Curry reflects on his Senior Bowl days

Former Alabama football coach Bill Curry is a legend in himself, but he spent time around bigger legends with those relationships beginning at the Senior Bowl in 1965.

He had a football career coached by Bobby Dodd, Tom Landry, Vince Lombardi and Don Shula. As the center, he snapped the ball to the likes of Joe Namath, Bart Starr and Johnny Unitas. He won Super Bowl I and Super Bowl V.

“Huge, huge memories for me personally,” Curry said in an interview with the Senior Bowl’s Patrick Woo about the game. “First thing that was a thrill and a shock was to be selected for the game. I didn’t expect it and I was just so excited to get a chance to come down there and play.”

After his playing career, Curry returned to the Senior Bowl as a coach and scout for the Green Bay Packers and thinks it’s an opportunity no one should pass up.

“It does matter because it’s an experience,” he said. “It’s a great experience to be with a bunch of people that are just like you that have been selected as the best crop of players in the United States of America for that year. It’s an honor to be selected and you go down there and play your heart out. I have great fondness.”

Listen to the full interview with Bill Curry above or read the transcript below.

Reese’s Senior Bowl: In 1965, you came down here in Mobile, Alabama for the Senior Bowl. Have you been back a few times?
Bill Curry: Well I have. I came back there as a pro scout for the Green Bay Packers and then I came back as an assistant coach for the Packers. Then I’ve been back to Ladd Stadium with the Georgia State team when we played South Alabama. And I came there as an ESPN analyst for a bowl game. So I’ve been back there quite a few times and we have relatives that live in Mobile and my wife was born in Mobile so we got a lot of connections.

RSB: Lots of memories and roots down here, when you go back to the 1965 Senior Bowl, are there any key memories that stand out to you?
Curry: Huge, huge memories for me personally. First thing that was a thrill and a shock was to be selected for the game. I didn’t expect it and I was just so excited to get a chance to come down there and play. And then I thought, “Oh well, somebody will beat me out and I’ll go down there and stand on the sidelines but I’m gonna fight to earn a spot.” And then I found out the next great bit of news was that our coach was gonna be Tom Landry. Oh my gosh, imagine getting to play for him. And he was certainly not a disappointment. He and his staff were wonderful the way they worked with us. The next thing that happened was that I learned that the quarterback was going to be Joe Namath. And I was not supposed to like him because they had beaten us. When we played against Namath the year before, he had bombed us twice. And we had heard all this stuff about him. And after five minutes of center-quarterback exchange drill, he and I were best friends and we still are 50 years later. He’s a great guy. The third thing that happened was Bob Hayes. It was the first time African American players had been invited and I imagine Bob was the reason they started doing that and I became very good friends with the fastest man on earth. And he scored our only touchdown by the way on a slant from Joe. And overall, it was just a great experience. Joe and I played every play as I recall. Even though we ended up in a tie, it was a great game and I just have wonderful memories of it.

RSB: You got to play with Joe Namath there, and then when you get to the NFL, you’re snapping the ball to other great quarterbacks like Johnny Unitas and Bart Starr.
Curry: Yeah I think – I don’t know how God does these things but I got picked it seemed like to be especially blessed of snapping the ball to the greatest quarterbacks that ever lived. And that’s something that I treasure and I relish. I enjoy the memories very much.

RSB: But it was really the center that made things easy for those guys, right?
Curry: Absolutely. I don’t know that it made it easy but they wouldn’t ever have done anything had I not chosen to give them the ball.

RSB: Do you remember how you found out that you were invited?
Curry: I think our coaches just called us in if we got chosen for something like that. I really don’t remember specifically but it was probably one of the assistant coaches calling me in saying, “Well they’ve invited you to the Senior Bowl.” They seemed to enjoy telling us about stuff like that - you get picked by some team or some honor. It was probably something like that. I don’t remember specifically. But probably one of our assistants.

