Volume 6, No. 3

NEW STATE OF MIND Incoming A&M coaches relish move to the land where football is king By Homer Jacobs

Both Arizona and Purdue have had their college football moments, from the Wildcats’ 12-1 season three years ago to the Boilermakers’ Rose Bowl ride through the Drew Brees era.

But the hottest ticket in Tuscon continues to be courtside for an Arizona basketball game, and Purdue continues to reside in a state where basketball rims remain mandatory décor for driveways and barnyards.

So when football coaches Dino Babers and Kevin Sumlin decided to leave Arizona and Purdue, respectively, for Texas A&M, it was like salmon making the run up the Columbia River: It was the innate thing to do.

"My big thing is that Arizona was a basketball school where we played good football," said Babers, who replaced Steve Kragthorpe as the Aggies’ offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach this spring. "After I left that place, I wanted to go to a football school. Be careful what you ask for, but that’s what I wanted to do."

Ken Rucker returns to A&M to coach running backs.

Sumlin decided the land of Midnight Yell Practice instead of Midnight Madness had a stronger pull to it.

"The state of Indiana is like the movie ‘Hoosiers,’" said Sumlin, the Aggies’ new assistant head coach. "The whole concept of football growing up in the state of Texas, basketball in Indiana is the exact same mentality."

Babers, Sumlin, and running backs coach Ken Rucker are the three new offensive coaches added to R.C. Slocum’s staff this spring, although Rucker is making his second stint in Aggieland after coaching the Aggie running backs from 1994-97. Rucker left A&M in 1997 for North Carolina to be closer to his father, who was suffering from poor health and later died in 1998.

While Rucker replaces Pete Hoener, who joined the Arizona Cardinals of the NFL as a tight ends coach, Babers and Sumlin will be asked to step in for Kragthorpe and Larry Kirksey, both of whom decided to leave A&M for the NFL.

Last year’s triumvirate of offensive coaches at A&M helped diversify the Aggie offense, implementing elements of misdirection and paving the way for wide receiver Robert Ferguson to become the Big 12’s most dangerous wide receiver.

But with Ferguson leaving A&M early for the NFL, and fullback Ja’Mar Toombs also opting to forego his senior year for a shot at professional football, the Aggies have plenty of question marks on offense heading into the 2001 season.

Add in a new coaching mix, and no one is quite sure what to expect from the Aggies this fall.

Babers said A&M’s offense will resemble its look from 2000, with a touch of Arizona and a twist of Purdue thrown in for good measure.

"A lot of times, offensive coordinators get too much credit or too much blame," said Babers, who coached at Arizona from 1995-2000 until head coach Dick Tomey resigned and was replaced by John Mackovic. "But this is not going to be my offense, it’s going to be the Aggies’ offense. J.B. Grimes is a heck of a football coach. Tam (Hollingshead) is a heck of a football coach. Kevin Sumlin is from Purdue, so we’re going to incorporate some of the ideas they had with Drew Brees up there. And Kenny Rucker was at North Carolina and with the Aggies before that.

"To be an offense, it’s like gumbo. You have to throw all that stuff in there and let it blend a little bit. All I did is bring in a system where you can blend in all of that stuff very easily."

While the Wildcats struggled offensively last fall, Arizona set Pac-10 records offensively two years ago, thanks in part to a strong running game with tailback Trung Canidate and a solid passing game with receiver Dennis Northcutt.

It’s the same run/pass balance that Babers and coach R.C. Slocum are hoping will evolve for the Aggies this season.

Dino Babers takes over as offensive coordinator.

"I know you guys do your homework down here, and last year at Arizona we were not that good," said Babers, who will take over an A&M offense that averaged 27.9 points and 381.6 yards of total offense during a 7-5 season in 2000. "Two years before that, we were really good. I think what you want to have is a mutliple offense that can adjust to defenses. We’ll have anywhere from no backs to one back, to two backs to three backs. Defenses have to adjust. That’s our style of offense. We’re looking for a balance. We’re not trying to be one-sided.

"I know that Bob Toledo was down here, and he did some things. But there’s no question Steve (Kragthorpe) opened the offense up. I was surprised to see some of the formations they were in. You get one stigma (of convervative offenses), and that wasn’t the case at all. They were doing some wide-open things down here, and I was excited to see that."

