thedrifter
08-14-07, 06:15 AM
FLORIDA STATE FOOTBALL
Trickett just a 'different dude' on and off field
Vietnam veteran and offensive line guru, Rick Trickett stuns the 'Noles.
Andrew Carter
Sentinel Staff Writer
August 14, 2007
TALLAHASSEE
In the first few months after he arrived here from West Virginia, Rick Trickett, the man Bobby Bowden hired in January to make Florida State's offensive line great once again, climbed atop his Harley Davidson Street Glide and rode.
He went west to Panama City, through the North Florida countryside, down to the Gulf, west to Destin, and back again. He liked the look of the land, lush and beautiful. He liked the feel of the wind as it rushed through his hair, mostly white after 59 years.
"Yeah, I ride my bike a lot," Trickett says. "I like riding my bike. Especially here in Florida, you don't have to wear a helmet and all. My wife thinks I'm crazy, but . . ."
He pauses for a moment, then laughs and says, "Probably am."
People always are saying Trickett is crazy. Unlike Tara, his wife of 26 years, most are serious when they describe him that way. It's easy for an outsider to form such an opinion, for Trickett sometimes emphasizes his points by slapping his players' helmets with his hat, a man who often yells and screams, which leaves his voice raspy and worn.
He served in Vietnam with the Marines, and awakes every morning at 5 o'clock, and has done 500 crunches every day for the past 21 years. He admires Bob Knight, and their styles are a bit similar, too.
Trickett shakes his head. Crazy? Not him.
"I'm not a wild man," he says. "There's a method to the madness. . . . I know exactly how and what I'm doing out there, and if I do something, I know why I'm doing it. It's kind of like [Gen. George] Patton said: 'It ain't for them to know, it's for me to know.' "
Trickett knows this: He was hired because Bowden and others believe he is college football's best offensive line coach.
Since his arrival from the Mountaineers, he has ordered his linemen out of bed by 6 a.m. for meetings. He has demanded they lose weight, that they become leaner and quicker. He has inspired. And he has intimidated.
Senior defensive tackle Andre Fluellen spoke of Trickett before preseason practice began, smiling and saying, "I'm not going to lie: I'm glad he's not my coach."
Then practice began, and Trickett really went to work. He demoted players, promoted them back, then demoted them again. He has been in this guy's face one second, in another's the next, a facemask in his hand after that. He threw his hat. Cursed. Stomped. Called his guys soft as toilet paper.
"Sometimes you're not going to like it; you're not going to like how hard he pushes you," sophomore tackle Caz Piurowski says. "But it's hard for you to push yourself that much. . . . You don't take anything that he says personally."
To understand the way Trickett coaches is to understand his background and what it was like to grow up in Morgantown, W.Va., the oldest son of a father who worked the coal mines by day and a cold can of beer by night.
It was there that Trickett first fell in love with football. He was 8.
"We were playing football down on the street with some guys and a kid named Emilio Fernandez," he says. "I tackled him and broke his collarbone. . . . So my parents told me that I couldn't play football anymore, that it was too dangerous."
It was too late. The game had taken him.
He never grew tall (he's 5 feet 8), but he still was among the best and toughest players at Mary Montgomery High in Semmes, Ala., a tiny town outside of Mobile where his father moved the family once work ran out in the West Virginia mines. His dad helped build Interstate 65 from Mobile to Montgomery, and the son built his football dreams.
Trickett could have played college ball at West Alabama as a walk-on. The money, though, wasn't there. The family moved back to West Virginia. Dad went back into the mines, and Trickett went to the oil fields.
The conflict in Vietnam was escalating all the while, and Trickett felt a calling. He joined the Marines, then spent 31/2 months on the front lines, watching people next to him die.
Trickett doesn't much talk about Vietnam. "I've kind of put it back there," he says, motioning toward the back of his head.
He hasn't forgotten, though, not fighting in the jungles nor what it was like to grow up a miner's son. After returning from Vietnam, he dedicated himself to his passion and became a coach.
Trickett and his wife have three sons: Travis, a graduate assistant for Nick Saban at Alabama; Chance, a college sophomore who is transferring to FSU; and Clint, a sophomore quarterback at Tallahassee North Florida Christian.
"He is trying to do that with our boys, make them appreciate what they have," Tara says. "Somebody along the way has paid the price for [their freedoms]. For all the freedoms that they do have, people take them for granted.
"[Rick] so grateful for everything that he's had."
He was grateful to be at West Virginia, which was why it was so difficult to leave. As Tara tells it, though, "He always wanted to coach for Coach Bowden."
So now he's here, maybe the most recognizable line coach in the country, and he's trying to fit FSU's linemen into his mold -- trying to instill in them the discipline he learned in the Marines and the work habits he learned from his dad.
There's work to be done, attitudes to change. Trickett likes coaching guys who are more cast-off than star.
"I've always had a lot of luck with guys like that," he says. "These five-star guys, prima donnas, them's the ones, me and them, we're going to 'bow up. He's been told how good he is and all that. If they don't do it the way I'm coaching them, now all hell is going to be raised."
There he goes again, the Trickett everyone thinks is a madman.
His wife knows better. There's more to him than the gruff ex-military man that everyone sees. He likes watching Lifetime TV -- "Television for Women," is the network's motto -- and he likes to dance. He also loves horses.
And his Harley.
"I could come home, get on that bike, ride for one hour, come back and I'm a different man," Trickett says. "Oh, I'm just a different dude."
