PROFILE: Dick Tomey
A breed apart
Spartans coach shuns conventional wisdom
Jake Curtis, Chronicle Staff Writer

Thursday, August 18, 2005

San Jose State senior Eric Wilson is 5-foot-9, which, as we all know, is too short to play linebacker at a Division I-A school.

This, however, is Dick Tomey football, where the limits imposed by yardsticks, scales and stopwatches don't apply. Tedy Bruschi was too short to play on the defensive line. Same with Rob Waldrop. Jeff Hammerschmidt was too slow. Marcus Bell was too small to be a linebacker, and Brandon Sanders and Darryll Lewis were simply too small. Tomey, then the coach at Arizona, was one of the few coaches who recruited them, and all became All-Pac-10 defensive players.

"He's not caught up in a lot of tangibles," Hammerschmidt, now an assistant at Cal Poly, said.

Facing the daunting task of making the Spartans a winner, Tomey's first- team linebackers at the moment are Wilson, 5-10 Matt Castelo and 5-11 Bobby Godinez.

"I never pictured myself as a linebacker," said Wilson, who, like Godinez, was a defensive back last season.

Tomey relies on his eyes and his gut to pick players others passed over or to put them at positions others would not consider. It was Bell's tenacity as a high school wrestler that convinced Tomey he could be a good football player, for example. Then he relies on personal relationships with his driven players to extract more than they thought possible.

"You're concerned about what somebody has inside," Tomey said. "The Tedy Bruschis of this world are not hard to find, if you understand what you're looking at. I don't consider myself any kind of super evaluator; I just think you need to know what you're looking for, and not just follow what all the gurus say, because the gurus are wrong a bunch."

"He's recruiting a personality," said Dave Fipp, San Jose State's co- defensive coordinator and a walk-on at Arizona under Tomey.

Tomey coaches from the inside out, "getting under the skin" he calls it, and his nurturing style will be tested at San Jose State. The Spartans have gone 14 seasons without a bowl-game appearance, don't seem to have the means to acquire the talent to make it happen and finished last in the nation in attendance. A year ago, a faculty group wanted the school to drop football.

"Before Dick Tomey, the program was in a freefall toward oblivion," said Bill Walsh, a San Jose State graduate and a member of the committee that selected Tomey. "I don't know if it could have continued. It seemed hopeless."

Along came Tomey, whose understated demeanor doesn't work the masses into a frenzy. He does it from the inside out. Before turning Hawaii into a winner nearly 30 years ago, Tomey had to persuade many players not to quit after they had lost the final two games the year before he arrived by a combined score 127-3. He twice led Arizona to season-ending top-10 rankings, but he was forced out at Arizona, partly, it seems, because fans were not being entertained.

"His Arizona teams were defense, kicking game and don't screw it up on offense," said Washington State head coach Bill Doba.

Tomey disputes his teams' offensive blandness, citing the 1999 team that led the Pac-10 in total offense, but there is no doubt about the Wildcats' outstanding defense. No one ran on the flex double-eagle alignment Tomey introduced to the world, a defense that used players who were considered too small but fit the package, a defense no other team has perfected for some reason, and a defense he will use at San Jose State.

He barely missed landing two other Division I-A head coaching jobs, being a finalist for the Cal job that went to Jeff Tedford in 2001 and coming in second to Mike Price for the Texas-El Paso job in 2003.

It was during the Cal selection process that current San Jose State athletic director Tom Bowen, then a Cal administrator, became convinced of Tomey's effectiveness. Walsh was already a Tomey backer, and he expects noticeable improvement this season.

"And in three years," Walsh said, "I think it will be comparable to Fresno State."

Walsh backs his bold prediction by citing one distinctive ingredient offered by the 67-year-old coach.

"He personalizes coaching," Walsh said.

Welcome to a new era

Tomey's introductory speech to his players immediately after being hired was not a fiery call to arms.

"I felt really uncomfortable, because when I looked out at the sea of faces, I didn't recognize many guys," Tomey said, "so I said, "Guys, we're going to stop, and I want to talk to every one of you guys for a few minutes, and after I've done that and I feel a little more comfortable with who we all are, we'll resume."

He spent all of the next two days speaking with each player in his office, asking them about their family, telling them about his.

"If somebody feels they are valued as a person, you can ask more of them, and they'll give you more," Tomey said. "It's all about us being uncompromising about what we can demand, and then delivering."

