The Big Three

On his first day on the job as offensive coordinator for Georgia State's football team, John Bond rolled a chair into an empty conference room in the Citizen's Trust Bank Building for the team's first-ever coaches' meeting.

"We had no table to meet around, no boards, no markers. We were in a room in a bank, and we sat with our notebooks in our laps," he says. "We literally had to pull our chairs up into a circle."

Joining Bond were head coach Bill Curry and the coach's two other new hires: defensive coordinator John Thompson and assistant head coach and recruiting coordinator George Pugh.

With more than 70 years of college coaching experience between them, Curry's top three assistants know as well as anyone that the life of an assistant football coach is full of the unknown - and oftentimes that unknown is where he'll get his mail next season. Still, building a team with no history and, more importantly, no players has been another challenge altogether.   

That summer day in 2008, Curry laid the groundwork: Bond would build the offense, Thompson would develop the defense and Pugh would be the lead recruiter. They had to start immediately to sign the team's first class by February 2009 and shape the Panthers' identity on both sides of the ball.

Ready or not, Curry told them, the Panthers would take the field in September 2010.

"I'll say this," Pugh says, "looking back, it's been a wild ride."

 

Talent Scout

For Pugh, that wild ride of creating a football program from thin air is similar to one he's been on before. In 1995, he was an architect in transitioning the University of Alabama-Birmingham's football program into NCAA Division I, just six years after the team played its very first game.

"I've seen the pitfalls and roadblocks, and every day is something new," Pugh says. "Starting a football program is a lot like making biscuits from scratch. If you don't have the right ingredients, it's not going to rise."

Pugh's primary task for the start-up Panthers has been getting those main ingredients: the players. Fortunately, Pugh's name opens doors, not just in Georgia but across the South.

"He knows how to find, sign and develop talent," Curry says.

Adorning Pugh's giant hands - the hands that caught passes when he was a tight end on legendary Alabama coach Bear Bryant's national championship team in 1973 - are extravagant rings from bowl games past.  

"That's from the Cotton Bowl in 2001," he says, holding up an inch-wide diamond and gold colossus he earned as an assistant at Arkansas. 

Pugh's not afraid to show off the goods from his past successes, and he makes it clear what it takes to get the right personnel on the field.

"Let no one fool you," he says, point blank, "networking and relationship-building with coaches, parents and former players means getting players."

Pugh's inroads in the Atlanta area go back to 1976, when he took his first coaching job at Columbia High School in Decatur, Ga. Two years later, he jumped into the college ranks and since has served as an assistant at seven schools, including stints at Texas A&M, Arkansas and Houston. He was head coach at Alabama A&M from 1989-91. 

At all of his stops, he says, he's recruited from the talent-rich Atlanta area.

"For all my 34 years," he says. "Recruiting is to a program what blood is to the body. You don't recruit, you don't win, and this area is full of players."

Pugh's duties don't stop after he gets a commitment; he's also the wide receivers coach. In the past, he has recruited and groomed several NFL-bound wideouts, including former University of Houston star Donnie Avery of the St. Louis Rams, and former UAB standout and Atlanta Falcons All-Pro wide receiver Roddy White. 

 

A Coach's Son

At the age of 19, offensive coordinator John Bond was already in charge of player substitutions and signaling in coverages for Lou Holtz's 1983 Arkansas Razorbacks.

"I think about that now and there is no way in the world I'd give a 19-year-old kid that kind of responsibility on game day," he says. The Arkansas coaches, though, must have seen something special in Bond.

To his chagrin, it wasn't his prowess as a quarterback. He had come to Arkansas as an all-state signal caller out of Rogers (Ark.) High School, where he had played for his father, Gary, a member of the state's high school federation Hall of Fame.

"Rich Olsen, an assistant coach, said to me, 'Hey look, why don't you help me coach because we'll always be trying to get a better quarterback than you,'" Bond recalls.

A devastating knee injury helped the coach's son make up his mind, and he hasn't left the sidelines since.

