Inside the headset can be the most chaotic, stressful or — depending on the game — entertaining place in any college football stadium at any given moment. From inside jokes to colorful language and full-on meltdowns, The Athletic asked a dozen-plus coaches for their very best stories from the headset over the years.
“My headset stories are probably not to be reproduced. And I’ve got some amazing headset stories,” Oklahoma coach Brent Venables says, laughing. “You could sell a lot of books on tales from the headset.”
(Editor’s note: Stories have been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.)
“You ordered pizza?” — Wisconsin offensive coordinator Phil Longo
When I was at Sam Houston State, I was trying to get a guy upstairs (in the press box). We were going into halftime and we were up, like, 31-3 or something. And I’m trying to get information from somebody in the booth.
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(The analyst) is like, “Oh, I’m sorry, Coach. I had my phone moved away.” And I was like, “What are you doing?” And he was like, “We ordered pizza.” I’m like, “You ordered pizza?”
They ushered in some pizza, and we didn’t have the ball right away, so they were messing with the pizza. And then we winded up getting the ball back. And I was like, “What yard line are we on? What hash?” No answer. I’m like, “Where are you? I need the information.”
(The analyst said), “Oh, I’m sorry, Coach. I had my mic moved away. We were getting our pizza that we ordered.”
“I had to get off the wavelength” — Tulane coach Willie Fritz
OK, I’m the defensive coordinator at Coffeyville Community College. This was in either ’87 or ’88. I’m on the headphones and it’s a real tight ballgame. And all of a sudden, somebody starts coming over the headphones. And we had a real small airport in Coffeyville, Kan., and between the plane and the tower, they were going back and forth talking, and they started telling me that I had to get off the wavelength. I had to get off these headphones and quit talking. And I of course told them I wasn’t going to do that.
So we’re going back and forth and one of our players goofed up. I even remember the name: Alfred Smith. Good kid. Great player. He missed a tackle, and me and the coach who was on the field were going off about it and maybe said some words that we shouldn’t have said.
All of a sudden the tower asked the (pilot) in the plane a question, and the (pilot) said, “Well, I’m not sure what you’re asking me, but I’m real glad I’m not Alfred Smith.” We all just started dying laughing.
“How could they miss that dome?” — Former Yale defensive coordinator Bob Shoop
I remember when I was the defensive coordinator at Yale and I was also coaching the kickoff team, and we were playing a game against the University of Connecticut and we had an ambush onside kick. I was supposed to report from the box whether I saw if it was there or not for us to give the signal. And then our head coach was supposed to take his hat off — casually take his hat off — to get the signal to the kicker that the play was on.
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Our head coach was a Hall of Fame head coach, who I have nothing but admiration and respect for, named Carmen Cozza, and he was bald. And so I said, “It’s there, Coach. We got it.” And he took his hat off and he took it off real quick, because he was nervous that (the opponent) would see that he did it. One of (Yale’s) other coaches said to him, “I don’t think they saw it.” (Cozza) said, “They saw it.” He got mad and said, “They saw it.” And I whispered into the headphones — I didn’t think he could hear me — and I said, “Yeah, how could they miss that dome?” And he goes, “I heard that.”
“Have we practiced any of this?” — Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz
I’m still horrified — anytime you jump on the defensive headset, which, I can go back and forth, and I swear to God, whether it was the first week of the first game of my career here or it could be the last bowl game we had, there’s such a difference between the offense and defense. Basically, defense, when you listen to those guys, it’s like, my question is, “Have we practiced any of this?” Everything’s a panic situation.
Our last game out we had a shutout, but you would never know based on the headset. Everything is like, a calamity. Total calamity. So there’s a real difference between the tones, at least in my experience. It’s total chaos. Just total chaos. And then somehow it works. Somehow, some way.
“The way to pronounce prosciutto” — Mississippi State special teams coordinator Eric Mele
(Late head coach Mike Leach) would go off on a classic Mike Leach (aside) where he starts talking about something else in the middle of a game. Our Alamo Bowl game in 2018 (with Washington State). (Running back) Max Borghi scores a touchdown and we stretch the lead. Me and (Leach) always talked about the mafia, pizza and Italian stuff. So Borghi scores and then he clicks on and starts asking people, “So how would two Italian guys go celebrate tonight? Would we go get the Italian meats on the tray?” I’m like, “Hey, there’s still like eight minutes left in this game.” He always got a kick out of the way to pronounce prosciutto.
“You guys are idiots anyway” — Mele on a memorable conversation with Leach
We played USC in 2017. It was a prime-time game on a Friday night. It was tied up in the fourth quarter and this always happened, too. Anytime someone tried to argue a play call or tell (Leach) his play call was bad, he was going to call it anyway, and 99.9 percent of the time it worked. But he calls a shovel pass. There’s video out there of him throwing his hand out calling a shovel pass. It’s a tied game 20-20 and he says, “What do you think about shovel here?”
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Two of our coaches on the line are like, “That’s terrible, that’s not going to work.” And he’s like, “Well, you guys are idiots anyway.” And he calls it, and sure enough we score a 20-something-yard touchdown on the shovel pass. After that game he ran with that in meetings for weeks and months. You never forget that one.
