Laramie – Joe Glenn could finally relax. Back home in Lincoln, Neb., a couple of weeks ago, he was enjoying some hard-earned vacation time in the historically preserved, 100-year-old home of his daughter, Erin, and her husband, Jim Glenn-Hash.
On his last day in town, he challenged his son-in-law to a “World Series” of pingpong in the basement. Showing his competitive fire, Glenn rallied from a 14-7 deficit to win the seventh and deciding game in a best-of-seven series, then put his sweat-soaked Wyoming T-shirt back on and went upstairs to say goodbye to his daughter.
Kneeling, he put his face to her belly and sang “Ragtime Cowboy Joe” to the baby that’s due any day now.
Jim Glenn-Hash said, “You know, he’s just a fierce competitor. I was undefeated until he came into my house and beat me. But, oh, my gosh, did we have fun.”
Erin said, “I was like, ‘Oh, my God, he’s not doing this.’ But you know, that’s just my dad.”
Yes, that’s Joe Glenn, head football coach at Wyoming.
And that, in a couple of family snapshots, is probably the secret of Glenn’s success.
He loves to win, and he loves to love.
Last December, the Cowboys upset UCLA 24-21 in the Las Vegas Bowl, a game considered the last step in a remarkable two-year turnaround at Wyoming – a program that had won just five games in the three seasons before Glenn arrived from Montana. A few weeks ago, Glenn, 56, was hailed on the cover of The Sporting News as “the next big thing” in college football, the coach all failing big-time programs will want to hire next winter.
Last week, Sports Illustrated ranked Wyoming No. 25 in its annual preseason poll, another nod at Glenn’s coaching acumen.
For Joe’s big brother, Pat, and the rest of his siblings, none of this is a surprise. In the big house on Garfield Street where the 12 children of Patrick and Dorothy Glenn grew up in Lincoln, the sixth child was known as “Joey Ballgame.”
“Some people can’t believe anybody could be that enthusiastic all the time, but believe me, it’s real,” said Pat Glenn, the oldest of the Glenn children and a member of the Nebraska Musicians Hall of Fame. “I’ve never seen him be anything else.
“When I was a senior in high school, I had a rock ‘n’ roll band, and sometimes I’d have a couple of the guys sleep over on Saturday nights after we’d been down in Maryville, Kan., partying all night,” Pat Glenn said. “Six o’clock in the morning, Joe, who was about 10 years old then, would come charging into the bedroom with the sports section to tell me all about some guy who hit three home runs or something. We probably should have killed him, but I think the guys all realized he wasn’t doing it to pester us; he was just really excited about it.
“That’s why I hung that nickname on him. He always had a game he was going to go watch or go play in.”
That enthusiasm never left Joe Glenn.
“I remember when he was in the Army stationed at Fort Leavenworth,” Pat Glenn said. “He was on the crew that fired the cannon over the Missouri River when President Harry Truman died, and he came home the next day, pulled in the driveway and opened the trunk. It was unbelievable. I mean, he could have fielded a soccer team, a baseball team and probably a football team with the stuff he had in there. Catcher’s equipment, football pads, badminton rackets, stuff I didn’t even know he played. But that’s just the way he was.”
Finding himself
The quarterback of an undefeated football team at Pius X High School, Glenn was recruited by the University of South Dakota. He eventually converted to wide receiver to get on the field as a senior and wound up setting a few receiving records.
His football inspiration came from the University of Nebraska and its coach, Bob Devaney. But when he began coaching, as an assistant at South Dakota and Northern Arizona, then as the head coach at tiny Doane College in Crete, Neb., there were others he chose to emulate.
“When I first started out, I wasn’t very happy in my own skin,” Joe Glenn said. “I thought you had to be like Woody Hayes or Frank Kush or somebody like that who was winning all the games. I don’t think until I got into my late 20s that I realized that’s not me.
“I mean, even when I was at Doane (1976-79), I would be a pretty good guy all day long, teaching and enjoying my job, going to have coffee with the guys downtown, and feeling good about myself,” Glenn said. “Then I’d go to practice and pull my hat down so tight, and try to be somebody else.
“It took me awhile to figure that out. I finally got to looking back at the people in my life and the coaches I had and who motivated me the best and realized it was more out of love than it was out of fear, I guarantee you that.”
Once Glenn got that figured out, there followed 16 consecutive winning seasons and three national championships as head coach – two at Northern Colorado and one at Montana – before he had his first losing season, 4-8, in his first year at Wyoming. A 7-5 record, including the bowl win last year, and suddenly everybody wants to know the secret to his success.
But if you ask his players, any of his assistants or the coaches who’ve coached against him on a regular basis, there is no secret.
The answer is on his sleeve, right next to where his heart is.
He’s not an innovator. He’s a motivator.
“The guys just really believe in him, and he’s not afraid to go for it,” said junior cornerback Derrick Martin of Denver’s Thomas Jefferson High School, the Cowboys’ most talented player.