RSB: So you get to play for Tom Landry at the Senior Bowl and then in the NFL, you get to be around Vince Lombardi, Don Shula, Bobby Dodd of course in college, what do you take away from all of that?
Curry: I learned that each of those great people and they were great people – and still are, the ones that are still living. You can learn enormous amounts of wisdom from them if you’ll pay attention but you can’t be them. You have to be yourself. And each one of them would teach us that somehow in his own way. And each of them had an inimitable style that was unique to him and I’ve written about it and talked about it so much my friends now have called me Forrest Gump. “You’re just Forrest Gump, you got stuck with all those great people.” And that’s how it feels so I know it’s a blessing and I try to share it all I can.

RSB: You got to share it because you went on to coach. Is coaching something that you always wanted to do?
Curry: When I was 15 years old my dad was a great coach at Georgia Military Academy, now Woodward Academy. He coached weightlifting, boxing and gymnastics and he had national champs in all of those areas. So I admired coaches but I didn’t think of wanting to do that until I was sacking groceries at a grocery store when I was 15 and my high school coach who ran the day camp in College Park GA, which is where I lived, asked me if I wanted to be a day camp counselor. And I didn’t care much for doing that, and that I was scared of him, but he was going to pay me 15 dollars a week, which was a huge amount of money to me, after making 50 cents an hour sacking groceries so I accepted the job for the wrong reasons. But after about two weeks of having my little group of guys, I was as I said 15 years old, so that would’ve been 1957. And after two weeks of working with, playing softball and taking them swimming and being in charge of them and responsible for them, I knew that I’d be working with young people the rest of my life. I knew that. So you could say yes I’ve always known I wanted to work with children somehow and I’ve had the privilege of doing that a lot of different ways and football was one of them.

RSB: The Action Ministries stuff, tell us about that and are you still involved?
Curry: Still very involved with Action Ministries. We had a breakfast last Friday morning that with Homer Rice who’s the great athletic director and formerly a great catch and Dan Reeves. All three of us go to the same church, Peachtree Road United Methodist Church. And Action Ministries is based in North Georgia and what we basically do is we give people off the street a chance to get into a program, get interim housing, have something to eat, get tutoring for their children. We fed over 100,000 people last year. It’s meeting the needs of people where they live. People that are destitute and it’s a great ministry so I’m honored to be a small part of it.

RSB: You came back to coaching to start the program at Georgia State but after you retired, what else has gone on in your life?
Curry: Well, seven grandchildren, so there’s always something to do with the grandchildren. I should tell you that each of them is brilliant in case you had not already heard that about the Curry grandchildren. The other thing we’ve done is formed a small company in conjunction with a huge company. It’s called AIM, that’s an acronym. Basically, to simplify we’re in the business of crisis management for athletics departments and people in the sports world. We’ve teamed up with Porter Novelli, one of the largest public relations firms in the world and we offer crisis mitigation, crisis prevention, leadership training and that sort of thing. We’ve been privileged to work with some really special people and I enjoy that a lot. 

RSB: How about when you were an ESPN analyst for a decade? What was that like?
Curry: It was another great learning experience. You think you know a lot about football but you really don’t unless you have to stand and observe three hours and 45 minutes to 22 players on the field. See all of them, see the sidelines, see where the signals are coming from and who’s signaling out to the quarterbacks or the defensive signal callers. Observe the play, hit the talk-back button for the director and tell him what you wanna see, the tight line or the all-22 or just whatever it is that you’ve isolated on. And then let go of the talk-back button and in 15 seconds tell people what you just seen and by that time they’re breaking the huddle to run the next play and then you have to shut up so you’re not speaking into the next play. And you better be right on everything and it goes on and on and on. It’s a huge challenge. It’s mostly hard work and preparation just like coaching.

RSB: More pressure to be right on everything: when you’re doing that on TV or when you’re the actual head coach?
Curry: Well if you’re on TV, you only get a couple – I made a couple of big mistakes and I think it cost us. I said a couple of things that I did not understand the rule the way I should have and we had clinics and all that sort of thing. So that happened and there was a reprimand. But if you make terrible calls as a coach, it’s a little different, you get fired in a heartbeat so there is a little difference.

RSB: Let’s talk about your coaching career, Georgia Tech, Alabama, Kentucky. When you look at the game today, out at Boise State there’s a young coach Bryan Harsin and at Utah State, there’s a young coach Matt Wells who are both rising stars in the profession but they’re both coaching at their alma maters but they’re hot names for jobs that might open up. You were coaching at your alma mater, Georgia Tech, at one time. What goes into a decision like that to leave your alma mater for another job?
Curry: I thought I would never leave Georgia Tech. And of course there’ve been moments where I’ve thought I made a bad mistake. But you have to be yourself and do what comes naturally and seems right to you at that moment and what’s best for your family. 

