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Roll of the dice pays big for Thompson
ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE LAS VEGAS -- No casino here can offer a bigger gamble than John Thompson took the first time he came to work at Arkansas in January 1982. Thompson cashed in the four years worth of retirement he had built up teaching and coaching in high school at Forrest City and Arkadelphia to pay off his 1975 Grand Prix, loaded all his belongings into the car and drove to Fayetteville to chase his dream of becoming a college coach. The only thing was, Thompson didn't have a job. Not even a lowly graduate assistant's spot. Somebody else had gotten that job when Thompson interviewed with Lou Holtz, who was then the Razorbacks coach. "But I stayed after Coach Holtz and said, 'If you say you'll let me come up there and work for you, I'll quit my job,' " Thompson said. "I just caught him in a weak moment, I guess, and he said, 'C'mon up.' "There wasn't a job, though. I was just a guy hanging out in the meeting room." Thompson said he did whatever the other coaches' asked -- break down film, clean the chalkboards. "Making sure all the chalkboards were clean was a major deal with Coach Holtz," Thompson said. "He had a real thing about that." For the first three weeks Thompson was working at his nonjob with the Razorbacks, he slept on the couch of a friend who was attending Arkansas' law school. Then the late Lon Farrell, who was an assistant athletic director, arranged for Thompson to room in the dorm with offensive lineman Carl Tegetoff and eat at the dining hall for $1 per meal. "I was 27 years old, getting paid nothing and rooming with an offensive lineman who made me sleep on the top bunk," Thompson said. "That wasn't a lot of fun." But the gamble eventually paid off for Thompson. TAKING THE REINS By the fall of 1982 he had secured a graduate assistant's spot with the Razorbacks -- paying $98 a month -- and that began a journey through the college ranks that brought Thompson back to Arkansas this season in his new role as defensive coordinator. Thompson now lives in a four-bedroom house in Fayetteville with his wife and two children and is paid $135,000 to coach at the school where he started for nothing. The guy who used to make sure Lou Holtz could see his reflection in the chalkboard is credited with leading the transformation of an Arkansas defense that didn't allow a touchdown in the last two regular-season games against Mississippi State and LSU. That helped the Razorbacks pull upsets that lifted them to a 6-5 record and a spot in the Las Vegas Bowl against UNLV on Thursday night. "Coach Thompson has turned our defense around since he started calling the plays," junior cornerback D'Andre Berry said. "Just look at the results." Arkansas Coach Houston Nutt decided he had to make a change and turn over the play-calling duties to Thompson -- who had been listed as co-defensive coordinator with Bobby Allen -- after Tennessee beat the Razorbacks 63-20 to drop them to 4-5. It was the most points an Arkansas opponent had scored since 1919, when Tulsa beat the Razorbacks 63-7, and while the Vols feasted on turnovers and kicking-game mistakes, they also rolled up 502 yards in total offense. Allen, who had been calling plays from the sideline, went up to the press box and Thompson, who had started the season in the press box before coming down to the sideline after four games, took over play-calling duties. "Coming off Tennessee, I wasn't feeling good about anything, but I knew we had to stop giving up so many long drives and start disrupting the opposing team's offense more," Nutt said. "We just needed a spark, and it's worked out well for us." Nutt said Thompson now carries the sole title of defensive coordinator and has the final word on play-calling going into the Las Vegas Bowl, with Allen as linebackers coach. "Bobby still will have a lot of input," Nutt said. "But John is our coordinator." When Thompson accepted Nutt's job offer last January after a three-week stop at LSU, he assumed he would be calling defensive plays, as he would have with the Tigers and had in previous stops as a coordinator at Northwestern (La.) State, Louisiana Tech, Southern Mississippi and Memphis. But Thompson said he understood Nutt felt a strong loyalty to Allen, who has coached with Nutt for five seasons at three schools and called the plays in Arkansas' 27-6 Cotton Bowl victory over Texas after defensive coordinator Keith Burns left to become Tulsa's coach. "It wasn't how I had envisioned things at all, but anybody who knows Houston knows he wanted the best of both of us," Thompson said, referring to himself and Allen. "I respected his reasons for doing what he felt he had to do at the time." Through the first nine games, Thompson coached the secondary and had input on the game plan, but Allen called the plays. "I was pretty much a fish out of water not calling plays because I'd been doing it for 20-something years, over 200 games," Thompson said. "It wasn't comfortable, but I had a job to do, and I hope I did it the best I could. "I really tried to look at it like you bring a player in and you ask him to move to another position for the good of the team." After the LSU game, Nutt acknowledged he had made a mistake naming co-coordinators and that Thompson had shown he deserved to be in charge of the defense. "I feel a lot more at home in knowing what my role is," Thompson said. But Thompson stressed the defensive improvement against Mississippi State and LSU was not about his play-calling; it was a combination of things -- the assistants working well together, the players adjusting, inclement weather in the games. "I was on the staff at Tennessee, and Bobby was on the staff against Mississippi State and LSU," Thompson said. "Whatever we've done, we've done as a team." SEEKING 'THE TRUTH' Thompson was part of a young but talented team of defensive coaches when he got his first full-time college coaching job as Northwestern State's coordinator. The group also included Bill Johnson, who is in his second stint as Arkansas' defensive line coach after working eight years at Texas A&M, and Art Kaufman, who is Ole Miss' defensive coordinator. Henderson State Athletic Director Sam Goodwin put the staff