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SCENES FROM THE 2004 ATLANTA CLINIC

Taking three different schools to state playoffs and being named South Mississippi Coach of the year - not bad for a coach who just six years ago was, in his own words, "15-51 and looking to get fired." That's Coach Steve Jones, who in 2003, in just his first season at Ocean Springs, Mississippi, took the Greyhounds to an 8-4 record, their first winning season in years, and a state playoff berth, their first in 10 years.

Since starting to run the Double-Wing, Coach Jones has turned around programs at class 4A Florence and class 3A Columbia (Walter Payton's home town), and now at class 5A Ocean Springs. In all since, switching to the Double-Wing, his teams have gone 36-18 regular season and 3-5 in the play-offs the last 5 years - 5 straight winning seasons and 5 straight play-off appearances.

Coach Jones is happy to point out to those who wonder whether the Double-Wing will work at a "big school" that Ocean Springs is the fifth largest school in the state, and plays such talent-rich powerhouses as Moss Point and Pascagoula.

Coach Jones was kind enough to make it to Atlanta to address Saturday's clinic. Since this time last year he was talking about the possibility of the Ocean Springs job coming open, I was very much interested in hearing about his 2003 season.

He showed the clinic a tape of the first Ocean Springs touchdown of the year, a long run by his A-Back that produced so much excitement that kids poured out of the stands to congratulate him, and one of the assistant principals had a penalty called on him for joining in the celebration. The video shows one of the team managers racing along the sideline, almost step for step with the runner. "We got him out for football," Coach Jones noted.

Coach Jones' offensive philosophy is fairly simple: "get the ball in the best athlete's hands." As proof of this, for the last four years, his A-back has gained at least 1600 yards. Giving credit where it's due, it should be pointed out that in three of those four years, the A-Back was Coach Jones' son, Cory, a sprinter in the 4.3/4.4 range who is now a freshman wide receiver at Miami of Ohio.

Although Coach Jones is the one I credit with inventing the Wedge Reverse, he says the credit really belongs to Cory, who happened to notice that whenever Dad called a wedge, opponents didn't seem to be paying much attention to the outside. Bingo - let's try it, said Dad, and the result was Wedge Reverse, which has proved to be a heck of a play. Sometimes it comes down to the runner and an opposing defensive back, one-on-one, but as Coach Jones said, "If your A-back can't get around the corner and make somebody miss, you're not going to have much of a team anyhow."

(I'll be showing Wedge Reverse at this year's clinics.)

Coach Jones gave a lot of credit for the big turnaround at Florence to his defensive coordinator, Steve Pruett. Steve, whose dad is Bob Pruett, fabulously successful head coach at Marshall, is now head coach at McLaurin High School, and he was in attendance at Atlanta, too. On the subject of defense, Coach Jones cautioned against playing a gambling, blizting defense that has the potential to give up big plays - said that at Columbia, they lost a few close games, and he found that the defense they were playing (he inherited the coordinator) was simply giving up too many big plays.

Coach Jones said that he's got seven years to go to retire in the state of Mississippi, and he's planning on staying with the Double Wing the rest of the way. Unlike those who complain that it is too limiting, he says, "the best thing I like about the offense is the versatility."

Did I hear him say versatility? The coach before him at Columbia ran the Notre Dame box. Apart from the difficulty of finding a quarterback - "convincing kids that it was all right to put their hands against another guy's rear end" - he was able to get a crash course in the offense from the former coach, and found out that it was possible to run plays from the Notre Dame box without having to change a thing on the offensive line. (That's Coach Jones' adaptation of the basic Double-Wing Super Power to a direct-snap Single-Wing.)

Another bit of advice Coach Jones gave those coaches at the clinic: "Don't change what you're doing at halftime." Listen to him, guys - at Columbia, he was down, 30-6 at halftime of a playoff game. Changes? Well, they did stop turning the ball over. But otherwise, he said, "we just stayed with the offense." Columbia won, 33-30.

Oh- and for those gender-equity people who keep trying to tell you that football is just one sport among many - Coach Jones is further evidence, if any is needed, that football sets the tone for an entire school - in addition to this year's playoff season in football, Ocean Springs' girls' basketball team made the playoffs and the boys' basketball team is in the Final Four.