Fortunately for Babers and the Aggie offense, quarterback Mark Farris returns for his junior year after throwing for 2,551 yards and completing 59.9 percent of his passes in his first year as the starter in 2000.

And while the changes in coaching personnel occurred just a few weeks before the start of spring practice, most of the new offensive system will be in place by the end of spring training on April 6.

"You have to put the entire offense in," Babers said. "But you can’t neglect fundamentals, because it all comes down to basic fundamentals. But I’ve always believed in the whole. To me, an offense is a Rolodex. You work the entire thing. You don’t do little sections because that’s not how kids learn.

"You keep reviewing it. Spring is part of that review. Two-a-days is part of that review, and the first three games of the season are part of that review. Then you get into a pattern with your personality, and you go from there."

Babers has had just a few days to analyze his offensive personnel, and besides the quick release of Farris, he said he has been extremely excited by the play of the Aggies’ offensive line, most notably that of All-America candidate Seth McKinney at center.

"I think Mark Farris has an extremely fast release, and that was exciting to me," Babers added. "I think Seth is a player. Football is like baseball, you want to be strong up the middle. We’ve got a good quarterback and a good center, and we can work with that."

Sumlin’s task will be to rework a wide receiver lineup that will have to replace Ferguson and reliable Chris Taylor. Bethel Johnson returns for his senior year, and he will be asked to carry the primary receiving load until some of the younger Aggies mature into solid contributors.

At Purdue, Sumlin saw his alma mater set Big Ten records for passing, thanks mainly to the leadership and talents of Brees. And, as Babers claims, look for a little bit of the Purdue offense to show up on the field for the Aggies this fall.

"There’s some things that we’re doing with a little more open sets, which is a little bit toward what they evolved to last year," said Sumlin, who coached the receivers at Purdue from 1998-2000. "And we want to have the ability to change formations and spread the field out a little more. There’s going to be a definite continuation of that (misdirection) because there was some success there."

Sumlin recruited the state of Texas for Joe Tiller’s squad at Purdue, which enabled him to become familiar with A&M, its assistants and its recruits. In fact, Sumlin remembers sitting in the homes of A&M signees like Terrence Thomas of Houston Washington and John Roberson of Bay City.

Now, those two incoming freshmen could be called upon for early action in the A&M offense in September.

"I actually sat in their homes with a couple of them while at my previous place of employment during recruiting," Sumlin said. "I talked with John and Terrence, so I’m real familiar with them. I watched the quarterback Terrence Murphy on film the other day, so I’m really excited about these guys. I’ve seen Bryant Singleton, too.

"In football nowadays, the best players are going to play. If they can come in and learn the system and know what they’re doing, they’ll have a chance to play. We’re going to put the best guys on the field no matter what age they are."

Both of the new A&M coaches said the idea of coaching in the Big 12 Conference was an attractive one, as well as a challenging one. After all, fellow South Division foe Oklahoma won the national championship this past season, and the league is known nation-wide for producing top-flight defenses.

While the Pac-10 was constantly berated by college football experts for its lack of defense, Babers will have few easy weeks as the Aggies’ offensive coordinator.

"There’s better personnel here than we had at some stages in our deal at Arizona," Babers said. "I definitely think there’s better personnel than the people they had at Purdue. The difference is what kind of personnel are you dealing with in the Big 12 Conference. Supposedly, this is the defensive league in the United States. That’s what we have to compare to. You can look on tape, but you just don’t know what you’re really going to need on offense until you line up there and see those Longhorns and Sooners on the other side."

Sumlin has seen his share of teams like Penn State, Michigan and Ohio State as a coach in the Big Ten. He has been part of a four-year run to unprecedented national glory for the Boilermakers, as Brees passed his way into Heisman Trophy contention.

But, like Babers, Sumlin wants to check out up-close the Sooners and Longhorns of the world, as well. And he’ll do it at a place like no other in college football.

"I’m anxious to get to the atmosphere of this university because I’ve always heard about it," Sumlin said. "It’s a very, very special place. That get backs to one of the reasons I came here and one of the reasons you’re in coaching.

"That’s big-time football, and that’s what you want. In any career at any level, you want to be part of the best and play the best. The pagaentry and atmosphere, that’s what college football is all about. That’s the reason I love college football and want to be a part of it. From everything I’ve seen and heard, I don’t thing there’s probably any better place in sports than here."

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