Tracking proCanes - Chad Wilson - Part II

Part II: Chad talks about Dennis Erickson as a coach, the “U” Family, former teammate CJ Richardson and Carlos Jones and much more!  Click here to read Part I of our interview with Chad.

pC: How was Erickson as a coach?
CW: I read Kevin Brinkworth’s statements about him and he pretty much hit it on the head.

pC: Did he run a loose ship? Were the players really running the place? Or is that kind of blown out of proportion?
CW: I don’t know how things are now. But the players were accountable for themselves and we got on each other and if you were just an outsider coming in it might look like we ran the show but we just didn’t necessarily wait for a coach to tell us to do something. Even down to when it would rain. When the lightning struck, we didn’t turn to the coaches. We started taking it in. They had to deal with the fact that 85 players are running off the field now and you’re not going to have a practice now because we said that’s it. And that works to our advantage when we’re on the field. It’s just a different thing about us. So to say we were on a loose ship? I don’t know. Was he a disciplinarian? Certainly not. Did he sweep some things under the rug? Yea he did. Did it hurt us in the end? Yeah, it probably did, so I don’t know.

pC: Did you guys know he was leaving after the bowl game?
CW: No. There was speculation but, no.

pC: Did he say anything in that locker room after the loss? He didn’t ever address it?
CW: Nope. It wasn’t anything like that. I knew when Lubick was leaving. He told us he was taking the job at Colorado State and it was a whole emotional goodbye to his defensive backs. If you knew Lubick, to see him get emotional you were like wow, but never with Erickson.

pC: Talk a little bit about Miami and that tight bond with old players going back and helping the young guys. Do you go back often?
CW: Early on I’d make it to all the games and I’d come around campus but life gets in the way. I’ve got three kids. I don’t miss any of their things. I coach their teams and as they got older the games would get later in the day on Saturday so I couldn’t make it to the games unless it was a night game. Randy has a passion for bringing teams down and making them play in the noon heat so it kind of cuts me out from going to the games. The alumni event I couldn’t go to because I had something to do for my kids, so I guess life gets in the way a little bit. But I’ve made it down here. I brought my youth football team down last year and Mike Barrow gave them a tour. I’ve been coming down to the campus more now since I started the website and talking with the coaches so it’s good that it’s allowed me to do that and it’s in the course of my living so hopefully I can make it to more games this year.

But the whole thing about the “U” family, that’s the uniqueness of this place and that’s what I try to get across to recruits. I say listen, don’t get hung up in the fact that Oregon has an underwater treadmill. In the grand scheme of things that really doesn’t mean anything. You’re not there to be in the locker room. It’s what’s going to happen on the field and your future and so on and so forth. You have the opportunity to come to this place (UM) if they’re recruiting you and if you’re interested and have pros come back and teach you the game and teach you how things are there. I remember being out on the field one summer and Michael Irvin came out and ran routes with us. That doesn’t really happen much at the other places like it does here. And once you’re a ‘Cane it’s like a fraternity, it’s like a brotherhood. I can see a ‘Cane that I didn’t play with, like Jeff Popovich, but it’s like we have the same mom almost. That’s the uniqueness of this place.

pC: You played with Dexter Seigler and Ryan McNeil. How was it playing with two greatest defensive backs in UM’s history? Did they mentor you?
CW: Well Ryan mentored me because he was older. Dexter saw me come in as a threat. He didn’t say it but he would ask certain questions and Paul White too. There was nothing better than being at our meetings because I think the funniest guys on the team were the defensive backs. Dexter didn’t really mentor me, he saw me more as competition whereas Ryan was an established All-American and he knows I’m not here for his spot, so he would mentor in that sense. That whole ‘92 class, those guys I really looked up to. All three of those linebackers (Michel Barrow, Darrin Smith, Jesse Armstead), even outside of football, just how they’ve handled their lives outside of football. What they did with their finances, how they carried themselves, top notch. And it’s something, now that I’m not playing, that I reflect on. Man this is how these guys did these things and they set a pretty good example which is great because I’m not playing football anymore so I don’t really need to reflect on how they covered a guy coming out of the backfield. I need to think about how they did things off the field.

pC: Did you have a nickname?
CW: Nothing that stuck. They did remind me a lot when I first got here that I wasn’t at Long Beach State anymore. Anytime something went wrong or I did something wrong or I got beat, “you’re not at Long Beach State!” Even Tubberville jumped in on that. I think he may have been the one that started it.

