From VMI to the NFL

[greeneagle5]

USA TODAY, 2/13/15

"It was the Spring of 1995, and it was Mike Tomlin's first recruiting trip at his first job in coaching, at a small , military-focused state institution in Lexington, VA. with no recent history of football success at the Football Championship Sub-division level......."

Link :

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sport...pittsburgh-steelers-atlanta-falcons/23305311/

 

[bruno]

Interesting Article- though Coach Stewart's experience at VMI ended unhappily as he was fired for making a racial slur to one of his players and he was then tanked at West Virginia when he tried to get a reporter to dig up dirt on his O-coordinator who was supposed to take over the headcoaching job at the end of the year. Coach Tomlin clearly moved up the coaching food chain pretty fast and good luck to Coach Quinn- they certainly learned how to coach under adversity during their time at VMI!

 

[NAS]

There's more detail to both of those stories that folks never heard about. For example, when he left VMI, Stewart was entitled to two years pay on his contract--Instead of taking the money, he gave it back to the Institute because he said it was the "right thing to do." There was more to the reporter incident as well. I'm not a Stewart fan, but I've heard he was a tremendous coach and leader, despite the mistakes.