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July 31, 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 special teams coordinator and tight ends coach Jay Boulware .....

Q: You're a tall guy at 6-3. Were you always tall growing up, and if so, did the other kids give you any nicknames?

JB: "Oh yeah, I was taller and bigger than everybody. When I was playing Little League ball they called me Jaws. I guess because I was fierce, and that movie had just been out, and everybody was afraid of me because I was bigger than all the other kids. Even though I was in second grade playing with fifth graders, I was still bigger than all those guys."

Q: You're one of four Texas natives on the coaching staff. Do you feel a close connection to the other Texas coaches?

JB: "Yeah. Texas guys are funny, especially when you're out of state and you're a Texas guy, that you always feel like you have a natural connection to Texas, because the outside world views Texas as its own entity. It's not really the South, and the West doesn't claim Texas, so where is it? Obviously we all know a lot of the same people and our histories go back pretty far."

Q: Can you talk about your personal connection to the book and movie "Friday Night Lights"?

JB: "I was a sophomore on the varsity when we went out to play Odessa Permian that year. We had a pretty good team that year, but to take a road trip of that extent - that was a five- or six-hour bus ride. We had the option of taking a bus ride or flying, and we elected to take the bus ride because we all wanted to stay overnight. That was a big deal when you're in high school, because you don't usually get to do that in high school. We went out there and just got our butts kicked from start to finish. They were a really good football team, but we didn't show up that day. When you see the movie, we didn't make much of an impact. Our game was so quick because they were on top of us from start to finish and it was a rout. But we did play that team that year - we're the team that they played before they played Carter and some of those other big games."

JB: "All of them. But my very first one especially, and actually I was redshirted that year. We never lost to OU when I was there, but that was a different time. But my very first one, I remember it was a defensive battle the whole game. I think they had actually scored seven points because our quarterback threw a pick six, and somehow we had mustered three points, so it was 7-3 down to the wire. It was in the fourth quarter, and their quarterback fumbled and one of my good friends, Bubba Jacques, scooped the ball up and took it to the house, and to hear the crowd erupt - it was split down the middle, but literally, you couldn't hear anything. Our fans just knew there was no way OU was going to score on our defense, and that whole last quarter was the most exciting quarter, because everything they tried was stuffed. It was just a dominating effort by our defense. It was really exciting."

Q: When did you decide you wanted to become a football coach?

JB: "Really, it came from my o-line coach in college. He's the one that kind of brought it to my attention once my career was over. He kind of said, `Hey, you're one of the only guys I have left that's a returning player on this line, and we've got a bunch of young guys out here and I love to have you help me coach just to stay involved.' I always loved football so I thought `Sure', and it kept building and building that whole year and the next year when I did it as a student assistant, and then finally as a graduate assistant. I just fell in love with it at that time. It was like `This is what I want to do. This is what God has meant for me to do.' So my junior year in college is when I decided I wanted to be a football coach."

Q: What was your least favorite task that you had to perform when you were a student assistant or graduate assistant coach?

JB: "I didn't really have anything. I had watched guys do it before me so I just figured that was part of the deal and the time you have to put in to get to this point and become a full-time assistant, so I did all of that stuff with a smile on my face. I was happy to be doing something, because a lot of my friends had just graduated and they didn't really have any direction or purpose and I already knew exactly what I wanted to do. So anything they asked me to do, I was front and center. I said `Hey, give me something. I want you to call my name out.' I thought if he weren't asking me to do it, then he's asking somebody else, and I'd rather he be asking me, because now my name is on their mind when their buddies are calling and saying `Hey, do you have anybody that can do this for their first job?', so I don't have anything like that."

Q: You're only in your 30s and have already had coaching jobs in seven different states. How tough is all the moving around?

JB: "It was easy. I've been single most of my life. I've only been married for four years, so up until that time, it was a lot easier. Even right now we have a young daughter that's two, so going to school and all that doesn't matter. The only thing that bothers me about moving now is that instead of me, my wife's kind of taken over getting everything ready to go for the move and putting everything up, because she has to have everything in a particular place for her. Me, I just throw it all up in the cabinets and I'm done with it. So that's probably the only thing that's hard, is seeing her working herself every two, three, four years or whatever, getting the house set up or packed up for a move."

Q: You and your wife have one daughter (Jordin). Were you part of a big family, and how big do you want your family to become?

"For a long time I was the only child. I have a little brother who was born when I was 13. By the time he was old enough to know what was going on, I was off to college and I was gone, so we didn't have a big family and I felt like I was an only child most of the time. For me, I would like to see us have just a couple of kids. I don't want any more than two. We have a little girl right now. I'd love to have a boy but if not I'm perfectly happy having another girl, just so our little girl that we have now has someone to grow up with and share things outside of the two adults that are in the house, because she's already thinking she's an adult too. I want her to have a little brother or sister running around so she'll spend a little more time with other kids instead of the adults."

Q: Do you think the average fan doesn't realize or pay enough attention to the importance of special teams?

JB: "Yes, I think the average fan and a lot of coaches in this profession don't. In the NFL they do. Everything matters in the NFL. The competition level is so tight, that if you have a punter that messes up or a kicker that misses a field goal, they can obviously fire those people and get somebody else. It's important at that level, and I think more and more college coaches are starting to understand the importance of special teams at this level. It's very evident when you're watching tape a lot of time, which schools spend hardly any time at all on special teams, and it's evident which schools spend quite a bit of time. As a coach, you can tell. Fans probably can't tell, unless something's going wrong. That's the old cliché, that unless something's going wrong, you don't notice special teams. But your teams do. When your average starting position after a kickoff is the 35-yard line instead of the 25 or the 20, that's a big difference, and the chances of scoring go up dramatically. Or if you're punting and you pin an opponent inside the 10-yard line, their chances of scoring go way down. The average fan doesn't realize it, but those that are really and truly football fans, or football coaches, they understand that it makes a big difference."

Can you explain why you didn't get to watch the 2007 Super Bowl?

JB: "That was the year that I was interviewing for the job with Coach Chizik at Iowa State. Gene wanted to bring me in for an interview, and it was Super Bowl weekend. Well, I came in on a Friday night, expecting a Saturday interview and leaving on Sunday. But Gene was held up in Texas somewhere because he was recruiting. He came in late Saturday night, and I was going to go back, but I said `Coach, would you like me to stay another day?' because we hadn't talked any special teams at all. At first he said it was okay, but he called later and said `Yeah, stay another day, because I'd like to talk to you, then we can watch the Super Bowl together and you can fly home on Monday.' And I thought that was great, but we started the next morning around 9 a.m. after breakfast, and I didn't see any part of the Super Bowl. The only part I saw was Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith walking across the field with confetti coming down, and I had no idea who won the game. I was trying to see who was smiling or who had a frown on their face to figure out who actually won the game, because I missed the entire game because of the interview. We went all the way from 9 a.m. through the end of the Super Bowl, just talking about special teams. Gene has never coached special teams so he was asking me everything, and lucky for me, I had answers for him. It was the best interview I've ever been on."

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