I’ve always liked Lou Holtz, but I’m not so sure he thought very highly of me–if he even thought of me at all. It’s not like I’d done a lot to earn his respect, but if you open the season up against the same team four straight years, you’d think he would at least know who the other team’s coach was.
That spring I went to Atlanta to play golf with some boosters and Vince Okruch, our defensive line coach. I arrived at O’Hare Field first, so I sat down and started reading a book on golf. A few minutes later I looked up and about, oh, three chairs away was Coach Holtz.
I thought, “Well, maybe he just didn’t see me. Whatever.” So I got up and said, “Lou, how you doing?”
He said, “Hey, Jerry. Where are you now?” I didn’t know quite what to say, but I didn’t want to embarrass him. So I mentioned that I was waiting for Vince Okruch, who used to work for Lou, and I figured he’d know that Vince was at Northwestern now.
I’d hardly gotten the words out of my mouth when up walks Vince, and I’m sure Lou then put together that I was the Northwestern coach. He wasn’t sure who I was, but he knew I was at Northwestern.
That was just the first episode, though. A few weeks later, a friend sent me a newspaper interview with Lou that I hadn’t seen. One of the questions he was asked was, “Is it hard work preparing for Northwestern in an opening game?”
His remarks were to the effect of, “Well, it’s hard blocking ghosts. You don’t know what Northwestern is going to do on offense. They may be in a two-back set, they go in a one-back set, or they may even use the no-backs set like they did when Gary Barnett used to be there.”
A few days later, SportsChannel taped Lou’s TV show from a bar on the South Side of Chicago called “Reilly’s Daughter.” They asked him about their game with us, and he said, “I want you to know, I have a great deal of respect for Leon Burtnett.”
Which was fine, except Leon Burtnett was the name of a former Purdue coach. They had to stop him and say, “Coach, his name is Gary Barnett.” They taped over that, so it never got on the air, but somebody there called to tell me about it.
Barnett gives evidence to believe
The first three years at Northwestern, coaching was like learning to drive a stickshift. You had to consciously hit all the pedals, shift the levers, hit the accelerator, steer. Every movement was conscious and labored. After a certain point in 1995, Northwestern football turned into a smooth-shifting automatic.
All I had to do was point it in the right direction and provide a little acceleration now and then. Even then, most of the time I could put it on cruise control. There was so much positive energy in the group that I just had to rev it up, let it go and keep out of the way.
To me, it wasn’t a quantum leap to beat Notre Dame in our first game.
I don’t think it was a quantum leap to keep winning, either. It was the logical progression based on four years in the stair-stepping approach we had been taking. Many, many times along the way it was hard to feel like we were making any progress, but those who could be close to it all yet step away enough to be objective could see something shaping.
When you’re in the eye of it all, well, it just felt like what we were doing was right. We were taking the necessary steps and doing what we as coaches had gathered and decided were the right things to do in all these situations. It seemed to lead to a logical, sequential outcome, and the truth is any program can do what we did.
The first step
On Monday before the (Notre Dame) game, I gave out the scouting report. The cover page said, “Belief Without Evidence.” I told the team, “We’re healthy. We’re rested. We’re prepared. We’re focused, anxious and hungry.” And we were.
Practice that week was clean, crisp and business-like. These players had a sense about themselves, and it didn’t matter a bit that oddsmakers had made Notre Dame almost 30-point favorites.
Notre Dame, as (coach) Lou (Holtz) pointed out, was thinking more about its entire season than its opening game. In an interview I remember him saying, “We don’t have the luxury” of just concentrating on Northwestern. I played that part of the interview for the team–and rewound it and replayed it, oh, a time or two.
When we took the field, we were absolutely ready. Right away, our defense was dominant, and our offense went according to script. We went ahead 7-0 on (Steve) Schnur’s perfect six-yard pass to David Beazley, who punctuated the touchdown by crashing into the Notre Dame band.
The game went back and forth a little, but I never felt like we weren’t in control. We led 10-9 at halftime because they missed an extra point, and then Schnur hit D’Wayne Bates for a touchdown early in the third quarter. Notre Dame scored with six minutes 16 seconds left but failed on a two-point conversion attempt when their center stepped on the quarterback’s foot coming out of the snap.
At least officially that’s what happened.
A lot of our kids after the game thought (Ron) Powlus had been tripped by someone else: Marcel Price, our defensive back who had been killed in a shooting over the summer. We wore his nickname, “Big Six,” on patches on our jerseys all season. We took his jersey with us to every game and hung it up before the kids walked out of the locker room.
In every meeting we had before we went to the game, I’d ask the kids to play one play for Marcel–who was a delightful kid. I didn’t care when they did it, but if they were in there I wanted them to pick one play ahead of time and play it for Marcel and bring him with us.
No one tried to carry me off the field, and–out on the field–the guys acted like we had won just another game. It wasn’t like it was the end-all, although I later found out that (kicker Sam) Valenzisi had scooped out some of the Notre Dame grass as a souvenir.