“Are you out of your f—ing mind?”— Longo on former Ole Miss coach Matt Luke
At Ole Miss, we had a fourth down-and-1 call midway through a game, and we motioned and tried to get them to jump offsides so that we’d get the first down. And it didn’t work. They didn’t jump. A.J. Brown (Ole Miss’ all-time leading receiver) went in motion.
So we lined up A.J. Brown into a formation. I guess we were at about the 35, 40-yard line. We’re outside of field goal range so you either were gonna have to punt them deep or you’re gonna kick an unrealistic field goal attempt. We line A.J. up and I called a deep ball. And (head coach) Matt Luke heard it on the phones and he was like, “What? What the f— did you call? Are you f—ing out of your freakin’ mind?”
Then we threw a touchdown to A.J. Brown and (Luke’s) like, “Great f — ing call!”
“We literally ran a play that we’d never run” — Old Dominion coach and former Penn State assistant Ricky Rahne
Big Ten Championship Game, 2016. We’re playing Wisconsin and we’re losing but we’re coming back. Coach (Joe) Moorhead, who did such an awesome job in that game, he calls a play that — he miscalls a play. We literally ran a play that we’d never run — in practice, in anything. We’d never run it. We had no idea. But we had a pretty good system and we had obviously great players and Trace (McSorley) just kind of drops back and throws a touchdown — throws the game-winning touchdown pass to Saquon (Barkley) on a play that was miscalled and we were all panicking.
I remember Joe being like, “Oh, they’ll figure it out. They know what to do.” And they did. He was right.
“I never was that upset ever in a game ever in my life’” — Former Iowa State coach Dan McCarney
We’re out playing UNLV. John Robinson’s out there as the head coach. They had some construction going on in the UNLV press box. So I’m getting ready for the game, we go through pregame, boom, boom, boom. Went over, talked to John a little bit, longtime NFL head coach.
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They were having trouble with our phones. No communication. They’re trying to work it out, work it out. We go on into (the locker room and) after pregame, I come back out there and we still have no contact with the press box. None. None of the phones are working. And here we are getting ready to line up to kick and kick off. And I’m yelling now from the sidelines to the referee, “HOLD IT, HOLD IT, HOLD IT, HOLD IT.”
I said, “Listen. We have no communication. Our phones aren’t working.” We can all look at their sideline and all of them are walking up and down the sideline, no problem. They’re relaxed. All their coaches had their phones, obviously theirs are working. And I’m on the field, I’d never had that happen before. And I said, “The phones don’t work. You’ve got to understand, we’re not starting this game.” (The referee) said, “Coach. It’s not an NCAA rule. It’s a gentleman’s agreement. And if they don’t want to stop the game, we’re not stopping the game. So you need to get off the field. I’m kicking this thing off.”
So we coached the whole game, we had two players’ phones — you see those on the sidelines, they’re just like the phone like we had growing up as kids. Pick up the phone, dial the phone. That’s what you had on the sidelines. My two coordinators, Pete Hoener and John Skladany, coached the whole game holding the telephone in their hands. We never got them working. And then we kicked their butt and shut them out (24-0). John Robinson came on our bus afterwards and apologized and all that stuff, but I never was that upset ever in a game ever in my life.
I told (my coordinators) afterward, “Maybe we oughta be out of phones more often. We’ll beat their ass (24-0).”
“Wake up, what are you doing?” — Pitt coach Pat Narduzzi
Cincinnati-Louisville, 2004. Cincinnati’s headsets went out just as the Bearcats kicked off to the Cardinals, who then took the first play 80 yards for a touchdown. Moments later, the headsets started working again. But Louisville would go on to beat Cincinnati 70-7 in the freezing rain on a dreadful afternoon for coach Mark Dantonio’s team. Just before the fourth quarter, with Cincinnati’s band even gone, a fed-up Dantonio turned off his teams heaters on the sidelines. That’s when he asked Narduzzi to come down from the press box to check out the scene for himself.
We actually started playing better in the fourth quarter. I started getting after their ass a little bit just about, “Wake up. What are you doing?” and from there on out, we had a lot of success with me coming down from out of the press box.
It all started in this game because of the headphones. All my years at Michigan State, all the way up until the last game when we beat Baylor in the Cotton Bowl, I’d come down at the end of the third quarter, fourth quarter just to kind of motivate our team and just change it up a little bit. … In the Big Ten championship in Indianapolis (in 2013), I think Ohio State was either No. 1 or No. 2 in the country at that time. But one of the players, Shilique Calhoun, jumps on the headphones, grabs one of the coaches’ headphones, jumps on it and says, “Coach, we need you down here right now.” We were down 14 and we came back and beat ’em.
“He’s flipping off the other sideline” — Shoop
(It was) 1994 at Yale. We’re playing Lehigh and I’m on the headsets. I’m in the press box and I’m giving the call down to the guy on the sideline and he signals it in. And there seems to be a lot of chaos. And I’m in the press box and don’t know what’s going on.