pC: So where would you say was the toughest place to play an away game? The Carrier Dome because it was so loud?
CW: No. You know I wrote for the school newspaper too. I wrote a column while I was here and I would always get on the West Virginia fans because they were the worst. They’d yell all kinds of stuff. I remember the phone ringing one time. We had the phone on the sideline and Lamar Thomas and someone else were coming over and the phone was ringing and someone yelled ‘Hey Lamar, get the phone, it’s your probation officer!’ and they’d yell all kinds of stuff. Some of it would be racial but whatever you couldn’t let them get under your skin. One year they threw a trash can and hit Randy on the head and hurt his neck. They were just crazy. We went there in ‘93 and it had to be 10 to 15 degrees outside and the guys are bareback painted up and they ran onto the field after the game (they beat us 10-7) so they were probably the roughest crowd. I’d heard from guys before that LSU was crazy. They’d throw batteries and you weren’t supposed to come out of the locker room without you’re helmet on and all that. But for me when I was there, the worst was West Virginia.

pC: What do you think about the program now? It has suffered the last few years, why do you think it did?
CW: I think the program suffered the last few years for the same reason why we started to fall down in the 90’s, the recruiting. Some coaches get recruiting and understand it, and others don’t. Erickson’s group, I don’t know that they ever really did. I don’t know, I might get some flack for this, but for those two championships he won, I don’t want to take anything away from him as a coach, but the majority of the playmakers out there were guys Jimmy recruited. I felt like once he left the cupboard was bare. And in Coker’s years, he did the same thing, he had early success with players recruited by Butch. Butch was an awesome recruiter. So I think that’s the deal, it’s just the recruiting thing. I think Randy’s gotten it back on track.

pC: So you think Randy is the man for the job?
CW: Yeah I do. I really do. We’re in a world now where we’ve got to see results now or the fans want the coaches fired. Fans say that Randy has this year and if he doesn’t get it done this year [he’s done] and I’m like holy crap! The guy is in his third season, a brand new head coach, he’s doing good things, we’re not on the police block, he’s trying to deal with cupboard that was bare. It’s a very difficult job and you’ve got to allow the guy time to do it. Yeah, give him 5 years; give him to the point that his kids are seniors, 5th year seniors. If it’s still not happening then, if it’s still mediocre then, then maybe you have an argument. But to say in his third year “he must win” it’s ridiculous. I hate to see that.

pC: What would you say is the most common misconception about UM players is?
CW: Every guy that you talk to is going to say the same thing: that we’re thugs because we enjoyed ourselves on the field and okay we might have had some run-ins with the law, but you know I had this conversation with a guy yesterday, who is a Florida Gator. I said you see what’s going on now? Take it from someone who’s been at two division football programs. It’s no different at Florida then it is at Miami then it is at Texas then it is anywhere, unless maybe BYU or something like that. They’re all doing the same crap, it’s just that when you start winning championships there are more eyeballs on you. There are more people there waiting to tear you down and find the bad. We’ve already seen the good, that’s great you’re up here. There’s no where else to go but down here. So they’re around your campus more they’re following you around more. You’re more visible. So now the things that you were doing that no one cared about, now they care about them. That’s what’s going on with the Gators and that’s what happened with Miami. That’s all it is. We weren’t thugs, we were just 19 and 20 year-old kids, going out and doing crap that 19 and 20 year-old kids did. We’re not thugs and like what Brinkworth said, look at what this class has done. You’ve got a movie star, you’ve got a guy that’s in the WWE, you’ve got it all over the place. So multi-talented.

pC: Brinkworth said he couldn’t really tell me a crazy story and then he ended up telling me a crazy story, you’ve got to give me some sort of good crazy story.
CW: Well without naming names I’ll give you a good crazy story. We were all in building 36. We all lived there. If you can imagine a bunch of football players being in one building. It probably wasn’t a good idea and that’s why they broke it up anyway. So, four guys in one room started playing pranks on four guys in another room and they are going back and forth and back and forth. So having to one up each other the end of the pranks was one of the guys in one of the apartments took a crap on a plate and somehow got into the apartment of the other side and put it up in the air vent and got out of there! Every time there AC kicked on, the most horrible smell would fill up the room and they were like what the hell is that? It’s hot in South Florida so you’ve got to have you’re AC on, so that crap would kick on and oh man! I thought it was the greatest prank ever. So it ended up that someone had the grand idea, hey let’s see what’s in the vent, and they found the plate and they were like oh my god! But to give you one story it’s very difficult.

