Wednesday, July 18, 2001
LeBeau looking for that look
Dick LeBeau is looking for a certain look. It's a delicate blend of distilled Corey Dillon and Takeo Spikes concentrate; a look that personifies passion, conveys competitiveness and is too seldom seen among the Bengals.
“People,” LeBeau said, “who want to play football.”
Training camp opens Friday. Any player interested in making a positive first impression on the head coach is advised to show up with a psychotic stare, a frothing mouth or a note from his mother.
“I don't know how far off the diving board we're going to go,” LeBeau said Tuesday afternoon. “But this will not be a quote "standard' training camp.”
LeBeau has been coaching the
Bengals for nearly 10 months now, but a football coach is never completely in charge until he takes a team to training camp. It is there that he sets his standards, imparts his plans and reveals his taste for torture.
Tough camp promised
Before Bear Bryant achieved sainthood at Alabama, he simulated sadism at Texas A&M. He took more than 100 Aggies to the small town of Junction, Texas, in 1954, and trimmed his team to 34 players during 10 days of merciless heat and legendary brutality.
“That had to be the training camp from hell,” LeBeau said. “They dug pits and did plank drills 6 feet down. You'd get knocked off the plank and you had nowhere to go.”
LeBeau's sweaty cloister at Georgetown College should be more civilized. It doesn't figure, however, to be much fun.
Beneath LeBeau's genial facade lurks a grinding determination to set things straight for this feckless franchise. He is 63 years old and therefore unlikely to land another head coaching job. He's not looking to enhance his resume but to leave his mark.
“I know what I want us to look like,” he said. “The players know what I'm going to ask them to do. We want them to know that we're prepared to spend the time necessary to get it done.”
Time stands fairly still at training camp. With his players largely confined to campus, available for twice-daily practices and marathon meetings, a coach has the opportunity to meld personalities and mold a team.
Yearning to attack
Vince Lombardi used to unite his players through shared misery. “He treats us all the same,” Green Bay tackle Henry Jordan said. “Like dogs.” But in an age of agents, grievances and seven-figure salaries, contemporary coaches must build more by consensus.
LeBeau has convinced his players of his sincerity and his fairness. He now must sell them on his vision and the work required to reach it.
“I want an active team that looks like it wants to play,” LeBeau said. “I think at times (last season) our pace was intense enough — but not often enough. We have to ask for something. Something's got to get better.”
In a word, LeBeau yearns to “attack.”
For a phrase, he invokes Civil War General Nathan Bedford Forrest, a cavalry officer whose credo is sometimes recounted as “Get there first with the most men,” and, more memorably, “Git thar fustest with the mostest.”
That's a pretty good look.
E-mail tsullivan@enquirer.com. Past columns at Enquirer.com/columns/sullivan.
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SULLIVAN: LeBeau looking for that look
