James Bringing New Lesson Plan for Success to Ventura College : Football: Coach returns to the position he held in 1970s, but he’s preaching values in addition to victories.

It sounds like loser talk, the kind heard at football programs at places like Rice and Northwestern. Is this what a school wants its new coach saying?

“Winning is important, but it isn’t the only thing and I don’t think I have anything to prove,” says Dick James, who is taking over Ventura College’s football program. “To come in here and say that I’ve got to be 10-0 and that’s my driving force and that’s my only goal, I’m not into that anymore.”

Something more important than wins and losses? Shouldn’t coaches be burned at the goal post for such heresy? It appears to be a recipe for a losing team and an early ticket to another job.

It’s also called perspective, and it comes from a guy who already is the winningest football coach in Ventura College history.

James, who served as a Ventura assistant coach the past two years, returns to the position he held from 1970-79 when he led Ventura to a 58-40 record. He knows he’ll win his fair share of games, and now he’s interested in something more ephemeral yet more lasting.

“I feel less pressure to win, having been involved with football for 23 years,” James said. “You don’t remember the wins as much as you remember the people you had an association with.”

Not the kind of coach who thinks the alphabet begins at L and ends at W, James is determined to take a holistic approach to coaching football players.

“There are just a lot of values that a football program at a junior college can instill in the young people that come here that are to me more important than blocking, tackling and W’s,” James said. “I just noticed in the six months I worked with these kids that they’re like sponges. They’re struggling for that.”

Words like accountability, organization and discipline are James mantras.

“Basically, every talk we’ve had has been related to the future, to life in general,” said Kasha Clemons, a sophomore strong safety from Santa Clara High. “He stresses there is more to life than football.”

Make no mistake, James isn’t talking about building the kind of character that comes from 2-8 seasons. He won two Western State Conference co-championships in his first stint at Ventura and has never been fired as a coach.

“When you’re going up the ladder, you always want to know what’s above you on the next rung,” James said. “When you have settled in at a particular place like I have and been above and have settled back down, there is just a feeling of confidence that I know we can be successful here.”

James’ gaze is steadier than the Mona Lisa’s, and his handshake is knuckle-numbingly firm. He means what he says.

“Integrity,” Ventura President Bob Long immediately replies when asked to name James’ cardinal virtue. “As a person, he’s got maximum integrity.”

The resumes of most longtime coaches list more schools than “The Insider’s Guide to Colleges,” but James’ resume reveals stability.

His career approximately divides into 10-year segments. During the 1960s, he completed his playing days at UC Davis and began working through the ranks as a college assistant coach. From 1967-69, James was the defensive coordinator for then-Ventura Coach Long.

James coached Ventura the next 10 years and was at Stanford from 1980-88 as an assistant coach and recruiting coordinator. As the ‘90s begin, he once again is the coach at Ventura.

Having begun his career as a relatively young college head coach, James returns, at 49, as a relatively old coach beginning anew.

“I feel like I’m a kid with a new toy that gets a chance to start over,” James said. Being away “gave me new life, new spirit. . . . It was almost like going on sabbatical for eight years.”

James spent the last two seasons as Coach Phil Passno’s assistant before taking over when Passno resigned in December after a 7-4 season.

Although James has recruited athletes from outside his school’s area in the past, he pledges that future versions of the James gang will be composed primarily of Ventura County products. For one thing, he believes a community college should serve its community first.

“I’m just going to be very, very selective in who I accept on our football team,” James said. “I would rather put my energies in some athlete from Fillmore or Santa Paula or Channel Islands and his family . . . . than to spend all my time and the energy it takes to bring in one or two or three or four out of state.”

However, the complexion of junior college football in Ventura County changed during James’ absence. Moorpark, long a patsy, has become a power on the field and in recruiting.

The battle of Ventura County is being fought on the Oxnard plains, where Moorpark has managed to recruit schoolboy stars Freddie Bradley, Johnel Turner and Bryant Taylor out of Ventura’s back yard in the past few years.

Moorpark Coach Jim Bittner believes his school’s success will continue to attract top athletes, but he also knows James will present a challenge.

“The guy is definitely an excellent recruiter and presents himself well, especially with parents,” Bittner said. “He’s very smooth.”

At Stanford, James was smooth enough to bridge the often gaping chasm between the academic and athletic communities.

He could persuade Kenneth Arrow, a Nobel Prize winner in economics, as well as other prominent Stanford faculty members to have Sunday brunch with 17-year-old football recruits. He was able to draw top athletes through an admissions process so rigorous that former Coach Jack Elway called it “Russian roulette.”

James would open football recruiting receptions by introducing a dozen or more recruits--and their parents--naming the players’ schools and positions flawlessly and without notes.

“We will do very well here at this college recruiting, and I think a lot of it is the experience I gained at Stanford,” James said. “I just think that with what we’re trying to sell and the product we’re trying to develop, we will begin to attract Ventura County athletes to this program. I have no question about that.”

James recruits parents as much as their kids. Stanford’s 1987 recruiting class was ranked the 10th-best in the country by SuperPrep magazine, and helped draw several other strong groups to Stanford.

“Dick James stands out in my mind as exemplary,” said SuperPrep editor Allen Wallace, “because he cared more about the recruit than almost any other recruiting coordinator I met.”

Simply recruiting the athletes wasn’t enough, though. In 1987, James approached Elway about moving back to the field. Elway, who believes the recruiting coordinator is the most important person on the staff, wanted James to remain in that capacity. A year later, Elway lost James to Ventura.

“He was so valuable to me. I probably should have done it (the switch) the year before and brought him back as an offensive line coach,” Elway said. “I often look back on that as a move I should have made.”

Still, James’ departure from the major college recruiting office he helped create to a junior college assistant’s job appeared to be a retrograde move, the action of a coach moving back down the bell curve of his career.

“I was, as recruiting coordinator, more the middle-management person,” James said. “I made the decision that I wanted to get back on the field and work with young people.”

The milieu has changed somewhat for James, who returns Rip van Winkle-like to the junior college ranks.

After years at pass-happy Stanford, James is shifting from the veer he used in the ‘70s to a more pass-oriented attack.

“We will look like that (the veer) this year,” said James, who concentrates on offense and the quarterbacks. “A lot of people will say, ‘Gee, that looks like James football in the 70s,’ but it will be dramatically different once the ball is snapped.”

James calls working with athletes the “sugar cube” that sweetens days full of administrative tasks, but on the field he isn’t exactly all sweetness and light. He isn’t a yeller, but he does get his point across.

“He’s just a perfectionist,” said Tim Albrent, a sophomore quarterback from Ventura High. “He doesn’t take excuses. He knows exactly what every player can give. He’ll keep you out there until you do it right.”

Ventura baseball Coach Gary Anglin played quarterback on James’ first team, in 1970, and describes James as a George Allen-type coach.

“It’s good to have him back,” Anglin said. “He does everything for the kids, but he has very distinct morals. They’ve got to go to class, and they’ve got to do it on the field.”