The way that Alabama thing came along, we had had a good bit of success at Tech after a horrendous start. We had rebuilt the Georgia Tech tradition in terms of academic excellence and graduation rate and integrity and winning a bunch of games. We wanted to do all that, that’s what we were supposed to be doing. So when that happened, we started to get phone calls from a lot of universities and I wasn’t interested. I didn’t even return their phone calls. But when my phone rang on New  Year’s Eve and it was Ray Perkins, my six-year teammate with the Baltimore Colts and one of my best friends, and Ray said, “I’m leaving to go to Tampa Bay and I want you to be the coach over here,” I almost passed out I thought he was messing with me. So I said, “OK Perk have another drink and I’ll see you after midnight.” It was New Year’s Eve. He doesn’t drink anyhow so I was just teasing him but he said, “Well you can make a joke if you want to but Dr. Joab Thomas is calling you in five minutes.” And again I really thought he was messing with me but he was not. And so I called my legendary coach Bobby Dodd, who was still living at the time, and I said, “Coach, you’re not going to believe what’s happened.” And he said, “Well tell me about it.” And I said, “Alabama has called.” And he said, “You don’t mean it.” And I said, “No, I do mean it.” And he said, “Are they going to interview you?” And I said, “Yes sir.” He said, “You have to go.” Well that was the most shocking single answer that has ever been made to me. I said, “What? I thought you’d say just the opposite.” He said, “No I love Georgia tech but I love you more and I know you. And I know you have to try the toughest and the highest mountain you can find to climb and besides I think you can add something to the Southeastern Conference that would be helpful for the students.”

And so that’s what started the process and I felt like after I came over and met with a diverse committee of all different kinds of Alabama people and when that committee and Dr. Thomas offered the job I thought there would be a really good bonding process but that was more complicated than it appeared. I understand much better now than I did then. But that’s sort of the progression that led to my taking the job, it was all a huge surprise.

RSB: You did the Alabama job for three years and that job has so much scrutiny that comes with it, what do you take away from that experience?
Curry: Great players, great student-athletes. I mean working with those guys that come to Alabama, that’s a special kind of person that takes on that challenge. It’s the kind of person that wants to be on the best and wants to be the best.  And you never have to worry about motivating Alabama players. Anywhere else, you got regular mortals. And they’re great kids and I loved working with them too but the Alabama guys have a special motivation because they understand what they’re getting into. They understand if they were gonna play for us, they were also gonna go to class and graduate and most of them did. And they understand that we’re not going to relax the standards or shoot for anything less than national championships every year and they hear it 365 days a year. You can’t go to Mobile or Huntsville or anywhere in between if you’re an Alabama player and not have somebody at a fillin’ station remind you, “You know what you better win it this year.” So it was fun to coach them. That’s what I remember most.

RSB: Through your entire football career, you’ve made such a positive impact on so many people, Reese’s Senior Bowl Executive Director Phil Savage being one of those people that I know you’ve made a very positive impact on, what is it? How are you able to do that to make such a positive impact on so many people?
Curry: Well in Phil’s case, he had a more positive impact on us than we did on him I think. He was just a great young man the first time we ever saw him. Homer Smith was our coordinator and quarterback coach and he said, “I found a brilliant young man and I wanna hire him as a graduate assistant.” I said, “Well tell me about him. He said, “Well he’s a baseball player from south Alabama.” I said, “Homer, we’re not hiring a baseball player from south Alabama to help coach quarterbacks. You mean he’s not a football guy?” “No, but he’ll learn quickly.” I said, “I don’t wanna do that but I’ll meet him, let me meet him.” Well about 15 minutes after I met Phil Savage, I called Homer back and I said, “Let’s get him. He’s special.” So I think Phil gave more to us than we gave to him.

