Pelini Strives for Balance

(BY BRIAN CHRISTOPHERSON / Lincoln Journal Star Sunday, Jun 15, 2008)

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As Bo Pelini likes to say, it’s not rocket science here. For someone who’s been playing and coaching football for most of his 40 years, he figures he should have a pretty good handle on the game by now.

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Nebraska’s coach expects to work, and plenty hard at that, but not 18 hours a day like some coaches are doing. He hasn’t ever pulled an all-nighter in a coach’s office and he doesn’t expect to start now.

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“Just in my estimation, if you’re working that many hours, you’re doing something wrong,” Pelini said. “When you work you need to be efficient, you need to know what you’re after, you have to be zeroed in. There’s a difference between putting in hours and putting in efficient hours. But everybody has their own styles. There’s a lot of ways to skin a cat.”

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For some coaches — former Husker coach Bill Callahan seemed to fit in this crowd — it has become a normal enough thing to spend an entire day consumed with football. Go to work in the dark and come home in the dark.

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Former Husker Mike Grant, who has been an assistant at the likes of Iowa State, Southern Miss and now Western Michigan, said he’s heard and seen the stories of NFL coaches who practically kill themselves with hours, depriving themselves of sleep and sometimes seeing family in the pursuit of gaining a football advantage.

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“Being with three or four different programs, I’ve seen there’s more than one way to do it,” Grant said. “There are guys who are grinding from 6 a.m. to midnight and expect to do it again the next day. Some guys are family first. If your kid has a recital, they’ll tell you to go to the recital.”

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There’s no written rule on how to do it. It’s a pressure-packed gig and people want wins. So if a guy sees an advantage in watching replays of last Saturday’s game while the rest of the city sleeps, so be it.

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In Pelini’s case, he said he wants to make sure he’s giving as much attention to what he considers his top job — being a husband and father — as he does to coaching.

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“I try not to get consumed with this. Honestly, I don’t watch a lot of football when I go home. I don’t talk about it much. When I go home, I’m not coaching, I’m Dad. That’s the way it is. That’s the way it’s always going to be. If it ever gets to the point where I feel like I’m losing the balance, to me that’s when it’s time to quit and do something else.

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“… I don’t know where this perception ever came out that when you become a football coach that being a father and being a husband take a back seat. I believe in balance. I talk the same thing with our players and our staff: ‘You need balance in your life to have success at what you do.’ ”

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Fellow Youngstown, Ohio, native and Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops has much the same approach. Perhaps contributing some to it is that both Pelini and Stoops have younger kids and they certainly don’t want to miss important things in their lives.

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“It’s a family atmosphere, no question,” Oklahoma offensive coordinator Jay Norvell said of Stoops’ work environment philosophy.

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Pelini has children aged 9, 7 and 5. All are heavily involved in activities.

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“I try to expose them to everything and encourage them to do whatever they want,” Pelini said.

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Baseball, softball, piano, horse riding, tennis — the kids are trying all that stuff.

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“Playing tennis I don’t know anything about,” Pelini said. “But I just try to hit the ball back to them.”

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The Pelinis will soon take a family vacation before fall camp starts.

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Pelini has set no magic number of hours he expects his coaches to work. The number of hours, he said, simply depends on how long it takes to be fully prepared.

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“No, I’m not going to sleep here, but there are going to be some days during the season (where) I’ll be here as long as I need to get the job done,” Pelini said. “We don’t have a lot of set hours around here. When you’re done, go home. But there are certain things you have to accomplish. That is why you have to hire good people and hire people you trust, people that believe in the same things you do.”