"He's a father figure you would die for," Hammerschmidt said.

In 1995, Arizona tight end Damon Terrell died after being hospitalized for some time, and the players were informed immediately after a comeback victory over Georgia Tech. Players wept for nearly two hours behind closed doors. Players were reluctant to play the next week's nationally televised game at Illinois, but after a discussion with seniors, Tomey offered a solution: They would play, and he would attend Terrell's funeral. The caveat was that the players wanted to do something to show reverence for their fallen teammate. Before the game, with TV cameras rolling, the players aligned themselves on the field to form Terrell's number, 88. It cost the Wildcats two timeouts and penalty.

Tomey was back in Los Angeles for the funeral after being in Champaign, Ill., the day before.

"I remember watching the pregame show on TV from the hotel with Dick," said Mark Harlan, a lifelong friend of the Tomey family who was an Arizona athletic administrator at the time and is now San Jose State's senior associate athletic director for external affairs, "and Lee Corso was saying he thinks it's an inappropriate decision for Dick not to be with the team. Dick just shook his head."

A family atmosphere

Warm and fuzzy is not the traditional description of a football coach, whose job is to produce tough, disciplined players, but Tomey gets as close as he can, learning what buttons to push for motivation or for consolation.

"He keeps the heart and souls of young men in his pocket," Fipp said.

To foster a one-for-all attitude, Tomey will manufacture ways to break up cliques, such as having a senior quarterback sit by a freshman defensive lineman at team meetings. To get his point across in practice without alienating players, Tomey will often blame a position coach for a player's mistake. He can yell with the best of them at practice, but wide receiver Rufus Skillern likens it to a father trying to get his son to do something.

"And he's not afraid to get in the middle of a drill and hug you," Fipp said.

Tomey's expressions of emotion seem to be a reaction to his father, who worked in the limestone mines in Indiana, which is where Tomey grew up.

"His dad was very different from him," said Tomey's son, Rich, who works for the Arizona Cardinals, "His dad was a great guy, but he was never affectionate. He was an old-style family dad. Early on my dad decided he wanted to be different. He still kisses me."

Ambition has not hardened Tomey.

"His goal was to be a high school assistant coach," Rich Tomey said. "That's all he wanted to be."

Tomey dresses like someone with modest goals. He owns one suit, and these days he usually wears socks after going without them for years.

"I'd be watching him on his coach's show in Tucson," Rich said, "and he had on these cowboy boots with no socks on TV. I'm thinking, 'Oh, my God,' but he doesn't care."

Tomey's recruiting M.O. is to become part of the family. He'll wander into a recruit's kitchen on a home visit, open the refrigerator and rummage around. He'll sit on the floor, play with the dog, maybe use the knick-knacks to demonstrate something.

One of the first things he did at San Jose State was get out of an office he thought was too big, trading down to a smaller one so academic personnel could have the larger room.

"An office never beat anybody," he said.

Tomey does not need room for a cot in his office. The job gets done without spending 18 hours a day there. He ended the spring scrimmage early so players could spend more time with their families. He lets assistant coaches go watch their kids play in athletic events.

While at Arizona, Tomey carved out time to watch his son play on the Wildcats' baseball team, even though it coincided with spring football.

"He basically formed the spring football schedule around the baseball schedule, and saw every one of my road games," Rich Tomey said. "He looked at the baseball schedule, and said, 'Here's when we practice.' "

Tomey nudges accepted coaching methods toward the personal, or what he would consider the practical. Practices during the season will begin at 7 a.m., an unusual schedule that makes sense for the day's demands, Tomey says.

Tomey is imprinting his personality on his team, a method that takes time, although the inspiring productivity of walk-ons and undersized players hastens the process.

"His favorites are the walk-ons," Rich Tomey said. "Those are the guys he wants to model the team after."



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The Tomey file
-- Born: June 20, 1938 in Bloomington, Ind.

-- Wife: Nanci Kincaid, fiction author

-- Children:

four adult children

-- Education: B.A. from DePauw University, where he was a catcher

-- Career track: college assistant for 15 years, head coach at Hawaii for 10 years (63-46-3 record), head coach at Arizona for 14 years (95-64-4), assistant with the 49ers in 2003, assistant at Texas in 2004

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E-mail Jake Curtis at jcurtis@sfchronicle.com.