The Buddy Morris Story

 

I was hired by University of Pittsburgh head football coach Jackie Sherrill two weeks after graduating from the university in April of 1980. I had talked to coach Sherrill about being a Graduate Assistant and running the strength program shortly before I graduated from Pitt, but after graduation I didn't hear anything from him and started interviewing for jobs whenever I could. 

I had just come home from interviewing at European Health Spas and accepted a position as a trainer with them when I received a call from head Pitt trainer Kip Smith. I'll always remember that conversation. Kip said, "Jackie wants to see you in his office tomorrow morning at 8 a.m." I responded, "I'll be there!" and immediately called European Health Spa to say thanks but no thanks. 

I wanted to be part of Pitt Football ever since my good friend from high school, Bob Jury, accepted a scholarship to play football there in 1974. (Bobby still holds the school record for career interceptions.) It was actually Bob Jury who asked me to train with him as he entered his freshman year. He introduced me to "lifting weights" with the program the head trainer at Pitt (Kip Smith) had sent him. 

After I graduated from high school, I accepted a scholarship to Indiana State University for track and field as a short sprinter. I transferred to Pitt after my freshman year at ISU and was once again training with Bobby and a few of the Pitt players. 

I started helping athletes prepare for the forty-yard dash, as there was no combine at the time and athletes would get calls from scouts to time them and "work" them out. Since everyone showed great improvements, Sal Sunseri's older brother, Gus, a senior at Carnegie Mellon University, asked me if I would train him in preparation for the NFL draft. I now had a training partner and total access to the Pitt Football weight room. Coach Sherrill found out about the help I was giving his athletes and decided to offer me a GA position. 

The day after Kip Smith's phone call, I woke up earlier than early to catch a streetcar and bus to the Pitt campus in Oakland section of Pittsburgh. To this day, I can remember how intimidated I was just sitting across from Coach Sherrill. He started off the conversation by asking me what I thought of his football team. My response was, "All the talent in the world but weak as water," to which he then said, "Can you do the job?" I answered "Yes," end of conversation. He reached into his desk, threw me the keys to the weight room, and said, "You're hired!" 

Now here's the kicker . . . notice I said in the beginning I was hired by head coach Jackie Sherrill, not the university of Pittsburgh! Jackie went out on a limb because he had the vision to see where college football was headed and understood the importance of having a "strength coach." 

He would give me money out of his own pocket until I was officially approved by the University in July of 1980. I worked for practically nothing the first three months and didn't receive a paycheck from Pitt until I was officially approved by the University in July of 1980. My starting salary was $12,800 dollars and for the first ten years of my career I had no assistants. 

I always tell everyone that if it wasn't for Coach Sherrill (whom I respect, love and will always be grateful to) and his vision I don't know where I would be. The man taught me "college football" and took care of me. When he accepted the Texas A&M job a year later I was the first person he called into his office and asked me to go with him, offering me $36,000 salary, but I turned him down to stay home. (Dumb mistake, I know!"

The "football" weight room was located at the back of the locker room accessible by only one door. It was roughly 2,000 square feet and had the equipment room on one side and the band room on the other side. I say this because when athletes were training at the end of the day the band was also practicing and it became a war between the band's music and the radio we put in the weight room at the time. It gave me a headache every day! 

The room had subpar lighting, no windows, and no air conditioning. There was aa home-build platform to the left of the door as you entered, with a full circuit of Nautilus machines (the new cutting-edgy crazy!) and three old fashioned York power racks where the only thing that could fit in between the racks was a bar and bent pins for hooks/safety catches. Back in the "L" shape of the room sat three quarter-inch plywood benches with wide uprights that shook violently if you had over 275 pounds on the bar. There was a set of cast iron dumbbells on the floor with missing '40s, '50s, and only one of each 25-30 and 35 pound dumbbell. The matching pairs were located in the rooms of various players who wanted an "arm pump" before going out on the weekends! 

My first order of business was to paint the weight room white so that it would appear larger and have the lighting replaced to bring brightness into a lifeless room. The second thing I did was get out a letter to all players announcing the new position that I would occupy. Since many of them knew me already and I had been writing programs for some of them and training in the facility with Gus Senseri it was an easy transition. 

Every day, my day began with asking the grounds crew to clean the weight room, which was like pulling teeth. Eventually, the university purchased a vacuum cleaner and I spent the first hour and a half of my day running the vacuum and cleaning machines and mirrors. My weight room was spotless, and made athletes want to come in and train I would lift and lean machines to clean the varnished floors and dust every machine daily with no help from assistants! In those first ten years I took one vacation, my honeymoon my first year of coaching, and that was it. 

When I was allowed to start purchasing equipment, it was up to me and whomever I could talk into it to unload and place the equipment or assemble it. 

