Furman Football 2013: A Different Look At Program Swagger
By John Hooper
GREENVILLE, S.C.–In 2010, I addressed the issue of program swagger, and how it has become the one thing that has separated the good programs from the great ones at every level of college football.
Prompting my idea for the original article was the ESPN 30-for-30 program that took an inside look at the program that invented that term and way of playing–the University of Miami–which is more affectionately known by those who are associated with that program in some way as “The U.”
While Miami took that attitude and confidence to an extreme that was overboard, the psychology of what is now called swagger became an artform for the Dennis Erickson and Jimmy Johnson era in Coral Gables. Attached is the link to that article that I wrote back in 2010.
In that article, I took a look at what I believe are the elements that separates the programs that have that “Swag” as the new generation refers to what The “U” created over two decades ago. There are four elements that I think make up that personality for a football program, with these four elements creating a fifth element, which I did not mention but is pretty obvious to figure out, and that is any program that up for consideration to have “swag” has to have tradition, but its more than just winning football games, its how you win, how that tradition is handed down by the leadership of the program, and how the recruits respond and buy in.
Rather than looking at the four elements that make up “swagger” in this article, I want to take a look at a different aspect of this program element that Miami was able to fashion, which invoked fear into even some of college football’s juggernauts, such as Notre Dame and even Oklahoma, who the Hurricanes beat handily during that golden era.
For Furman, the tradition is obvious, being the winningest team in the Southern Conference in the decade of the 1980’s, and rekindled that winning swagger towards the latter part of the decade and for even for the first six years of the new millennium, as the Paladins were consistently a Southern Conference title contender and ranked towards the Top 10 in for about a seven-year stretch from 1999-2006.
But, as you probably already know as a Furman fan or SoCon fan, Furman hasn’t sniffed the postseason since 2006. One of the things that makes swagger unique is that it is a time-sensitive element of a program, which means that the more time that elapses between that established winning tradition of a program and the season or seasons, which is sometimes characterized as a “rebuilding” season, in which the program loses this winning edge, the harder it is to get back.
What I mean is, swagger is what recruits for your program, and the best recruiters in the business are the salesmen, but the more removed a program gets from that last success on the field, the harder it is for the coaching staff, or salesmen to go out and sell this swagger to the younger generation. Much is made about the facilities argument as it relates to recruiting, but I believe there’s nothing that sells a program better than tradition, which creates that winning attitude, or swagger. Swagger recruits itself, but the best in the business can color this picture for a recruit and bring the program to life in the living room of that potential future all-conference or All-American quarterback.
It’s one of the elements that the Furman staff has done so well, time-and-time again on the recruiting trail since the Art Baker era in the late 1970’s. Furman is fortunate in this respect, which is that it has two members of its staff, in head coach Bruce Fowler (1977-80, 1984-2001, 2011-present) and quarterbacks coach Tim Sorrells (1977-present), who can paint that picture with brilliant color and those vital elements of tradition in order to sell this swagger to recruits. While they probably wouldn’t refer to this as swagger, it’s exactly what they are doing, or what any coach does.
With the academic constraints at Furman, an eye for “diamonds in the rough” in talent assessment has been vital for Sorrells and Fowler, and over the years, no staff in the SoCon has done better at finding players that were overlooked and believing in players that were waiting for a college to believe in them. One of those many talents is Louis Ivory, who only had non-Division I offers, which included one from nearby Fort Valley State, but all Ivory did was go on to become one of the best running backs in SoCon history, and is still the school’s all-time ground-gainer with
It is also important to note that Furman isn’t selling the same swagger as a Georgia Southern, Appalachian State or in past years, Marshall has been able to sell. Obviously those aforementioned programs have done an excellent job of maximizing their strengths, and over the past few years, Appalachian State’s success has easily revealed the Mountaineers’ program swagger, but more than that, their facilities, which dwarfs Furman’s in just about every aspect, and is great eye candy for incoming recruits. Perhaps the only thing the two programs have in common on the recruiting trail is that they have done so with class, which is hard to find in today’s environment of cut-throat recruiting.
But a coach that can take you to those moments in which the program’s swagger were born because they were apart of that foundation as players as both Sorrells and Fowler were, that’s something that can keep the Furman tradition alive in the household of a recruit, and it is the one rare exception to have two players-turned-veteran coaches that were there when this element of a program was born. Both Fowler and Sorrells, who were college roomates, will be the first to tell you how important it is to be a part of swagger and what each has learned in their better than two decades of work as both players and coaches on this staff.
