AuburnTigers.com
    Timeout For 10 Questions With Jeff Grimes Texas native feels like he's back home living in Alabama.



    July 23, 2009

    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 offensive line coach Jeff Grimes .....

    Q: What was life like growing up in Garland, Texas?

    JG: "Life was good. It was your typical middle-class background. My dad worked at Texas Instruments and was a hard-working guy who did whatever he had to to take care of us. He would work a second job around Christmas sometimes to make some extra money for Christmas. My mom worked. We were very involved in the church and were raised in a strong Christian home. Growing up in Texas is like growing up here in Alabama - very sports oriented and community. Football is big so we got involved in sports. I was probably your typical kid growing up in that part of the country."

    Q: Were you a big Cowboys fan as a kid?

    JG: "I still am, you've got to be. Growing up, that was the heyday of the Cowboys. You had Roger Staubach, Tony Dorsett, Randy White and all those guys. That was the day when the Cowboys, and I still think that they are, earned the title of `America's Team'."

    Q: What do you remember about your Christmases growing up?

    JG: "I remember some of the traditions that we had as a family. I think traditions are cool because it's something that a family comes together around. I think it builds unity and I've carried on some of those with my family. It's nothing big, just the little things of Christmas Eve and going to the church service with my family and my extended family of my grandma and aunt and uncle and cousins. We would have a big meal and share time together as a family that I remember. My dad was always the guy who would do something every year when I was little around Christmas to make it fun. I remember one year when he went stomping on the roof just as we were about to go to bed. My sister and I were having a tough time going to sleep and my parents couldn't get us to go to bed and here's my dad stomping on the roof and I was hearing `Ho ho ho' coming down the chimney and my sister and I split off trying to find it. He said that he was going to come back in five minutes and if we weren't asleep then he wasn't leaving anything. It's just some of those fun little things that make Christmas such a fun time for a family."

     

     

    Q: The top high school players are almost treated like celebrities these days. Were you a celebrity in high school?

    JG: "No, I wasn't good enough to be. I was young for my grade. My parents started me in school early so I was still 17 when I started in college. I was still always one of the taller kids, but I hadn't fully developed yet in terms of my coordination and my strength hadn't come yet, it came later in college. I was a guy who had a few schools recruiting me, but they were schools that were looking at me as more of a project rather than a guy that was ready to come out and play. So I wasn't heavily recruited by any means. I was a guy who felt fortunate to have an opportunity and I think that's one of the things that kids miss out on today because of the way that recruiting goes on nowadays and it's a lot of people's fault, but a large part is due to the way that we recruit. A lot of kids feel like they're entitled and they feel like they deserve something. They feel like something is owed to them because of how great they are rather than recognizing how fortunate they are to get that opportunity, and I always try to remind my kids. I was talking with a recruit and his family the other day about the pressure of making the decision and I told them to think about the hundreds of thousands of kids that would die to be in their shoes right now. Is there some pressure involved in it nowadays and is it sometimes hard? Yeah, it is, but what a great opportunity. That's one of the things that I think a lot of kids miss out on because of the way the recruiting process has gone, is that feeling of thankfulness and gratitude for the great opportunity they have."

    Q: When you were in school at Texas-El Paso, did you make many trips across the border to Mexico, and if so, what were those experiences like?

    JG: "I didn't go over there much, but some of my friends who went over there got into trouble and so that kind of curtailed a lot of the Juarez trips. I actually did a mission trip over there for a week and it was one of the most eye-opening experiences of my life. I worked with the youth department of a church one summer while I was out there. We had been working with a church in a small town on the outskirts of Juarez. It's just amazing because these people have nothing, really. They had shacks for homes and a lot of them didn't even have running water and the streets were dirt. But one thing that I noticed was that the kids were so happy and they were so happy to see us, somebody who was there and cared about them and would play games with them and hug them. It brought me back to the recognition that life isn't about things, it's about relationships and it's about people. That's something that I think we've really lost sight of in our society now."

    Q: How did you meet your wife, and was a long-distance romance tough?

    JG: "We met through the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. We did a couple of camps together and we served as leaders for younger kids. We started staying in touch with each other. She was going to Texas A&M and, of course, I was in El Paso. She grew up in Amarillo and I grew up outside of Dallas so there was no common meeting ground and because Texas is such a big state, a lot of people wouldn't realize how far apart those two places really are. From El Paso to College Station is about a 10-11 hour drive. Even from Dallas to Amarillo is about a six-hour drive so we were never really too close to each other until we got married. Honestly, it was difficult, but it allowed us to form a relationship in a different way and maybe in a way that it happens some other times, because it kind of forced us to take our time to get to know each other through letters and phone calls and that was before e-mail and texts and Facebook. It was old-fashioned letters and sending little gifts to each other through the mail, but I do think that it helped us not to rush, but to get to know each other as friends first."

    Q: When did you first realize you wanted to be a coach?