At every school Bond has coached, he's built dominant offenses. At Army, one of the oldest football programs in the country, Bond's offense broke 35 school records. He's perhaps best-known for coaching one of the nation's most prolific rushing attacks at Northern Illinois from 2004-06.

Bond is quick to point out, however, that his offenses aren't one-dimensional.

"Our running games in the past have always got the attention, but we've always been very good passing the football," he says. "Balance is our buzzword."

It was during Bond's tenure at Northern Illinois that he met his current boss. The Huskies and their high-octane offense were often featured on ESPN's weeknight college football slots, and Curry often called those games as a color analyst.

"Being a coach's kid, I was very familiar with his career both as a professional player and a coach," Bond says. "I was excited to meet the guy and talk football, and we just clicked."

In 2007, Bond got his shot with a major program when he was tabbed as offensive coordinator for Georgia Tech, but things didn't work out as he'd hoped.

"We won eight games, went to a bowl game and got fired," he says. 

He and his family opted to stay in Atlanta, however, and when he heard that the start-up program across town would be led by Curry, he put in a phone call. The head coach brought him in and hired him on the spot.

"I've been very fortunate to be associated with him," Bond says. "I've learned a great deal from Bill Curry and I'm very appreciative of his leadership."

Now the head coach is expecting big things from Bond; Curry has made it clear to him that he holds the keys to the Panthers' offensive machine.

"I get to do my deal without any interference from the head coach, and that's rare," Bond says. "Hopefully we'll do a good enough job that he'll leave us alone."

 

Organized Chaos

At first glance, the color-coded shorthand that fills the whiteboards in John Thompson's office look more like formulas than formations. Stacked neatly on his shelves are dozens of binders - playbooks, some stuffed with more than 300 pages, from defenses he's built over the course of his more than two decades as a defensive coordinator and 30 years in coaching.

"That's the whole warehouse up there," he says. "We might only take a fraction of that into the game, but that's what we'll pick from."

Thompson, admittedly, is a bit of a mad scientist when it comes to creating defenses, which he characterizes as "organized chaos."

Thompson says he builds his defenses around his players' strengths, and he plans on running flexible schemes that will allow him to adjust from play-to-play to the opponent's offense.

"This situation is unique because we didn't have a lot of information about our guys," he says. "We're still morphing into what we really are."

In his long and successful career, Thompson has directed defenses at nine schools - including five SEC programs - and served as head coach at East Carolina.

In 2006, his reputation as a creative thinker led him to an athletic director's position at Central Arkansas, his alma mater, where he guided the university into NCAA Division I play. A year later, an opportunity arose to lead an SEC defense and Thompson took over as defensive coordinator for a struggling Ole Miss squad.

That would be the only season he would spend in Oxford. Head coach Ed Orgeron's entire staff was let go at season end, and for the first time since 1983, Thompson was without a team. That's when the football scholar turned to writing and authored a six-book system outlining everything from proper game-day planning to multiple blitz systems. 

"That summer, I put these books together and I hit golf balls," he said. "That kept me sane and kept the peace around our house."

Like Bond, his offensive counterpart on the coaching staff, Thompson too had a past relationship with Curry - he coached linebackers for Curry at Alabama in 1987.

"He's been really influential, and I've consulted with him on the career moves I've made," Thompson says.

After learning that Curry was building the GSU program, Thompson called to congratulate him on his new endeavor.

"After we hung up, I called him right back and said, 'Hey, I want to come work for you,'" Thompson says. 

Just like with the offense, Curry is hands-off when it comes to the defense's X's and O's.

"[Thompson] finds a way to convey a defense that is simple to players but utterly confusing to the opposing offense," Curry says. 

Right now, Thompson is concentrating on Shorter's offense.

"Not to be dramatic, but how we play against Shorter is going to be historic," he says. "And it's getting a lot more intense because they're going to kick it off no matter if the coaches are ready or not!"