For Sorrells and Fowler, they are part of the program’s Mount Rushmore, as have predecessors Art Baker, Dick Sheridan, Bobby Johnson, Jimmy Satterfield and Bobby Lamb. Fowler’s predecessor Bobby Lamb, was similar in being able to recapture that enthusiasm he remembered as a star quarterback for the Paladins, leading the Paladins to a national title appearance in 1985 against arch-rival Georgia Southern. Now the head coach at Mercer, who resurrects its football program after a 72-year hiatus in 2013, Lamb gave 29 years of service as a player, assistant and head coach at Furman, and brought those same colorful stories from the glory days of Furman football into recruits’ living rooms.
But the biggest element of Furman’s swagger and one that coaches, from Baker in 1973-to-Fowler in 2013 have been able to sell, is Furman wins the right way.
It’s not a program that has bent the rules at any point in its successful league-standard tying 12 league titles since 1978, but more importantly, it’s a program that has stuck with the elements of swagger that brought it much success in for the better part of a 28-year stretch, and that’s old school discipline, fundamentally sound football.
Furman is not a program that has ever been wowed by trends, or buying into the latest, fashionable offense as many programs have over the years. It’s a program that doesn’t run a gimmick offense, and if it can’t line up and out-muscle and out-execute a team, then it its not going to win many football games.
While Furman has not had the athletes of an Appalachian State or Georgia Southern over the years, it has been able to compensate for that lack of speed in key positions by out-executing its foe.
Furman is also a program that has established its swagger in being able to exploit matchups on the field where the Paladins have an advantage, and more than any other staff in the league, the Furman staff has been able to take advantage of those matchups on both sides of the ball, seemingly since that Baker era.
One that comes to mind is back in 2001, when a Bobby Johnson-led Furman team took down talented Appalachian State, 28-22, at Paladin Stadium.
But it was one matchup in that game that the Furman staff was able to exploit, which saw Isaac West catch two deep balls against ASU cornerback Du’Shon Martin on a day when the Mountaineers’ stout defense rendered Furman’s running game virtually non-existent.
Furman has been among the large majority of teams over the years that has won the right way, such as Appalachian State, The Citadel, Western Carolina and Chattanooga being the ones that are clearly evident to me.
Much has been made about Furman having lost something from its program since 2006, which was the last time since the Paladins were worthy of a postseason invitation–the longest playoff drought since the Paladins first made the postseason back in 1982–but this isn’t a staff ready to give up on what has worked. It’s not a staff that has forgotten how to bring the program’s swagger into a recruits living room, and its not a staff that buys into the fact that the spread offense is the only way to win in football.
I think I can speak for Fowler and Sorrells when I say that they don’t buy into the fact that there’s only one way to win in college football, which is a hurry-up, spread offense. No, to me, it’s a staff that takes more of the Nick Saban approach at Alabama, who has stuck with the elements that made the program successful in the past, and maybe that’s the best strongest aspect of having a swagger, which is an identity.
Georgia Southern has one, which is the flexbone offense, Wofford has one, which is the spread-bone, and Appalachian State, now has a new one, which is the spread. Furman’s identity is running the football out of the Power-I, and while the offense has many more wrinkles than it did in the late 1970’s and throughout the ’80’s, Furman’s winning swagger and thus, its identity is power football.
That’s not something that will change anytime soon and with just 35 lettermen back, a whole new crop of Paladins are buying into this concept, and now Fowler has his players buying in, as he has brought back that old school swagger that was lacking in the latter years of the Bobby Lamb era, which existed during the first few years of Lamb’s nine-year tenure at Furman, and flourished during the Ingle Martin years. However, with program constraints, including rising academic standard, coupled with personnel, Lamb and staff transitioned to a spread offense in 2009, which ended up backfiring. It was an unlucky turn of events for the well-respected Lamb, who was the 2004 Southern Conference Coach of the Year, helping Furman claim its 12th and most recent SoCon crown that same season.
With that said, the challenges will be different in coming seasons without Appalachian State and Georgia Southern in the SoCon, which should play into the favor of a young Furman team looking to recapture swagger from the recent past, and not relinquish it for years to come playing under a couple of its founding fathers in Fowler and Sorrells. Finally, I end this article with this quoted excerpt from Tim Sorrells in the 2002 American Football Coaches Association Manual, which further illustrates the philosophy and winning swagger that has been passed down from 1978-present.
“It is indeed an honor to be able to share with you some thoughts and ideas from our philosophy on option football at Furman University. Everything we implement atFurman on offense has come from the combination of philosophies from former head coaches; Art Baker, Dick Sheridan, Jimmy Satterfield, Bobby Johnson and current head coach, Bobby Lamb. These men have developed an offensive system combined with a tough defensive mentality that has enabled us to win an average of 8.2 games per season since 1978 as well as a national championship (1988), two appearances in the finals (1985 and 2001), 11 Southern Conference championships and 11 playoff appearances. Along the way we have been blessed to have players with tremendous ability and outstanding character and intelligence who have believed in our system and worked very hard to execute it in practice and on game day.”–Tim Sorrells, 2002 AFCA Summer Manual