    JG: "I considered it a little bit when I was in college, but I didn't think that it was the direction that I wanted to go. When I finished in college, I was in a couple of professional camps, but I never made a team while I was trying to keep that dream alive of playing in the NFL. When that didn't work out, I had to figure out what I was going to do for the rest of my life and that was a difficult time for me. Initially, I said that I didn't want to go into coaching for all the reasons that make it a tough profession for yourself and your family. The moving around and the amount of time that you have to put into recruiting, in particular, and I really wanted to do it at the college level if I did do it, but I had initially decided not to do it. I really didn't have a lot of other directions, but I had some friends in El Paso who ran a corporate insurance company and they offered me a very lucrative job and they tried to bring me into the firm as one of their own. The vice president was someone who I knew would take me under his wing and so I said that I would take that job, but I was still trying to help Sheri finish college. As time got closer for us to go out to El Paso, I just didn't feel at peace with it. I wasn't excited about it, but it was just the best opportunity that I had. One day, I had been doing sales at the time and I was sitting in my old Chevy Blazer with no air conditioning in south Texas heat with a coat and tie on doing my sales. I was sitting at a railroad watching this train go past and I was looking out the window when this thought just hit me. I was like, `Jeff, you really love coaching.' The thought just kind of exploded and it was truly one of those ah-ha moments. I think I really had an epiphany and a light went off. I went home and I said to Sheri, `I kind of had this thought and it's something that I really want to talk to you about.' So she said, `If you want to coach then let's go coach.' And I knew that there was more to it than that and you had to know what it means. We were going to have to move a lot and take a lot of jobs that we wouldn't necessarily like just to move up the ladder. She said that if I was happy, then we would be happy so we should go do it. We never looked back from that moment on."

    Q: When you took a job at Boise State after spending your whole life in Texas, did you and your wife have any difficulty adjusting to how different it was?

    JG: "That was tough. All of my other jobs had been in Texas and Sheri and I had even talked about other coaching jobs, but she said that all the states that border Texas were okay - states like Louisiana, Oklahoma and New Mexico. I explained to her that that's not how it works. Lo and behold my first Division I job offer is in Boise, Idaho, so we got out the map, we looked at it, and Sheri said, `That borders Canada.' We had grown up in Texas and been there our whole lives and we had no idea and off we went. It was a bit of a challenge because she always was and still is very close with her parents and we always lived fairly close to them. But one of the things that has been really cool is how family has always come to visit us no matter where we've been. We've been very fortunate in that wherever we've been, her family has been able to come and spend some time with us. Now that we have children, the grandparents are always going to come to see the kids. It was a challenge at first, but it's been a great adventure too."

    Q: After Idaho you then moved to other states out west: Arizona, Utah and Colorado. How does living in Alabama compare to those places?

    JG: "Well, it's very different from being in the west, but honestly, it felt like coming back home for Sheri and I. I think that Alabama and Texas have a lot in common and it starts with the people. The people are very friendly down here and they care about one another and they look you in the eye when they say `hi.' They'll slow down on the road to let you in rather than speed up to cut you off. There's just a real difference in the feel of people in different parts of the country. That's not to say anything about people out west, but there just a difference and there's more distance and I think that people aren't as comfortable relating to one another in a short space of time. For us, it's been a very easy move and something that we've looked forward to. We love a smaller town. Being in a small college town that has good schools and good people is a perfect fit for us."

    Q: If your life story was made into a movie, what type of movie would it be?

    JG: "Whenever my wife and I talk about movies or even go to a movie, she wants to know how the movie is going to end up before we go because she's not into sad endings. I like a movie that makes an impact on you, regardless of what kind it is. So, if it's a scary movie, how much does it actually frighten you? An edge-of-your-seat thriller, does it actually get you up and out of your chair? If it's a drama, does it move you to tears or to joy or whatever? My favorite movies are `Remember the Titans' and `Hoosiers' and those kinds of stories that are, in a sense, sports movies that revolve around the drama of real people and real lives and involve the story of the underdog, because that's me. When I was in high school, nobody would have ever thought that I would've gone on to play college football. Then, when I first got into college, nobody would've thought that I would've had the chance, even though I never made a pro team, to play in an NFL camp. I think of myself as an over-achiever. I think of myself as a guy who has done more than a lot of people expected and I have always enjoyed and appreciated when people told me that they didn't think I had a chance because I've taken that on as a challenge. I think it would be something along the lines of my playing career to my coaching career. It would be about a guy who's coached high school football and Division III early on, but carried the theme of relationships. In the end, it's got to be a happy story otherwise my wife's not going to watch it. There have been some bumps and bruises along the way and there have been some things that have made it a challenge, but the journey is something great. Some people are so concerned with the end, whether it be a big coaching job or winning the national championship, but they're so concerned with getting to the end that they miss the journey. I've learned to appreciate the journey, because that's really life."

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