THE DEFENSIVE JEDI MASTER
Snow Drawing on 40 Years of Coaching Experience

By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Foundation

From his first stop, as the secondary coach for the JV at Berkeley (Calif.) High School, to his last, as the defensive coordinator at Temple University, Phil Snow has kept every playbook he's ever used in 40 years of coaching.

"I have every playbook you can imagine," says Snow, Baylor's 61-year-old defensive coordinator. "Like when I went with the (Detroit) Lions, it was the Monte Kiffin defense, so I picked some things up from that. What I've done is taken the good and thrown out the bad and put together a package. It's been a lot of fun over the years."

He's forgotten more defenses than most coaches know.

Snow has 33 years' experience as a college coach, including 23 as a defensive coordinator, four years in the NFL and three as a high school assistant.

"That man is a guru," sophomore linebacker Clay Johnston said after Friday's workout. "We call him Yoda. I asked him yesterday, 'Where did you learn all this?' He was like, 'Forty years of coaching.' He's very wise. He's the man."

Ironically, the "Yoda of football," as Johnston called him, had never even heard of Yoda, the Jedi Master from the first "Star Wars" movies.

"I had to ask my wife who that is, but I still don't know," he said. When Snow was told that Yoda is very wise and "like a thousand years old," he quipped, "Well, that's what I am, a thousand years old."

With age comes knowledge. "You tell him, 'What if this formation is here?' And he says, 'Oh, we've got a defense for that.' There's such a peace," Johnston said.

Snow decided his career path when he was just 10 years old, telling his mom, "I want to coach."

Even while he was a student-athlete himself at Winters (Calif.) High School, he was coaching the seventh-grade basketball team and summer league baseball. When an injury ended his playing days at Cal State Hayward, Snow started his coaching career under John Martinez at Berkeley High. Since then, he's only been away from the game for one year.

"I've been fortunate. I've coached in high school, junior college, I-AA, I-A and the NFL," says Snow, who counts former Boise State coach Jim Criner and Arizona State coach Bruce Snyder as two of his main mentors. "Along the way, I've run into a lot of different coaches that I've coached with."

Through his various stops as a defensive coordinator at Boise State, Arizona State, UCLA, Washington, Eastern Michigan and Temple, Snow developed a reputation as one of the top defensive coaches in the game. His 1986 defense at Boise was ranked sixth nationally, he headed up a '96 ASU defense that helped the Sun Devils get to the Rose Bowl and his Temple defense was third nationally a year ago. Maybe that's why he doesn't shudder or cringe when asked about facing the explosive offenses in the Big 12 Conference.

"We came from the American Conference. And if you look at the conference, most of the people running the offenses were in the Big 12," he said. "We have an approach to how we address these offenses and how fast they go and what they do. Now, do we always win? No. If they have great players, they can make a play in space and beat us. But, I'm not scared of the offense. . . . I talk to a lot of defensive guys, and they make me mad. They're scared of the offense. Well, their kids aren't going to play well. We're not scared of the offense. We'll go play, and whatever happens, happens. They'll make some plays, but so will we." When then-Temple coach Matt Rhule was offered head jobs by both Baylor and Oregon, he asked Snow, "Where do you want to go?" Without hesitating, Snow said, "Let's go to Baylor."

His No. 1 reason: "Because we don't have to get on an airplane to recruit."

"Oregon has to get on an airplane to recruit every one of their recruits," Snow said. "I said, 'We can get good players at Baylor.' So, Matt said, 'Yeah, but we don't know Texas.' I said, 'When you coached in the NFL, and you had players from Texas, did they care whether you were from New York? What did they care about?' That you know what you're doing. And Matt did a great job of hiring some really quality high school guys that have brought us all together. But, we haven't had any problems recruiting Texas, and I think we've been accepted pretty well."

Rhule also kept the Temple defensive staff intact, bringing Elijah Robinson (defensive line), Mike Siravo (linebackers) and Fran Brown (secondary).

"Coach Rhule has had to keep them for the last three years," Snow said. "When we were at Temple, they were offered some big-time jobs, and we kept them. I think it's the environment we're in. Matt takes care of them financially. There's a lot of things that go into it. And they're not real old guys. We've had a great relationship, but at some point it's going to end. These guys are going to go on and be coordinators and head coaches. But, we've been real fortunate to keep the guys on our defensive staff."

That's helped make things go much smoother at Baylor than when Snow first implemented the defense at Temple "and none of the coaches knew the defense."

"Now, we've got coaches who have all been together," he said. "So, it's been a much smoother transition than when I put it in at Temple, because the coaches all know it. We'll learn as we go, and I think we'll get better and better as the season goes."

There will be some growing pains, though. Rhule, who was a graduate assistant coach at UCLA under Snow, says that so much is expected of the players that it generally takes the defense about a year to really get up to speed.

"At some point, they have to take ownership of it," Snow said. "We're working, we're getting closer to that, but it's still not there. And I tell them, this defense isn't mine, it's yours. Once you take ownership ÃÆ'Æ' ¢ÃƒÆ' ¢' ¬" how hard we play, take ownership in that, be on each other, do what you're supposed to do for each other. Good teams, they do it for each other. Those are the things we're still cultivating and getting better at."

The Bears will continue with the early-morning workouts, without pads on Saturday and Monday, before going to full pads for the first time on Tuesday.

For season or single-game ticket information, call the Baylor Athletics Ticket Office at 254-710-1000 or go online at www.baylorbears.com/footballtickets.

QUOTE OF THE DAY
Asked about the physicality of Baylor's practices, Snow said, "When a baby is born, nobody says, 'Boy, that's a tough baby.' It's the environment that you're put in. We put them in a tough environment. If you're going to be tough, you've got to be in a tough environment. There are still little nicks, and they complain about this and that, because they've not been nicked like this before. So, we're still overcoming that. But, as the year goes, we'll get better and better and more physical."