaches to observe Clemson’s two-a-day practices. Said Curry, “I’ve got friends who have visited with the Georgia staff. I’ve talked to (Georgia Tech coach) Paul Johnson, and he has invited us over. There just hasn’t been the right occasion for us to get together yet.”
It’s coming, though.
Just like Georgia State’s first football season is coming — slowly.
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Bill Curry getting head start on Georgia State football
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
You’re Bill Curry, and you’re highly energetic (translated: you can’t stand doing nothing). But you’re the coach of a Georgia State football team that won’t have its first kickoff until 2010.
This waiting can’t be good.
So why is Curry sounding like a 68-year-old kid on Christmas morning? Well, he already is opening some of his gifts. Most strikingly, there was last week’s tryout that drew 55 participants. Said Curry, “It was unbelievable. I didn’t think we’d have more than 10 kids. We turned a bunch away, because they didn’t get there in time to sign their disclaimers and all. So I’m going to have another tryout.
“I found a long snapper. I found a punter, and there were two or three guys who could really run and catch. Two or three big guys. And there were a whole bunch of folks that are just really fired up about football coming to Georgia State.”
There also is an upcoming pep rally, where Curry will announce his recipe for tailgating to the crowd. Plus, he wants folks to know that he will give two scholarships to walkons. He laughed, adding, “So there are all kinds of exciting, fun things going on that I’ve never done before.”
Yeah, but you’re Bill Curry, and since you left home in College Park to star at Georgia Tech during the early 1960s, you’ve always been within a chinstrap of live football games in a mighty way. You were a splendid enough NFL center to start for two Super Bowl teams. You were an assistant coach with the Green Bay Packers. You spent 17 years as the head coach at Georgia Tech, Alabama and Kentucky. You later became an ESPN analyst for more than a decade through last season.
No, this waiting can’t be good, especially with Bulldogs and Yellow Jackets prospering all around you, and with NCAA limits on what you can do at Georgia State right now. So Curry spends his current Saturdays doing what?
“I’ve had Saturdays where I have sat and charted exactly what games I’ve wanted to watch, and I’ve studied four or five football games from start to finish,” Curry said. “I’ve also, for the first time in my adult life, driven to Charlotte, N.C., to attend a fall baseball game where my 11-year-old grandson was pitching. Then I left there to go to a football game where my 9-year-old grandson was playing center for his team. And then I left there to go to a junior high game where my son — the dad of those two boys — coaches the junior high football team in his community.
“To experience that, it was one of the nicest days of my life. I’ve never been able to do that before — ever.”
Curry also travels the nation as a motivational speaker, and he has a recently published book that he will sign at Georgia Tech on Saturday before the Jackets’ homecoming game against Virginia. Still, his primary focus involves trying to find ways to make “2010” not sound so distant for Georgia State football.
For instance: Curry received permission from the NCAA to spend an entire game day with another coaching staff. That will complement what he did earlier this summer, which was send his Georgia State assistant coaches to observe Clemson’s two-a-day practices. Said Curry, “I’ve got friends who have visited with the Georgia staff. I’ve talked to (Georgia Tech coach) Paul Johnson, and he has invited us over. There just hasn’t been the right occasion for us to get together yet.”
It’s coming, though.
Just like Georgia State’s first football season is coming — slowly.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment |
Van Wieren’s retirement as sad as it gets
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Nothing against Larry Munson, the recently retired broadcasting god of the Bulldog Nation, but losing a legendary baseball voice hurts more.
It always does. That’s because baseball voices are with you longer during a given season and lifetime. They begin talking to you through their microphones in early March with exhibition games, and they continue on nearly a daily basis through the spring, summer and autumn.
They do so year after year, and often decade after decade.
They may not know you, but you definitely know them, because they become a part of your family through their jokes between pitches, their stories during rain delays and their emotions while describing the highs and lows of your favorite team.
They are magical for the ages - more so than the majority of their peers in the other sports combined.
Jack Buck. Ernie Harwell. Red Barber. Harry Caray. Jack Brickhouse. Mel Allen. Bob Prince. I grew up as a Big Red Machine fan, and I still cringe when I think that Cincinnati Reds games took place this season without Joe Nuxhall describing the action for the first time since the LBJ administration. Nuxhall died last November.
So Pete Van Wieren’s retirement from the Braves broadcasting team after 33 years is as sad as it gets. The same goes for the retirement way back when of Ernie Johnson Sr. The same goes for the death this season of Skip Caray, Van Wieren’s broadcast partner with the Braves forever.
The same goes for whoever else you can think of who fits this category.
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