Once we got in the locker room, though, we became idiots. Absolute fools. Everybody went crazy. We were dancing, screaming, laughing. I mean, it was a hoot. We were giddy. I think one of our tight ends, Shane Graham, tried to kiss everybody on the team.
On my way back to the locker room one of the radio guys from Chicago stopped me and asked if I could go on with them live right away. We needed those kinds of things, and I’d always had a good relationship with the guy who asked, so I said, “OK.” Well, it took forever for the host to come on the phone, and when he did his lead statement was like, “The perennial losers of Chicago . . .”
That set me off. I just stopped and said, “What kind of bull is this?” I gave the phone back to the guy I knew and refused to do the interview. I wasn’t going to listen to that kind of stuff before, and I wasn’t going to listen to it now.
You know, if you don’t say something to somebody in that situation they’ll just go ahead and keep beating up on you. I guess it’s a respect thing. At least that’s the way I was taking it.
I called (my wife) Mary from my cellular phone on the bus on the way back, and it was one of the sweetest rides I’ve ever had. I just had this grin stuck on my face, and all these cars with Northwestern people in them buzzed around us, honking and waving their flags. It was a triumphant return. School wasn’t even in session yet, and we probably had a thousand fans waiting for us back in Evanston.
Rodney Ray, a defensive back, who’d come such a long way as a person, got off the bus and went over and sat on his car and watched all the hoopla unfold. I went over to Rodney and asked him what he thought. He shook his head and said, “Never thought I’d see the day.”
The lowest of lows
There really aren’t words to describe how I felt after that. I was angry, frustrated, completely disheveled. I didn’t know what to think. I couldn’t think straight. I saw Ron Vanderlinden, our defensive coordinator, roll his eyes into the back of his head.
We lost because Miami played the entire 60 minutes, and we played 30 or 35. We were not going to point fingers at anybody but ourselves, as a team. We were going to take this upon ourselves.
It didn’t seem possible that this could happen. After all we’d been through for four years to get to where we were, this just was shattering. It was so alien, so unexpected, so humiliating, to lose that way. I guess the best word to describe my feeling was “traumatized.”
We had our usual reception for our coaches and family and friends in our offices that night. That’s a very difficult situation, because these games aren’t life and death to your friends and family. They figure, “Shoot, we’ll play another one next week.”
But for a coach after a loss, well, a piece of you has died that you can never grow back. It doesn’t regenerate itself. You’re often embarrassed and humiliated, and I was never more so than I was that night. When I walked up into our outer office, I immediately turned right down the corridor to my own office. I didn’t want to see anybody or say anything to anybody.
Mary saw me come in and came into my office a moment later, and we sat down on the couch together. I don’t remember my exact words to her, but I honestly didn’t think I could ever coach again. I wish I could have cried, but I couldn’t even muster the tears. I was so overcome.
It was like I didn’t even know who I was.
Rosy thoughts in Michigan
I hadn’t ordered the guys not to carry me off the field, but nobody tried to. I do, however, confess to briefly dancing with Rob Johnson on the field. I didn’t mean to do it, but it just kind of came over me. We had played valiantly and gallantly, and I thought Michigan was the best team we played all season. We were fortunate to win, and if we had played 10 games last year, I’m not sure Michigan wouldn’t have won nine.
But on that day, it was ours. I told the guys, “The eagle has landed.”
We moved up 11 spots in the rankings the next day, and since we were 2-0 and alone in first place in the conference–in front of five teams by a half-game–people were daring to mention the Rose Bowl.
Uh-uh. As much as I didn’t want us polluted by negativity, I also didn’t want us to lose our focus. I wasn’t going to talk about any bowl game yet. We had to achieve a winning season before I’d even mention it.
I thought discussing bowl possibilities at that point would be like letting water into a crack in a rock. If it freezes, the rock will break up. So I told reporters I was going to try to hermetically seal the players’ brains from those dangerous thoughts.
In hindsight, though, I know I slipped up once or twice in that regard. Before the Michigan game, it turns out that I casually made a reference that was uncharacteristically ahead of myself:
“Now,” I said, “keep in mind you’re probably going to have to beat Michigan to go to the Rose Bowl.”
Barnett on Michigan, Iowa
After a 40-7 loss to Michigan in 1992, Barnett wrote this passage in his diary:
“I probably tugged on Superman’s cape this week. (Defensive coordinator Ron Vanderlinden) and the defensive coaches complained about Michigan’s no-huddle substitutions, and I made a point of it in my press conference. It became national news. . . . As if, `Even if Michigan was using the rules to its advantage, why would Northwestern University bother to complain?’
Michigan just reinforced my bitter opinion of this program. They were jerks, except for (assistant coach) Les Miles. . . . After the game, (then Michigan coach Gary) Moeller wouldn’t shake my hand, and neither did any of the other Michigan coaches except Miles.”
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After losing 56-14 to Iowa in 1992:
“After the game, Coach (Hayden) Fry came over and said, `Hope we didn’t hurt any of your boys.’ I sort of stared at him and said, `I don’t think so.’ His comment stuck with me for four years.”
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Friday: Will he stay or will he go? Gary Barnett details just how close he came to leaving Northwestern.
