Ross Settles in, Bears Down

Bobby Ross is a football coach. I know this because of a conversation I had with him Friday morning. He was talking about what he would be doing if he were still coaching at Georgia Tech, from whence he came.

“I’d be glued to the television set watching Georgia Tech play basketball,” he said. “Bobby Cremins is a good friend of mine.”

This was not the clue that he was a football coach.

It came next.

“Geez,” I said. “You should have brought Bobby Cremins with you to coach at San Diego State.”

It was a tongue-in-cheek suggestion, of course. Ross had been lured away from Tech to coach professional football, or at least to turn the Chargers into a professional football team. Cremins would not leave Georgia Tech for Montezuma Mesa.

“Hmmm,” Ross said curiously. “Who’d San Diego State hire? Anybody yet?”

In truth, they have hired an anybody already. The new coach, I told him, was Tony Fuller.

And the new Charger coach, I realized, had that wonderful tunnel vision which afflicts all successful football coaches. Fuller’s hire and Jerry Tarkanian’s non-hire had been all over the news and newspapers for days hereabouts.

Ross had not heard.

He follows in the tradition of Don Coryell, who was asked during the Chargers’ training camp in 1981 if he had stayed up to watch the wedding.

“What wedding?” he asked.

Something about a Royal Wedding and Princess Di. Coryell had heard nothing about it.

So here was Bobby Ross, 55, all of 2 1/2 months into his first term as head coach in the National Football League. Training camp was months away, but already he was leaving home at 5:30 a.m. and returning at 7 p.m. He seemed apologetic, lest owner Alex Spanos think he was a slacker.

“I don’t like to sleep at the stadium,” he said.

Indeed, Ross does not say things as much as drawl them. He is a Southerner whose resume reads like a map of the Confederate states. High school and college in Virginia, assistant coaching positions at Virginia Military, William & Mary, Rice and Maryland, head coaching positions at The Citadel, Maryland and Georgia Tech.

Only one thing seems to get him out of the south . . . the NFL. He was an assistant coach with the Kansas City Chiefs for four years from 1978 through 1981.

Once again, he has ventured out of Dixie . . . this time for his first NFL head coaching job.

“I’ve always wanted to spend more time on football,” he said. “You’re not able to do that in college ball.”

It’s different. Very different.

“The biggest thing you don’t have that you have in college ball is academics,” he said. “Academics and, of course, recruiting. You have some recruiting with Plan B (free agents), but it’s not the same as college recruiting.”

Academics, in their own way, are very much a part of a professional football program. The players probably spend as much or more time in a classroom as they do in college. The difference is that their “professors” are assistant coaches and the subject is always football.

“That’s why systems are more sophisticated here,” Ross said. “The NCAA restricts meeting time. We don’t have that problem. Technology is more complicated. And there are more coverages, for example. There’s a lot for a player to absorb and get down.”

Ross is holding the Chargers’ version of summer school now. It’s voluntary. Really.

“I’m very encouraged by the turnout and attitude,” he said. “We’re getting 35 to 40 players three days a week. We cover what we can cover in an hour and we’re out of there.”

Bobby Ross is upbeat. He is hopeful the program is ready for an upward turn.

“I don’t know if there’s any magic to it, or not,” he said. “I think the same things are important to any program. People are important. Obviously, good players are important. Also, you have to work together as a team. And I don’t mean within the team, but within the organization.”

This organization has had little stability and less consistency in terms of leadership. The elevator to the Chargers’ offices on Level 1A at the stadium has been much more like a revolving door.

Much of that can be attributed to the volatility of Spanos.

“I’d rather have an owner who wants to win than one who doesn’t care about the football team,” Ross said. “Some people aren’t in it for the competition as much as they are for other reasons. I’m happy he’s in it because of a desire to win.”

Ross smiled and spread his hands.

“Of course, he might be on a different timetable than I am,” he said. “I really can’t say yet, because I haven’t seen enough to know or make an evaluation.”

Don’t worry. The NFL is the same as collegiate football in that evaluations tend to take care of themselves. The Ws and Ls tip the scale one way or the other.

And the biggest difference between the Chargers and Georgia Tech might just be that Georgia Tech did not have an owner.