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The assistant coach reported back to me that the players on the field couldn’t see the signal. And the linebacker got on the headphones and he goes, “You gotta tell” this particular coach “to get the hell out of the way. He’s standing in the way of the signal.” And I go, “OK. Well, tell this coach” — I don’t want to say people’s names — “to get out of the way.”
The next day — it was back in the early ’90s, so it was back when you were VCRing things — the game was on TV in the Lehigh Valley and our players wanted TV copies so they could send them to their parents or for whatever reason. So I’m watching and one of the assistant coaches calls me over and says, “You gotta see this.” And I go over and it’s that scenario of plays going on. You can see all the bickering and everything going on on the sideline. And right before that (moment), to give you some of the backstory, someone came off (the field) and one of our players said, “I think (Lehigh) has got our signals.” And the defensive line coach said, “I’ll take care of that.”
I’m watching the two-minute segment on the game on the VCR and they’re talking about our head coach Carm Cozza and they’re saying, “Look at him, he’s a Hall of Famer, he’s a man of integrity, man of leadership,” all that stuff, and it’s that scenario where everybody’s arguing on the sideline and our D-line coach pops right in front of the camera, not looking at the camera, but he’s looking across the field at the other sideline and he’s flipping off the other sideline.
He’s giving the finger, saying, “You’ll never get our signals, you’ll never get our signals!”
“Your stomach is in your throat” — Former Louisville and current Cincinnati defensive coordinator Bryan Brown
Louisville-UCF, 2021. With 31 seconds remaining and the game tied, Louisville quarterback Malik Cunningham threw an interception that put the Knights on the Louisville 41-yard line, in need of just one play to get into field goal position. Cardinals linebacker Monty Montgomery had just torn his ACL on the previous series, prompting then-Louisville defensive coordinator Bryan Brown to sub in true freshman Jaylin Alderman with the game on the line. Alderman ultimately won the game for Louisville on a 66-yard pick six with seconds remaining. But not before he missed his assignment and took his eyes off the one wide receiver he was supposed to be tracking, creating all sorts of chaos on the headset.
THE PLAY.
💻: https://t.co/59FqPW7pRv#GoCards x @jaylin_alderman pic.twitter.com/PbhL5RmGHP
— Louisville Football (@LouisvilleFB) September 18, 2021
When I made the call, my linebacker coach is going nuts. His name is Derek Nicholson. He’s the linebacker coach at Miami now. He’s saying, “Oh, God. Oh, God,” … because he saw at that moment that (Alderman) was not looking at his responsibility. I’m on the headset just going nuts, as well.
The ball’s snapped and I’m on the headset saying, “Help us, Lord. Help us, Lord. Help us, Lord.” That’s what I’m saying during the play because I knew — and I saw it in the kids’ eyes — he had no clue what to do. … It’s like your stomach is in your throat at that moment.”
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“Who called timeout?” — Liberty head coach Jamey Chadwell
I don’t get upset much on the headsets. We’re playing Billy Napier at Louisiana-Lafayette, 2018. I was an assistant coach (at Coastal Carolina). And we’re driving to go score in the second quarter or whatever and the play clock’s running down. And our head coach at the time, every time it got under 10 seconds, he’d start panicking: “OH, THE CLOCK, THE CLOCK, THE CLOCK.” I’d be going, “You’re fine, you’re fine, you’re fine.” Well, we snap the ball and we’re walking in for a touchdown. Big play in the game. Little known to me, they blow the whistle. Our GA, who shouldn’t have done it, he runs down there and calls timeout because he was worried about the play getting snapped. I slammed my first down, I go, “WHO CALLED TIMEOUT?” and he goes, “It was me.” And I said, “You do what I tell you to do or you’ll never do it again.”
To this day we call him the “T.O. Kid.” And he works for me now.
Then-Clemson defensive coordinater Brent Venables and head coach Dabo Swinney watch as the Tigers play Wofford on Nov. 2, 2019, at Memorial Stadium in Clemson, S.C. (Streeter Lecka / Getty Images)“Hey, man, you can smile now” — Oklahoma coach Brent Venables on Clemson coach Dabo Swinney
We’re playing Alabama (in the 2018 national championship game). It’s — I don’t know — it was eight minutes to go in the fourth quarter and we’ve got pretty good control of the game.
I’ve got my arms crossed and I’m not very comfortable yet, and Coach (Dabo) Swinney’s like — the offense, they had just scored to make it 44. And he was like, “Hey, man, you can smile now. It’s time to celebrate.” And I go, “No, sir. Not yet. Not yet.” And I was in my really stressed emotional moment.
And he goes, “Oh, YET.” He goes, “This is YET. This is YET right now. It’s that time.” And I remember just thinking, like, “There’s no way this is really happening.”
As you reflect back on that game, there are not many games where everything seems to go your way like it did that night.
That was one of my most fun headset moments.
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The Athletic’s Christopher Kamrani contributed to this report.
(Illustration: Eamonn Dalton / The Athletic: photos: David K Purdy, Keith Gillett, Jonathan Bachman / Getty Images)
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