Hoover, Ala. – Vanderbilt’s interim head coach Robbie Caldwell put on a show Thursday morning with his refreshing charm behind the podium. With his strong southern accent and laid back demeanor he let his tales of working on a turkey farm, growing up in Pageland, S.C. and becoming a head coach fly in front of more than 150 reporters. Here are his top three quotes from Thursday:
“All I know how to do is work. I’ve been a worker all my life. I grew up in it. My wife said, ‘You can’t talk about anything but football.’ I can. I can talk about pouring concrete, farming, being a pipefitter, all those things. Working on a turkey farm. But nobody wants to hear that. Those are the things that I did prior to getting into football. That’s the God’s truth.”
“You had to like watermelon, No. 1, because it was the watermelon capitol of the word — we proclaimed anyway. You had to like hunting and fishing. Frog gigging. I was scared to death of girls, so that didn’t interest me. And I played ball. We played all sports to get out of work. That was the policy. If you played a sport, you didn’t have to work during a practice time. That’s why I played basketball. I was probably the worst there’s ever been, but I played it so I wouldn’t have to go pour concrete … My first hourly paying job was on the turkey farm. I don’t know if I could tell you what my job was, but I was on the inseminating crew. That’s a fact.”
“Here I am, I go from lining the field to I’m head coach in the SEC. I’m telling you — what a thrill. It’s a dream. I can still walk in places and nobody knows me. Last night I was opening the door for people and they gave me a tip. I thought, ‘Hey that’s great. How can you get it better than that?’”
* South Carolina head coach Steve Spurrier is proud of his bookworms. His Gamecock freshmen “led the SEC, over 3.0 grade point average.”
The head ball coach also mentioned his football players have kept their noses clean in what seems to be a time period in the SEC of chock full of arrests and stints behind bars.
“I don’t think we’ve had but one player arrested in about two year, and those charges were dropped,” Spurrier said. “That’s pretty good nowadays, as you know.”
But he also brought up his record with the Gamecocks, saying the squad has won seven games for five straight years but recognized he hasn’t taken the program to the caliber he wants.
“Our attitude around there has not changed. It’s not changed to where we hope to be someday. We hope to be a team that can compete for the SEC year in and year out. That’s what you hope to be,” Spurrier said. “We haven’t gotten there yet.”
* Rogers Redding, SEC Coordinator of Football Officials, announced the NCAA implemented a rule making three-man wedges on kickoffs illegal.
“If (the players are) more than two yards apart, that’s OK,” Redding said. “If they’re within two yards, shoulder-to-shoulder, three players aligned along a straight line, that’s a foul for formation.”
But Redding said officials won’t “overanalyze it. If it presents itself to us as a foul, we will (call it).”
Redding also said if a player is injured, he must leave the game for at least one down and must see the medical staff before coming back onto the field “in a recognize-and-refer stance.”
* Arkansas quarterback Ryan Mallett plans to try out for the 2012 U.S. swimming team after spending so much time conditioning in the pool due to his foot injury.
“ Yeah, I feel like I’m going to try out for the Olympics … I’m going to give it a shot,” Mallett joked Thursday morning at his news conference. “I’ve been doing a lot of swimming to stay in condition. I haven’t been able to run to this point, so I’ve been swimming a lot, doing a lot of weight room stuff with upper body, a lot of single-leg stuff. It’s really helped me out. I’ll be ready to go in two weeks when we start.”
* Vanderbilt’s interim head coach Robbie Caldwell subtly compared Commodore running back Warren Norman to Herschel Walker, saying the sophomore is bursting at the seams with potential.
“We could talk about him all day. He’s down here. I hope you get a chance to interview him. A tremendous young man. Never says a word,” Caldwell said. “Warren, we look to take him to another level. He’s excited about it. He’s working in the weight room to get ready, to prepare his body. You’re going to take a pounding in this league.”
* Parties in South Beach are wreaking havoc on players, coaches and teams this offseason. Note to SEC football players: don’t book any flights to Miami. For a long, long time.
* Alabama head coach Nick Saban still hates greedy pimps, I mean agents.
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