“You look at the Las Vegas Bowl, and we were going to kick a long field goal in the fourth quarter. But instead we went for it, got the first down and pounded it in the end zone. Then we got a fumble on a punt return, and that changed the game around. He believes in us, and we believe in him.”
Said Air Force coach Fisher DeBerry: “Joe brings a lot of belief and a lot of enthusiasm. They’re probably a little ahead of where they thought they’d be, winning a bowl game and beating a Pac-10 team in their second year.”
The turnaround doesn’t surprise New Mexico coach Rocky Long.
“If a coach has a personality that mixes well with the players, and he has enough talent, they are going to win immediately,” Long said. “Joe’s personality fit with the players who were already there, and guess what, there was enough talent at Wyoming.”
Power of positivity
Joe Glenn confesses to not being a mastermind, but he has been scripting plays as long as Broncos coach Mike Shanahan.
He oversees the game plan, then delegates the calls to his coordinators, Bill Cockhill on offense and Mike Breske on defense, so he can concentrate on making adjustments and motivating players.
“I think the most important thing in any game is to figure out how the other guy is going to play you as quick as you can,” Glenn said. “Get some plays called that you think will work, then make adjustments as you go along. Halftime, the kids are usually pretty wound up, no matter if you’re ahead or behind, so I don’t try to put too much on them.
“I try to be a calming influence. I’ll say two or three things I think we need to do to play better, and that’s it. I try to be as positive as I can.”
Glenn said the main thing players are looking for, in addition to strategy, is encouragement, which fits his personality to a T.
“For a coach to be stoic on the sideline, I don’t think that’s right,” he said. “And for a coach to be crazy on the sideline, I don’t think that’s right, either. If I can infuse my enthusiasm and my excitement – not to be a cheerleader – but if I can be a positive force and be upbeat and just stay after it all the way through, then that’s what I want to do.”
And the only thing better than playing a game, said Glenn, is winning it.
“It’s the American way,” he said. “I’ve coached in enough games to know that if you don’t play good and you win, I’m still crazy about it. I’m maybe not as happy about it as if we’d played real good, but I’m still pretty darn ecstatic.
“Losing, you wear it right here in the neck and shoulders and you ache for about a week. But then you come out of it and start thinking about winning the next one.
“There’s an old country western song by Merle Haggard where he’s talking about wanting to quit the smoking and the drinking, I think, because ‘the lows keep getting lower than the highs.’ And that’s really true about winning and losing. Winning is what we all want.”
In Wyoming, expectations are sky-high.
“The people here, they’ve been dying to get a little respect after having lost it for a little bit, and now you can’t believe how it’s impacted the state,” Glenn said. “They don’t have to have a perfect season, I don’t think; they just want to have their fair share.”
Back in Lincoln, where the Cornhuskers have fallen on hard times, there is growing speculation that if Bill Callahan doesn’t get the program turned around in his second season, Glenn should be brought home to work his magic.
“Oh, I haven’t heard that one since about 3:30,” Pat Glenn said. “But I’ll tell you what, I’ve never heard it from my little brother.”
And he never will.
Glenn understands why there is such talk, but he’s not going to endorse it.
“I’m a guy that lives for today. I’m not looking for a job,” Glenn said. “I love the job I’ve got. The people I work for here are just outstanding, and we’re getting to the point where I think we can compete on a pretty high level.
“You know, we just walked off the field in Las Vegas a few months ago, and you couldn’t feel any better than that.”
Staff writer Joseph Sanchez can be reached at 303-820-5458 or jsanchez@denverpost.com.
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About Joe Glenn
Age: 56
Hometown: Lincoln, Neb.
College: South Dakota, 1971
Coaching career: Led Wyoming to first bowl appearance in 11 seasons a year ago. … Cowboys won their first bowl game in 38 years. … Wyoming recorded its first win in history over a Southeastern Conference school in 2004, beating Ole Miss 37-32. … In 2003, Wyoming defeated Colorado State and Brigham Young, the first time since 1988 the Cowboys had done so in the same season. … Has won three national championships, one at Montana (Division I-AA) and two at Northern Colorado (Division II), and six conference titles.
Personal: Wife, Michele; children Erin and Casey.
COACHING RECORD
Year School Record
2004 Wyoming 7-5
2003 Wyoming 4-8
2002 Montana 11-3
2001 Montana 15-1
2000 Montana 13-2
1999 Northern Colorado 11-2
1998 Northern Colorado 11-2
1997 Northern Colorado 13-2
1996 Northern Colorado 12-3
1995 Northern Colorado 9-3
1994 Northern Colorado 7-4
1993 Northern Colorado 8-3
1992 Northern Colorado 6-5
1991 Northern Colorado 8-3
1990 Northern Colorado 7-4
1989 Northern Colorado 6-4
1979 Doane College 5-4-1
1978 Doane College 6-4
1977 Doane College 5-5
1976 Doane College 5-5
Overall record 169-72-1
Source: University of Wyoming
