Dave Wommack’s character was on display Friday night.
At a Music City Bowl welcoming reception for Georgia Tech and Ole Miss, the Rebels defensive coordinator shared the room with the man who fired him in January 2010 from the same role at Tech, coach Paul Johnson. Both men handled the occasion with grace.
“I got to see Paul and his wife, Susan, and their daughter (Kaitlyn),” Wommack said. “She’s grown up beautifully.”
Monday’s bowl game might carry more intrigue if Wommack could have mustered some bitterness for his former employer, but it is not his way. In a way, that is how Wommack ended up at Tech and a few years later at Ole Miss.
“I’m a little high-strung at times,” Ole Miss coach Hugh Freeze said Saturday at a pregame news conference. “He’s very calm and can handle those times I’m like that.”
Johnson, sitting next to Freeze and someone who might also be described as “a little high-strung at times,” smiled in appreciation. Johnson hadn’t known Wommack well before hiring him, but brought him in part because of the personality mesh.
“He is a good guy,” Johnson said earlier this month. “I’ve said that all along. At the time (of the firing), it just didn’t seem to be working, not the way I thought it should work.”
Wommack recalled the success the Jackets had in 2008 and 2009, winning a combined 20 games and going to the Orange Bowl in the latter season. The Jackets ranked 25th in total defense and 28th in scoring defense in 2008, but dropped to 54th and 58th in those respective categories a year later. After Wommack, Johnson brought in Al Groh, who lasted 2 1/2 seasons with no improvement. Ted Roof was hired after the 2012 season.
The past four years for Wommack have brought turns refreshing and unexpected. Following his dismissal, he returned to his home near Table Rock Lake in Missouri, near Branson. He said he fished 150 days over the next year, but joked that his wife made him go back to work. His plan was to coach high school football until he retired, but, he said, he couldn’t find a job. That led to a job with Freeze at Arkansas State, where Freeze was promoted to head coach after the 2010 season.
Wommack was recommended to Freeze by Gus Malzahn, then Auburn’s offensive coordinator and one year later Freeze’s successor, and John Thompson, then Georgia State’s defensive coordinator and now Arkansas State’s defensive coordinator and interim coach.
“I didn’t think he was going to hire me, really,” Wommack said. “I think it was just a God thing.”
Freeze and Wommack were at Arkansas State for the 2011 season and then jumped to Ole Miss in 2012. Ole Miss enters this game ranked 39th in scoring defense, not bad considering that the Rebels’ high-tempo offense typically creates more possessions for the opposition and that Ole Miss has played five of the top 21 scoring offenses in the country.
“I just think his experience and the way he leads the coaching staff there and the kids has been extremely valuable to me,” Freeze said.
Wommack finds himself in the same spot he did on Tech’s Rose Bowl practice fields during spring practice and the preseason, coaching his defense against Tech’s spread-option offense, this time with raised stakes. While Wommack more than anyone could be excused for preparing a game plan on that experience alone, he looked at three years’ worth of game video to get a feel for Tech.
“But it’s a bowl game,” he said. “You can expect anything.”
Four years after his firing, he makes almost double the salary that he did at Tech, is coaching a generational talent in defensive tackle Robert Nkemdiche and his son, Kane, is a grad assistant on the Rebels staff. As of Saturday afternoon, he was expecting the birth of his grandson at any moment.
Wommack had it right — you can expect anything.