But if you want to impact human beings you have to form a relationship with them. Look them in the eye, tell them the truth, it’s really simple. And then love them. Sometimes loving them means you make them run extra laps or you make them do grass drills because they cut class. They may not like the way you love them but it’s building relationships and in the case of football guys, when they grow up to be men they appreciate the discipline that was sometimes enforced upon them a whole lot more than maybe they did when you did it. But it thrills me for somebody to say what you just said and I hope that we’ve had a positive impact. The guys certainly had a huge impact on me.

RSB: That’s something that is important to us here at the Senior Bowl that the players that have come through here and been a part of our history and will continue to be a part of our history, that this place and this game week is a positive impact in their lives. So when you look at it, having been here as a player and as a coach, why should guys come to participate in the Senior Bowl?
Curry: What’s happened today is everything’s become so commercialized. If you can’t see it paying off in big bucks it’s as if it doesn’t’ matter. It does matter because it’s an experience. Forget the bucks. It’s a great experience to be with a bunch of people that are just like you that have been selected as the best crop of players in the United States of America for that year. It’s an honor to be selected and you go down there and play your heart out and it’s an experience you never forget and you will, you will be a better football player for it and you’ll be a better man for it. And you’ll never forget it. I have great fondness. I would’ve never been buddies with Joe Namath any other way and I treasure that.

RSB: The difference in offensive line play today is drastically different from your day, what do you see in that?
Curry: When I came to the Senior Bowl I was probably 225 and trying to get bigger, and I had to get bigger before the next year and I got a little bigger. But the guys coming to the Senior Bowl now, they’re 325. That’s the biggest difference. And they’re faster than we were and they’re better athletes than we were. So just the sheer athletic ability and the size and speed and the gees that are generated with the collisions are all obvious differences. But other differences that are huge are the changes in the rules because you can use your hands. You can get away with holding cloth inside the radius of the body most of the time and everybody knows that so everybody does it and the officials will call a couple of holding calls a game. That’s very different. If you had grabbed somebody or put your hands outside the plane of their body when we played we would’ve been called for it. We could not stand up and pass protect and envelop people the way you can now. They can manage to block the stunts and to pass people off because they have such terrific strength and agility and they practice that sort of thing so much more than we did. And by that I’m talking about protecting the passer against stunts that are executed up front in those sophisticated blitzes that defensive coordinates invent every day. All of that has changed. But the biggest change is the size and the skill of the student-athlete. And one of the huge changes in football is air-conditioning. Nobody had air-conditioning when we were growing up so you sweated all the time. If it’s 105 degrees in Mobile, well you just perspired. Now those big bodies are accustomed to 72 degrees Fahrenheit and you take them out in the heat and it’s dangerous because of the adjustment accustomed to it. So you have to be careful with the conditioning and such because every year there’s some awful, some catastrophic injuries that occur and even deaths because coaches are having to learn about the heat and what it does to this kind of huge body. So there’s a lot of differences.

RSB: You certainly didn’t have the cooling benches that Alabama had at Texas A&M. I’d be remiss if I didn’t’ mention that you won Super Bowl I and Super Bowl V. That must have been such a thrill early on in your career.
Curry: It was and I thought it would go on forever. But it stopped abruptly after Super Bowl V. I know that there was an element of just pure luck to get a chance to be on those great teams with the Green Bay Packers and the Baltimore Colts because it was a circuitous route to get from one to the other. And I know that I was incredibly blessed to have played with some of the greatest human beings that ever lived and I love the reunions when we get a chance to go back to Green Bay now and just get to see the guys like Willie Davis and Herb Adderley and Dave Robinson and of course Bart Starr and Jimmy Taylor and there’s so many others. We used to have an occasional reunion in Baltimore but because the Colts disappeared and because we don’t exist in the Colts records in their minds I suppose, we get to do the Green Bay thing. So I know I’m lucky in a thousand different ways.

RSB: Coach, we can’t thank you enough for taking the time to catch up with us for seniorbowl.com. We’re so glad it was a great experience that was able to propel your football career. Going back to your seven grandkids, we wish them the best and hopefully at least one of them comes through Mobile as a Senior Bowl player but if they’re anything like you, we’ll take all seven.
Curry: We’d appreciate that. Two of them are females so they’ll have to be executives or something or cheerleaders. Thank you for that. It’s great to reconnect with the Senior Bowl.