Andrew Carter can be reached at acarterb@orlandosentinel.com.
Ellie
Trickett just a 'different dude' on and off field
Vietnam veteran and offensive line guru, Rick Trickett stuns the 'Noles.
Andrew Carter
Sentinel Staff Writer
August 14, 2007
TALLAHASSEE
In the first few months after he arrived here from West Virginia, Rick Trickett, the man Bobby Bowden hired in January to make Florida State's offensive line great once again, climbed atop his Harley Davidson Street Glide and rode.
He went west to Panama City, through the North Florida countryside, down to the Gulf, west to Destin, and back again. He liked the look of the land, lush and beautiful. He liked the feel of the wind as it rushed through his hair, mostly white after 59 years.
"Yeah, I ride my bike a lot," Trickett says. "I like riding my bike. Especially here in Florida, you don't have to wear a helmet and all. My wife thinks I'm crazy, but . . ."
He pauses for a moment, then laughs and says, "Probably am."
People always are saying Trickett is crazy. Unlike Tara, his wife of 26 years, most are serious when they describe him that way. It's easy for an outsider to form such an opinion, for Trickett sometimes emphasizes his points by slapping his players' helmets with his hat, a man who often yells and screams, which leaves his voice raspy and worn.
He served in Vietnam with the Marines, and awakes every morning at 5 o'clock, and has done 500 crunches every day for the past 21 years. He admires Bob Knight, and their styles are a bit similar, too.
Trickett shakes his head. Crazy? Not him.
"I'm not a wild man," he says. "There's a method to the madness. . . . I know exactly how and what I'm doing out there, and if I do something, I know why I'm doing it. It's kind of like [Gen. George] Patton said: 'It ain't for them to know, it's for me to know.' "
Trickett knows this: He was hired because Bowden and others believe he is college football's best offensive line coach.
Since his arrival from the Mountaineers, he has ordered his linemen out of bed by 6 a.m. for meetings. He has demanded they lose weight, that they become leaner and quicker. He has inspired. And he has intimidated.
Senior defensive tackle Andre Fluellen spoke of Trickett before preseason practice began, smiling and saying, "I'm not going to lie: I'm glad he's not my coach."
Then practice began, and Trickett really went to work. He demoted players, promoted them back, then demoted them again. He has been in this guy's face one second, in another's the next, a facemask in his hand after that. He threw his hat. Cursed. Stomped. Called his guys soft as toilet paper.
"Sometimes you're not going to like it; you're not going to like how hard he pushes you," sophomore tackle Caz Piurowski says. "But it's hard for you to push yourself that much. . . . You don't take anything that he says personally."
To understand the way Trickett coaches is to understand his background and what it was like to grow up in Morgantown, W.Va., the oldest son of a father who worked the coal mines by day and a cold can of beer by night.
It was there that Trickett first fell in love with football. He was 8.
"We were playing football down on the street with some guys and a kid named Emilio Fernandez," he says. "I tackled him and broke his collarbone. . . . So my parents told me that I couldn't play football anymore, that it was too dangerous."
It was too late. The game had taken him.
He never grew tall (he's 5 feet 8), but he still was among the best and toughest players at Mary Montgomery High in Semmes, Ala., a tiny town outside of Mobile where his father moved the family once work ran out in the West Virginia mines. His dad helped build Interstate 65 from Mobile to Montgomery, and the son built his football dreams.
Trickett could have played college ball at West Alabama as a walk-on. The money, though, wasn't there. The family moved back to West Virginia. Dad went back into the mines, and Trickett went to the oil fields.
The conflict in Vietnam was escalating all the while, and Trickett felt a calling. He joined the Marines, then spent 31/2 months on the front lines, watching people next to him die.
Trickett doesn't much talk about Vietnam. "I've kind of put it back there," he says, motioning toward the back of his head.
He hasn't forgotten, though, not fighting in the jungles nor what it was like to grow up a miner's son. After returning from Vietnam, he dedicated himself to his passion and became a coach.
Trickett and his wife have three sons: Travis, a graduate assistant for Nick Saban at Alabama; Chance, a college sophomore who is transferring to FSU; and Clint, a sophomore quarterback at Tallahassee North Florida Christian.
"He is trying to do that with our boys, make them appreciate what they have," Tara says. "Somebody along the way has paid the price for [their freedoms]. For all the freedoms that they do have, people take them for granted.
"[Rick] so grateful for everything that he's had."
He was grateful to be at West Virginia, which was why it was so difficult to leave. As Tara tells it, though, "He always wanted to coach for Coach Bowden."
So now he's here, maybe the most recognizable line coach in the country, and he's trying to fit FSU's linemen into his mold -- trying to instill in them the discipline he learned in the Marines and the work habits he learned from his dad.
There's work to be done, attitudes to change. Trickett likes coaching guys who are more cast-off than star.
"I've always had a lot of luck with guys like that," he says. "These five-star guys, prima donnas, them's the ones, me and them, we're going to 'bow up. He's been told how good he is and all that. If they don't do it the way I'm coaching them, now all hell is going to be raised."
There he goes again, the Trickett everyone thinks is a madman.
His wife knows better. There's more to him than the gruff ex-military man that everyone sees. He likes watching Lifetime TV -- "Television for Women," is the network's motto -- and he likes to dance. He also loves horses.
And his Harley.
"I could come home, get on that bike, ride for one hour, come back and I'm a different man," Trickett says. "Oh, I'm just a different dude."
Andrew Carter can be reached at acarterb@orlandosentinel.com.
Ellie