together in 1983 when he became Northwestern State's coach. Goodwin was Arkansas' running backs coach from 1981-82 and had gotten to know Thompson. Goodwin offered the job to a startled Thompson while the Razorbacks were doing pregame stretching in the Astrodome before playing Florida in the 1982 Bluebonnet Bowl. Among the coaches who applied and weren't hired by Goodwin were Tommy Tuberville, who is now Auburn's coach, and Rick Minter, who is now Cincinnati's coach. "I didn't have a lot of money to work with, so I had to get some young guys," Goodwin said. "And John had impressed me while he was at Arkansas. ... He was 100 percent football coach. He lived it, breathed it and was very intelligent and anxious to learn." Johnson already was working at Northwestern State when he saw Thompson for the first time at the football offices. "I remember John walked in the door wearing a little preppy-looking tie and carrying a briefcase, and I thought he was an insurance salesman," Johnson said. "He was looking for the head coach's office, and I figured, 'This guy is trying to sell Coach Goodwin some insurance.' " Johnson soon was formally introduced to the coordinator he'd be working with at Northwestern State, and he and Thompson quickly hit it off. Two months later, they and Kaufman went to Fayetteville to attend Arkansas' spring practice and pick up ideas for the defense they wanted to run at Northwestern State. "We drove in a white school car that had a Northwestern State University emblem on it that said 'Seek the Truth,' " Johnson said. "We were trying to come to Fayetteville to seek the truth. "We literally put that defense in while we were in our car driving and talking on the way up to Fayetteville and on the way back." The defense became a cross between the read-and-react scheme Monte Kiffin had run at Arkansas in the late 1970s and Thompson had copied and used at Forrest City and Arkadelphia and an attacking style he had seen Don Lindsey use at Arkansas in 1981 and 1982. "As a high school coach in Arkansas, you naturally did what the Razorbacks were doing [with Kiffin]," Thompson said. "But Don Lindsey had some really abstract ideas I had never seen, like taking a player and really featuring him -- like he did with Billy Ray Smith Jr. -- in a way that affected the whole package." For Thompson, it was the start of laying the foundation for a multiple defensive package that has been the cornerstone of his college coaching career. "I didn't want to be afraid to try something different," he said. "If you can find an offensive line rule, we want to try and break it. "I'd rather an offense worry about us than us be concerned with the offense. You've got to know what [the other team] does, but my first thought in calling a defense is, 'Hey, what can we do to them?' " At various times Thompson has gone with eight-man fronts, 4-3s, 3-4s, dropped linemen into coverages, and blitzed everyone. "It's been like adding on to the house," he said. "You might have to knock out this wall to make this room a little nicer, or add on another story. ... The key is to make sure the foundation stays the same, that you're always good fundamentally." SUDDEN IMPACT The Razorbacks quickly grasped Thompson's play-calling and are full of confidence after their success against Mississippi State and LSU. "You know his defense causes problems when you're watching the offensive line and their heads are on a swivel trying to figure out which man they're going to block," Arkansas junior nose guard Curt Davis said. "It's a really confusing defense, and it's fun to play." Johnson said Thompson has "great organizational skills, and he can control the package in his mind real well. He's always thinking ahead." Thompson was thinking ahead when, after seven years at Southern Mississippi from 1992-98, he moved to Conference USA rival Memphis. He got a raise, but his main motivation was raising his profile. "I needed to shake my career up," Thompson said. "[Former Memphis Coach] Rip Scherer said, 'Hey, come here and do a good job and people will notice.' " Nick Saban did. After Saban left Michigan State to become LSU's coach last year, he hired Thompson. Thompson wasn't at LSU long enough to meet any players, though. Less than a month after accepting Saban's offer, he took a job at Arkansas. Thompson has heard the stories about how he quickly found out he couldn't handle working for Saban and had to bail out, but he said that's not true. "I did my homework on Nick Saban, and I never heard 'easy to work for' or 'fun guy,' " Thompson said. "But I heard 'great football coach,' and I knew he was a guy I could learn a lot from if I went to LSU." Thompson said he didn't take a job at Arkansas to get away from Saban, but because it was an opportunity to come back to his home state. "Anybody who knows me knows how I feel about Arkansas," Thompson said. Thompson believed he might become the Razorbacks' defensive coordinator in 1998, but Nutt decided to hire Burns, a former Arkansas player and Southern Cal defensive coordinator. Thompson and Nutt have said it wasn't a "good fit" for Thompson to come to Arkansas at that time, but the fit seemed better last January. "I think probably that I wasn't as hard-headed the second time," Thompson said. "I was more insightful and more patient." Thompson needed to be patient when he later found out he wouldn't be calling plays, but now he's in control of the defense the way he envisioned when he accepted Nutt's offer. "I feel a responsibility here now to get the thing done," Thompson said. "I know what the Razorbacks do affects so many people in this state in a positive way. I know I'm blessed to be a part of it." Thompson first was a part of it in 1982, when he came to Fayetteville without having a job. Looking back, he still remembers what his father, the late Ralph Thompson, who was a longtime high school coach and administrator in Arkansas, told him. "I was pulling out in my car packed down with everything I owned and wasn't sure what was going to happen for me," Thompson said. "But my dad said, 'I'm happy for you, because you're chasing a dream.' " It's a dream Thompson is living.
This article was published on Wednesday, December 20, 2000RETURN to main page
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