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| —— I understand that you are one of the “fathers” of this Arena Football League. How did that come about? Well there was a guy by the name of Jim Foster, and Jim had invented the game. He was sitting in an arena and had the thought to play football indoors. So he held a practice game and later showed me some of the tapes. Initially I thought it was really boring, so when I became Director of Football Operations I looked at how we could spice things up. Then we sat down and worked out the rules and basically what every team is running now. The first thing we did was to open up the offense and make it closer to what we were already running. We asked ourselves, What do fans like? Touchdowns of course! so we’re going to have a lot of touchdowns lots of scoring and some limits on the defense. But make no mistake, it’s still football and so it’s got to be physical and people are still getting knocked around. The only difference is that all this is going to be happening RIGHT IN FRONT OF PEOPLE! In Arena Football fans are so much closer to the action and so players are getting knocked around and into the stands fans just love it. Those are the things fans enjoy, so we oriented the rules towards that end. The challenge was to see if we could do all that in a small little area and I think we’ve done a darn good job. When Jim brought it to me we (my staff and I) already had a reputation as being exciting offensively, so we tried to bring that to the league. One idea we kicked around was to have 8 offensive players and 7 defensive players, but when I suggested that to him he replied, That would be un-American.(laughing) —— Coach you’re 71 now, how long have you been doing this for now? Well, if I had been coaching straight through, every year, this would be about my 50th year, but itﾕs not quite so because I’ve had a couple of respites in between. I was in the service for a couple years and out of coaching for a few more. All told, from high school to college and the professional level, I’ve been at it over 40 some years.
—— So you like it then? (laughing) Well, for me football has been my joy and my career. What coaching does is it keeps you young, cuz your always working with young people that are passionate about what they do. So they’ll bust their ass to do what you want them to do. In life a lot of situations are based on what can I get from you, not what can I really do today or what can we do together. So from that standpoint it’s always fun. Fun in football though is always correlated with winning, cuz you’ve got to win. If you don’t win, it’s still okay, but it sure is more fun when you’re winning. When you’re losing you have to spend more time justifying why you lost, rather than concentrating on the things you need to. Hands down, winning is more fun than losing.
—— I can tell you love what you’re doing, how did you decide you wanted to be a coach? Well as a young kid, an eighth-grader, that’s when I determined that I wanted to be a coach. I loved playing and I was a pretty good athlete too well, that might be overstating it a little. I was okay I could play football, basketball, baseball, track. I could do all those things, but I had also figured out that I was not going to be big enough to be a pro-athlete, because I was smaller (5’6′) than just about everyone else. —— So when most kids are thinking about being coached, you’re thinking, “I should be a coach.” Yep. Even when I was a quarterback in high school, I was already reading football books and things. One time I made up a play in the huddle, obviously it wasn’t going to be any good since we never practiced it or anything, but I had read about this thing called a “screen-play”. So I told the guys what to do and it was just plain awful. After we left the field I remember the coach asking me, What was that play? So thinking quickly I told him it was one of his. —— I’ve got to ask you, what’s the story behind your nickname “Mouse”?  Well it’s not very exciting but I’ll tell you anyway! (laughing) the truth is that when I was freshman in high school and I was playing varsity baseball, even though I’m a lot smaller than most of the guys because I ‘d been playing since I could walk. So anyway, I’m a lot smaller and my dad used to call me bore mouse around the house whatever the hell that is because I had small hands. So one day I was playing second base and my brother was catching and he throws me the ball down to second base and I dropped it. So he yells over Nice hands Mouse! and that was it! From that point on all my teammates called me Mouse and within two years even the teachers were calling me Mouse. Later when I went to college people kept it going. So when I went into the service I thought I was finally going to leave that all behind I’m going to lose that nickname. My older brother did it, so I thought it might work for me too. Turns out that when military training I looked around and saw all these guys that I ‘d just been playing against in college. Hell, I knew right then I was “Mouse” alreadyand it’s been with me ever since.
It hasn’t all been bad though it’s been kind of fun sometimes. In fact, at Portland State we were the Vikings, but our unofficial mascot was a mouse. Our quarterback was Neil Lomax, who broke a ton of NCAA records, and his brother wore the mouse outfit. Everywhere I went people have picked up on it. In Houston, with the USFL Gamblers we had a great receiving core and they were known as the Mouseketeersﾓ, and jeez they could fly. Every chance they had all the guys would be wearing their mouse-ears. Seems at one time or another, cheerleaders, players, mascots everyoneﾕs been in on it! I figure it’s only a matter of time before something like that happens here.
Riptide Cheerleaders strike a pose on media night
—— So Mouse what brings you to San Diego and the Riptide? —— You’ve coached at every level and every league I can think of, what’s that been like? —— So you’re still experimenting?
Mouse putting the offense through its paces during practice
—— You’re well known as an offensive innovator and the man behind the “Run-and-Shoot” offense, what was it about that offense that created so much controversy? We run a modified version of it here with the Riptide. You can’t stop it when it’s executed properly. The knock on the run-and-shoot was that it was more of a sandlot back yard style, but the truth of it is that it requires a lot more discipline than any other offense because you have to make more decisions. It’s an offense that provides the receivers and quarterbacks more options depending on what the defense gives them. You need a sharper player and what people will tell you is that players aren’t smart enough to make all those decisions. I strongly disagree. They’re smart enough, if you’re smart enough to tell them what to do. When I took over as the Offensive Coordinator of the Detroit Lions, they weren’t just last in offense they were dead last. If they had played four more games they would have still been last. It was pathetic. And so in two years we went from last to 4th in the league on offense. We came in and we ran when we should pass, and passed when everyone thought we should run. Defenses didn’t know what to do! Most teams run and run and run to set up the pass, but we passed to set up our runs. It’s actually more effective and we even lead the league in rushing efficiency.Not only that, but it’s so much more fun and itﾕs more fun for the fans. So why wouldn’t you use it?
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