Auburn's Ted Roof enjoys winning first title

Sitting on a stage inside Jordan-Hare Stadium, the impact of winning the BCS championship finally hit Auburn's Ted Roof.

Roof, who designed the defense that stymied Oregon's point-a-minute offense, said the coaches didn't get much of a chance to celebrate their accomplishment. After the game in Arizona, coach Gene Chizik and his assistants, including defensive coordinator Roof, hit the recruiting trail. There was no time to think about surviving an early-season scare against Clemson, or rallying from 24 points to defeat Alabama, or winning the SEC, or coming from behind once again to pluck the Ducks 22-19 on a last-second field goal.

But sitting on that stage and celebrating with nearly 80,000 of his closest friends, with no calls to make or e-mails to send, Roof actually got a moment to himself.

"It was a wow moment to see how happy the people were and how proud they were over what the Auburn football team accomplished this season," Roof said.

Roof has many fans in his native Georgia, as well. He grew up in Lawrenceville and played at Central Gwinnett before signing with Georgia Tech and leading the "Black Watch" defense in 1985 under coach Bill Curry, whose teachings Roof said influence him even today.

"When we started the Black Watch defense, the only reason we could do something like that was because we had a player and a leader like Ted Roof," said Curry, now the coach of Georgia State. "To become a part of the Black Watch, you had to be chosen by Ted."

Roof modestly said he's not as articulate as Curry, but he tries to maintain the same perspective on football and life that he was taught at Tech. And he tries to teach it to the players he has led, whether at Duke, where he was head coach from 2003-07, or at Minnesota, where he was the defensive coordinator in 2008, or at Auburn. He said he just likes to teach.

That love of teaching is what helped Auburn win the national championship. There was a 37-day break between the Tigers' victory over South Carolina in the SEC championship and the BCS title game. Roof said Chizik used that time wisely, calling for a patient implementation of the game plan. Roof said the bit-by-bit approach kept the players focused.

One of the key teaching points was reminding his players that the game would be decided by one-on-one battles. If they could win those, it wouldn't matter how quickly Oregon called its plays or that it averaged 49 points and 537.5 yards per game.

"Our mindset going in was every time they put the ball down we get an opportunity to play defense, so let's let them put it down as fast as they want to," Roof said. Auburn held Oregon to 19 points and 449 yards.

"You've got to be aggressive," he said. "The way the game has evolved has dictated that. Coordinators and offenses have gotten so good they can 5- and 6-yard you to death. You've got to put the offenses behind the chains with some different pressures. You have to have a physical aggressive state of mind."

Curry remembers that aggressiveness when trying to sign Roof. He also learned that Roof already was looking at the bigger picture.

"When we were recruiting Ted, he asked me two questions: ‘If I come to Georgia Tech, are we going to win? And, if I come to Georgia Tech, will you help me be a football coach?'" Curry said in an e-mail.

Roof's attacking approach has produced positive results throughout his career, from his first job at West Georgia, to later becoming the linebackers coach and then defensive coordinator at his alma mater to taking a similar position at Duke before being promoted.

While happy at Auburn, he said he would like to one day become a head coach again so that he can continue to teach. He said his experiences in Durham helped him last season because he was able draw from a bigger reservoir of patience than he had before that 6-45 stint with the Blue Devils.

"At the end of the day everybody's problems end up on your desk," he said. "It gives you a unique perspective that you can only gain by doing it. It makes you see the big picture. That's what it took."

After the BCS championship was won, Auburn's coaches had big-picture goals to accomplish. They are hard at work on the 2012 recruiting class, as well as planning spring practices with the goal of defending their championships.