Word Associations, Give me the first thing that pops in your head when you read the following: 
Erickson: oh man, uh, tough one. You hit me with that one early. Uh, wow. Come back to that one
Randy: A Cane. When I think of a Cane that’s a Cane.
Larry Coker: Over his head.
Orange Bowl: Mystique.
Dolphin Stadium: Um, temporary. Temporary, I hope.
The Ibis: The symbol.
The Fiesta Bowl: Heartache.
Ohio State: I’m in the recruiting business now, um, robbery.

pC: Can you think of one for Erickson?
CW: Normally when I do this, stuff jumps to mind.

pC: Is it more because of your Seattle experience or your UM days? I get the sense that he’s not on your good side. If you saw Frank Costa, I think he said no comment.
CW: Really? I’m not bitter with him about my days in Seattle or cutting me. I guess in the end it felt like it wasn’t really his decision. I felt like the general manager was pulling the plug on that. Could he have kept me if he wanted to? Sure, you know, he kind of told me a story about how there’s a chance we’ll bring you on the practice squad. But when I’m holding a ticket in my hand that you paid $1200 to send me from Seattle back to Miami, I know you’re full of ****. So I kind of would have preferred if he would have looked me in the eyes and said ‘listen they cut you.’ At least give me that. I don’t know, I guess that would symbolize some of the stuff that went on. The word that would come to mind would be, I don’t know.

pC: Talk about your senior year. You were an All-Big East player. Did you start your whole senior year?
CW: Actually my second season here I started the first game. And I’ll give you the truth on this. Paul White and I were in a battle in the spring after my first year here and I felt like I beat Paul out straight up and I don’t know if there was an allegiance to Paul because he had been here two years before me, but they came up with the idea that you guys are going to rotate starts. Chad you start the first game and Paul you start the second and rotate and I was a guy left with one year to make enough of an impression to NFL scouts and I felt like man am I going to be able to do that and what games am I starting? I had to pull the schedule out and see Boston College, looks like I’ll start the Florida State game and the Colorado game. Okay, it looks like I had the better of the starts. The week leading up to the second game I got hurt. I hyper-extended my knee. I thought I had torn ligaments but they did an MRI and I didn’t, but I wasn’t able to play the second game which was Virginia Tech. So, I wasn’t supposed to start that game, Paul started like he was supposed to and I was good enough to come back and play the third game which was the game I was supposed to start. But now when I’m ready to come back the defensive coordinator, McMackin says to me, ‘Oh well no, Paul is starting this week.’ I said “well he started last week and you told me we were going to alternate starts and I’m ready to come back.” He goes ‘no, Paul will start and if you’ve got a problem with that…’He came at me that way! I said “alright I don’t have a problem with it, that’s fine if that’s what you want to do.”

So I went to the practice and said you know what, I don’t think my knee is right, I don’t think I could play. I wasn’t going to sacrifice my senior year. I felt like I blew the previous year, they could have and should have red-shirted me because I didn’t really play a significant amount of time, I was behind Ryan McNeil. If Ryan were to get hurt or anything I wasn’t going to go in. It was going to be Paul. So you guys should have red-shirted me. So I lost that year, so I didn’t want to come my next year, my senior year and you [the coaches] blow it for me too. I didn’t want that and I remember this conversation with Hurley Brown and he said to me: ‘listen take it from me because I did the whole alternate starts thing with Charles Pharms and you don’t want anything to do with that.’ So I kind of took that to heart and said the right thing is maybe I’m not 100%. Could I have come back and played? Yeah. Would I have been alright by the end of the year? Yeah. But I said sometimes you’ve just got to look out for yourself. My senior year is not going to be spent starting against Temple starting against this one and that one and he gets all the choice starts and at the end of the year I’m left holding the bag. So I said “I don’t think I’m ready to play.” The next week I said “I don’t think I’m right yet.” Then I finally said “hey you guys need to probably red-shirt me.”

pC: So they red-shirted you?
CW: Yeah they red-shirted me. So I took the red-shirt year and in the end it was great. Paul was able to start all of the games, finish his senior year out strong and not have to rotate and alternate with me and I just came out the next year and started all 13 or however many games we played.

