Each week AuburnTigers.com will give fans a chance to get to know a member of the football coaching staff with a quick Q&A. One coach will be highlighted each week, and this week's subject is running backs coach/recruiting coordinator Curtis Luper .....
Q: What was life like growing up in Sherman, Texas?
CL: "Sherman is about 45 minutes north of Dallas, and growing up there was good. I was raised by my grandfather and he was a wheat farmer. So, I grew up on a farm for the most part and I really had some good experiences. I was driving the combine by age seven and working with the wheat."
Q: Did you get into any mischief as a child?
CL: "We were big into bicycles and building clubhouses, so there wasn't a lot of trouble to get into in Sherman. But there was a lot of industry there. There was Texas Instruments, Oscar Meyer, Johnson&Johnson, Folgers and IBM, so it became kind of a lower-class town. And I was into athletics, I wasn't into much else."
Q: How did you end up going to Oklahoma State?
CL: "I had a cousin who was four years older than me and he was at Oklahoma State four years prior to me, and he started every game. So I went up there a lot. It was an 11-game season and they played in two bowl games, and he started in 46 consecutive games. So I was very familiar with it and I was comfortable there. It was between Oklahoma State, Texas A&M, Nebraska, Tennessee and Arkansas so I had a fine opportunity. It came down to Oklahoma State and A&M, but it was Oklahoma State all the way."
Q: You played running back at OSU while Barry Sanders and Thurman Thomas were there. Did you think that you should have played more ahead of them?
CL: "I thought then that I should have, definitely. Thurman and I were about the same. I was bigger and he was a little quicker, but I was faster. He was probably a little more mature. He was more of a city guy and I was a country guy. Other than that, there wasn't much difference between us two. Barry was special. He was two years younger than us. Thurman and I were classmates and we went in the same year. We were the number one and two running backs in the state of Texas and we both chose Oklahoma State. Knowing what I know now, maybe I would've gone to A&M or Tennessee or Nebraska, but Thurman and I are great friends and we'll always be great friends."
Q: What led you to leave OSU to go into the Army?
CL: "Well, my stepfather was in the military so I was kind of enamored by it. We spent some time in Germany as a child and in California, so I was just enamored by the military. At Oklahoma State, playing behind Barry and Thurman, I decided I had to find something better to do so I joined the military. It was a great experience for me. I got to travel and grow up and I got my education paid for. I really began to appreciate our country and the preeminence of our country."
Q: You completed college at Stephen F. Austin as a 27-year-old running back. What did the other guys on the team think about that?
CL: "That was a fun year. They thought of me as the old man. The story about me was one half, here's this old man coming back from the military, and the other half was that I played in college behind Barry and Thurman. At that point in 1993, they were All-Pros in the NFL. Barry had already won the Heisman and Thurman had been in several Super Bowls. At that point, they were at the height of their popularity in the NFL. But it was a fun time and I learned a lot. That's how I became a coach and when I write a book, that's going to be a huge chapter - that 1993 year. My high school coach was the head coach there, too. The whole staff was my high school staff. Since I went to college twice, I have two sets of college friends and teammates and that's also how I met my wife, through Stephen F. Austin. It was a blast."
Q: You started your coaching career as a graduate assistant at SFA. What kind of tasks did they make you perform that you would never want to do again?
CL: "We would play a game on Saturday night and we'd finish around 10, and coach would tell me that he needed the tape by 6:00 in the morning. So I had to drive to Houston and get there around midnight. The tape would fly in from wherever around five in the morning on the first flight and we would have to drive it back. It seems like every weekend we were down in Houston to pick up the tape, staying up late. When I was a G.A., my coach made sure that I was challenged and that I would learn to do the things that I would need to do to improve as a coach. He would give me a list of things to do and I would say, `Coach, there's no way that all this can be done.' And he would say, `Oh yeah, you'll figure it out.' And sure enough, I figured it out."
Q: During your two trips to the Las Vegas Bowl while coaching at New Mexico, did you get a chance to see any shows?
CL: "Well, let me tell you, the Blue Man Group was overrated, especially if you have to go twice, and I had to go twice. I had to see it back to back with all that percussion. Seven days in Vegas is way too much. One thing that I learned is that it's kind of cold in Vegas in December in the mornings when we practiced. But it was fun. I would take the children and we stayed at the Golden Nugget both years off the strip. It was a great experience."
Q: You spent much of your life in Texas and Oklahoma. How does living in Auburn compare to that?
CL: "This is a unique place. The people at home are friendly, but the people here are overly-friendly almost. I can't put into words how friendly the people are here. I love the weather here. I was expecting it to be unbearable like it was in Houston, but it's not. I love it. I love the weather and I love the people and, not to say anything negative about the other institutions that I've been at, but Auburn really stands on its own as an institution. Academically, people in the region think highly of Auburn and that's a good thing.
Q: What's the deal with the tinted glasses that you often wear?
CL: "Some people call them sunglasses, but to me they're really not sunglasses. They don't do too much for the sun, but I like them because my players can see my eyes. As a coach, they need to see my eyes and this way I don't have to keep taking off my glasses for them to see me. They're orange and when I took the job here I said, `Hey, I get to keep my glasses because they still match.' It's nothing particular, but they work when it's sunny, when it's cloudy. They work at night and they work inside and outside."
