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Sidelines Kalani Simpson |
Warriors guest coach
Gansz makes poetry
of motion
"Strip the ball! Get ready, get ready! Hustle to the bag! Hustle to the play side! Ready? Go! Get off the block! Get off the block! Get on the run! Get on the run! Hit through it! Take it to 'em! Get on the next bag! Go! Go! Go! Tempo! No tempo ... no focus! No focus, no speed! Ready? Go! Go, come on! Get on the ball! Hands to the holster! Throw the uppercut! Same arm! Same leg! THE SWIFT AND PROPER EXECUTION OF FUNDAMENTALS! Quick! Go! Go! Go! Go! Go! Get on the run! Get on the run! Hit first! Get the ball! Get the ball! Better! Better! Better! Better! Better! Better! Ready? Go!"IF you arrive at Hawaii's football spring-practice sessions any time after 7:20 a.m., you've already missed it. The highlight. The genius. The show. You've lost out on that block of time labeled on the UH practice schedule, simply (no other description for it): FRANK GANSZ.
-- Frank Gansz
Gansz is a rarity. In fact, he's an only-ty. He's the one guy who became a legend as an NFL assistant coach.
He's a madman and a poet. He adapts 13th-century sea battles to kick-return schemes. He cites Aristotle and he screams through a bright red megaphone.
He already seems to know everyone's name.
"Yesterday," he says, "I gave them a quote from Thomas Wolfe."
Gansz is a "guest coach" at UH this spring (temporarily taking an unfilled position these few weeks), and it seems that all the players want to please him and all the coaches quote him.
Now everyone is equating interception returns with improvisational jazz sessions.
Another audience is captivated. Another team is spellbound, motivated, educated. Inspired. Frank Gansz has done it again.
HE WAS A head coach once, in the NFL. In the '80s, for a couple of years. That's how much Frank Gansz makes people believe. But getting that job is not why he's revered in this game. That's not why he's remembered. That wasn't his gift.
And it isn't so much that he knows his stuff, really (which he does), or that he gets results (he is, without argument, the greatest special-teams coach in the history of pro football).
It is, as Bill Murray said in "Stripes," because of the stories that he tells.
"I think that everybody likes a story," he says. "My grandchildren like stories, I know that. My children like stories. And the players always seem to enjoy them."
Gansz is a historian. A "buff". He always has something that connects with people. Something that lifts them. Something beyond X's and O's. "You know," he says, "football can be a little bit of a drag sometimes."
And so there are gripping tales of the exploits of Lord Nelson, and Charlemagne, and Crazy Horse. And of history's greatest battles.
And ... French Impressionist masters?
"Auguste Renoir and Henri Matisse were great friends," Gansz says. "And Renoir of course was the great painter. He had crippling arthritis and it was so bad he couldn't leave the house. But he continued to paint into his later years. And Matisse came up to him one day and he said to him, 'Auguste, my friend, why do you continue to paint when it's so painful for you? You can't even go outside, I have to do your shopping!' And he said to him, 'The pain will pass, but the beauty will remain.' "
Ah, Renoir. He would have been a wedge-buster.
ON FRIDAY, FRANK Gansz opened his session with this:
"Remember what I told you yesterday: If we're going to fight in the North Atlantic, we're going to train in the North Atlantic!"
It seemed to make perfect sense at the time.
ARISTOTLE ONCE SAID this:
"Aristotle said this," Gansz says, "I didn't say it, but he said: 'We are what we repeatedly do.' Excellence then, is not an act, it's a habit."
Legend has it Gansz once said this:
"Men, mothers turn their kids' eyes away when we go in to block a punt."
THOSE FIRST 20 minutes are magic. Everyone seems to hit harder, play harder, coach harder. Everyone is writing down Ganszisms, things like "Anticipatory Management" and "Luck favors speed. Luck favors movement. Luck favors the prepared."
By the end of the week half the Hawaii team will probably be quoting Patton and Sitting Bull.
Next season UH will tackle better. You can already see it.
These days Gansz's son, Frank Jr., has his dad's old job as special-teams coach of the NFL's Chiefs. Gansz is officially retired now, to spend more time with the grandkids.
After practice, he seems remarkably calm for a special-teams coach, even one with the soul of a storyteller.
"I calm down," he says.
This is what he does now, favors for old friends like June Jones. He teaches teams for a few weeks at a time, delivering fire and inspiration and motivation and history through that bright red microphone.
They are better for it.
That's his gift.
In his players, those old stories roar back to life.
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
Kalani Simpson can be reached at ksimpson@starbulletin.com