Do You Love Football?! by Jon Gruden, Vic Carucci

would be. I had trouble just getting an interview for a full-time college coaching position, let alone an offer. I thought for sure that somebody would want me on his staff. With Johnny Majors on my résumé? And Walt Harris? And Tennessee? How could I go wrong?
    After we beat Indiana in the Peach Bowl at the end of my second season, I stayed in Atlanta-along with the rest of our coaches-to attend the annual American Football Coaches Association Convention. Walt introduced me to everyone he knew ("Hey, you got anything for this guy?"), but I couldn't get a sniff. I left telephone messages at colleges all over the country.
    No one would return my calls.
    Finally Walt lined up an interview for me at East Tennessee State. I thought I did well, much better than I had done with Walt a couple of years earlier, because I was more knowledgeable and felt a lot more confident. But the job went to someone else. I went back to Tennessee feeling totally depressed.
    Although my GA status had expired, Coach Majors offered to keep me on as a "volunteer" coach. Not a lot of GAs received that opportunity, so I felt good that the people in charge of one of the top college football programs in the nation thought I brought some value to their staff- especially when I didn't have any other options at that point. There still wasn't any pay involved, but Coach Majors lined up part-time work for me in what then was the new Thompson-Boling Assembly Center and Arena. I would help straighten up around the facility, set up chairs for concerts, that sort of thing. I wasn't going to give up the hunt for a full-time job coaching football, though.
    I knew there had to be another school out there willing to give me an interview. Sure enough, with Walt's help, I found it Southeast Missouri State University, a Division II program looking for a quarterbacks coach.
    I made the six-hour drive from Knoxville to Cape Girardeau, Missouri, and was right on time for my 8 A.M. appointment with Bill Maskill, the head coach. I found out later that even though Bill thought I came across well in the interview, he needed to do a little research before pulling the trigger. He called my high school coach. He called my college coaches, who told him I was a "football junkie." Then he made what, from my perspective, was the best call of them all-to Gary Horton, who once again came to the rescue.
    "Billy, if you don't hire him, in two years you will wish you did," Gary told him. "This guy will climb the ladder."
    That was all Coach Maskill needed to hear. At twenty-four years old, I officially became a full-time college football assistant coach. I had a $15,000 a year salary. I had a business card.
    I had everything I could ever want at that stage of my life.
    The only problem was that I was hired in April and I wouldn't start getting paid until July 1, when my one-year contract took effect. Southeast Missouri State didn't have enough of an athletic budget to pay me any sooner than that, but I wanted to start coaching right away. I was ready to get together with Phil Meyer, the offensive coordinator, and begin working on the offense that we would be installing for the 1988 season. That meant, from April until July, I had to work a part-time job that the university arranged for me with the Cape Girardeau Public School System. For $6 an hour, twenty hours a week, I was part of a crew that went around town ripping up old carpeting being replaced in schools. It was a bitch of a job, but I had to eat and pay the $150 a month rent for the efficiency apartment I moved into after briefly living in a room that the university paid for at a Budget Motel.
    Cape Girardeau gets pretty hot in the spring and summer. It gets even hotter when you're on the top floor of a four-story building, ripping out carpet. Sometimes we had to take chisels and dig the rubber padding off the floor. After a while my hands looked like they were just rotted out. As I ripped through those carpets I kept reminding