I'll never forget the day a long, flat-bad eighteen wheeler showed up at the stadium on a wet snow, overcast day in December with two large wooden crates. The truck driver was not permitted to help so I climbed up on to the flat bed and opened the top crate. I unloaded one dumbbell at a time out of the crate on the flat bed, which I then loaded onto a large flat four-wheel dolly. When I could not fit another dumbbell on the dolly I pushed it all the way to the weight room and unloaded the dumbbells onto the racks that I had carried in first. From 5 to 120 pound dumbbells, the entire process took me four hours. That would be unheard of today, especially with the strength staffs having multiple assistants and equipment companies doing the work themselves. 

During the first ten years, the weight room was expanded on two separate occasions, taking over the equipment and band rooms and making the total square footage to be around four thousand. During one of the expansions over the summer months (in those days most athletes went home for the summer) we had no lights and Jim Sweeney, Bill Fralic and a host of other guys went and got flash lights and candles so we wouldn't miss a training session! 

I stayed at Pitt for the first ten years of my career even after a few other job offers. I worked for four different head coaches and countless assistants/GA's, including Jackie Sherrill, Foge Fazio, Mike Gottfried, and Paul Hackett. Along with great coaches came great athletes like Dan Marino, Bill Fralic, Jumbo Covert, Mark May, Hugh Green, Mark Stepnoski, Ricky Jackson, Chris Doleman, Curtis Martin, LeSean McCoy, and so many more who did or didn't make it to the NFL. 

I always tell every strength coach and any clinic I speak at that the hardest thing I had to do my first ten years was open the door and turn the lights on! Which brings me to a very important point . . . 

NO strength coach ever won a football game! 

I am blessed with two outstanding daughters, Kara and Claire. In 1989 my oldest daughter, Kara, was diagnosed with autoimmune chronic active hepatitis, a progressive liver disease that leads to cirrhosis and transplantation. She is now 32 and by the grace of God is stable (though a few prayers wouldn't hurt) and non-active on the transplant list. With Kara's diagnosis, I decided to step away from coaching and be a father. I went to work developing and worked in what was then a "Work Hardening Program," a program began nationally to return injured workers to active employment. I also developed a program the hospital called "Pro Performance Plus," which trained local high school athletes for sporting activity (one of the first attempts at a performance center for high school athletes.). I also starting working training athletes for the NFL combine as one of the first combine prep training programs. 

In 1997 I got a call from two former Pitt players (both who were playing or had played in the NFL) asking me if I wanted to return to Pitt. They were about to make a change and a lot of alumni wanted me back. Next thing I know I'm driving to Pittsburgh (my hometown) and accepting the head strength coach and conditioning coach position under new head coach Walt Harris. Along with this title came my first assistant! 

Under the guidance of a new athletic director, the program had expanded the weight room to 7200 square feet inside a separate portion of the stadium with air conditioning. I wanted new equipment but was told there was no money in the budget that year, so I asked permission from the assistant director to raise money from former players. I raised over $100,000 in donations from former players (Mark Stepnoski sent me a blank check) and re-outfitted the weight room. 

Two years after returning, they tore down "old Pitt Stadium" and in 2000 we played our home games at Three Rivers Stadium, home of the Pittsburgh Steelers. The University also partnered with University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and the Pittsburgh Steelers to build Heinz Field and a training facility on the Southside of Pittsburgh, which is now home to the Panthers and Steelers.

In 2001, I got a call from Butch Davis and the Cleveland Browns to interview for their open position. Foge Fazio, former Pitt head coach, was the DC, and Kevin Elko well known sports psychologist, both gave Butch my name as a candidate. I was offered the job a week later doubling my salary from $75,000 to $150,000. You can't refuse when someone offers you double your salary, and Pitt was telling me they had no more money to offer me, so I left for Cleveland. After three years and the Browns first playoff appearance in decades as a wild card against the Steelers, we were "let go" and I sat around for a year under contract and searching for a job. 

My contract ended in February of 2005 and I went on unemployment until May of 2006 when Turner Gill called me and asked me to interview at the University of Buffalo. I accepted the head job the next day and was back to making $60,000 a year, going from the penthouse to the outhouse. At the time, there were 119 teams in D1 football and Buffalo was 119,but I had a great head coach and athletic director in Warde Manuel. More importantly, I was back coaching . . . 

. . . Every day I read and study so I can become a better coach, even at 61, because I believe we expect our athletes to get better, why shouldn't we expect the same of ourselves? 

I don't have a philosophy, they are for philosophers. I have a system, that is a living breathing organism adapting and changing/growing/evolving as I learn more. 

You can't get better unless you constantly pursue knowledge and over time you will gain true wisdom, which is separate from knowledge, but the sign of a battle worn experience. 

In closing, it is a privilege to be a strength coach, or as my close friend James Smith has always said, physical preparation coach. 

Enjoy Your Lifting!