“To be a college coach, I had to play college football,” Tuberville said. “I had to know what they [the coaches ] were going through.” Powell finally relented, figuring the first time Tuberville missed a good time with his friends because of a six-hour film session would mark the last time he set foot in the defensive coaching offices.
Instead, he became a fixture. And eventually, his sheer football smarts enabled him to occasionally see the field during games as a backup, though he usually found himself beaten by faster players.
“If all your players were like him, you wouldn’t win many games,” Powell said. “But it’d sure be enjoyable.” Adulthood changes people, and very often, their dreams change with them. Not Tuberville’s. Shortly after graduating, Tuberville left a low-paying job as a high school coach at Hermitage for what started out as a no-paying job as an assistant at Arkansas State.
TUBERVILLE: When I enrolled at Southern Arkansas University (where I played football) my ambition was to find a trade in the business world. I kept in touch with my old high school coach, Butch Stoker. Hermitage High was only about 40 miles away, and I followed all of its teams. As I plowed through college, I dropped the idea of business and decided to become a coach.
My college football coaches, Rip Powell and Sonny Whittington, taught me all I had to know about the fundamentals of the game. You think you know a lot about football when you’re playing the game in high school. But it’s not until you get to college that you realize how much more you have to learn. So I wound up getting my degree in physical education – and my first job was at Hermitage H.S. You could call it “jobs.”