pC: Who did you start opposite from?
CW: Carlos Jones.

pC: Why did he fall off? Did he just get in the dog house?
CW: I think he relaxed. Carlos had kind of like a lazy way about him. It could kind of be misunderstood but he’s a New Orleans kid and the way he comes across, it could look like he’s just not playing hard and that’s why I think it’s important for coaches, and Jimmy was really good at this, at understanding a kid and treating everyone differently. I think he fell into the dog house and of course the new staff came in they didn’t really understand him in ‘95.

pC: He played his freshman year and made a couple of great plays against Florida State.
CW: His next year he played along me and had 5 interceptions and think he was tied for the team lead and man after I left, that was a disappointment for me because I felt like the kid was on his way and he ended going to Seattle as a free-agent. He ended going up with Erickson and they cut him. So I was disappointed in that because I felt like he was going to be a superstar.

pC: Can you talk about CJ Richardson a little, only because he is one of my all-time favorite players. I never understood why he didn’t make it to the NFL.
CW: He didn’t fit the cookie cutter. He wasn’t a tall safety he wasn’t really big and he wasn’t really fast.

I loved that guy. I loved playing with him. My senior year it was Malcolm Pearson and CJ and I. CJ and I worked better together and I think it was just the kind of player I was. When Malcolm was on my side of the field I was a little nervous because Malcolm would come and jump routes and I’m doing the same thing, and I knew with CJ, I could give him the signal that I’m going jump this and if it’s not what I think it is, he would be over the top of me. With Malcolm I’d jump the route and I’d run into Malcolm and we’re both jumping the same thing and the guy goes behind and it’s done. But that defensive backfield didn’t give up a touchdown until the Pitt game which was late in the season and I remember we weren’t really aware of it and that week I think someone made us aware that we hadn’t given up a touchdown and Pitt scored one. I remember the look when the guy caught the pass and Malcolm was on the other side of the guy and I remember him looking at me and me looking at him and we had the look like, “Oh my god what the hell just happened” look.

pC: The defensive backs that year were no-names, no one was an All-American.
CW: We were all very hungry guys. Carlos was hungry he was trying to finally get into the starting line up. I was, because I thought I should have been starting the year before. CJ and Malcolm had been head hunters on the special teams for all those years and made a ton of plays and just wanted their time to shine. So you had four hungry guys back there. I think we worked hard. CJ was a hard hitter. He’d knock you’re head off. He’s a good guy. I know he hung around here a little bit after we were done and someone told me he was coaching High School football.

pC: Talk about for a second the move to Dolphin Stadium what do you think about that? Did you go to a game there yet?
CW: I have not been to a game at Dolphin Stadium and again it’s because I coach the football team. I don’t think I can give a fair opinion about a game in Dolphin Stadium because I haven’t been there. It just seems to me, when I see it on TV that there isn’t any atmosphere there and obviously it’s not the Orange Bowl. And that’s the problem, you’re comparing it to the Orange Bowl. It just doesn’t seem like there’s an atmosphere there.

The Orange Bowl for being rickety and run down, as a player, there’s nothing better than running out to into that stadium and feeling the energy. I guess some of it has to do with the kind of fans that were in there. Like the heart and soul fan that can afford to get in there and yell and cheer and really get out of their seat because that’s why they are there. It’s not like you said, a corporate place, where the guy’s back might be turned for a 90-yard kickoff return because he’s talking business. So I’m imagining that’s probably what’s going on there [Dolphins Stadium]. That’s the way of football now, corporate dealings. Unless you’re in one of these small towns, where there’s football and nothing else, I don’t know that you’d get that atmosphere. I don’t know if the Orange Bowl will ever be duplicated. You’d have to sacrifice too much money to create a place like that

pC: Talk about who’d you say was the most influential person in helping you develop your game?
CW: I don’t know. Don’t get me wrong I had great coaches. I learned something from Willie Brown, although I had two defensive back coaches when I was at Long Beach State and even though he was the Hall of Famer he was not the better of the two. The coach I had the second year was a guy by the name of Jimmy Warren and he was a great NFL defensive back, but unfortunately his claim to fame was, and you’ll look for this now the next time you see the play, he was the last guy that had a chance at Franco Harris in the immaculate reception. He was a great great coach. And he probably stands out to me out of the five defensive coaches I had in five years. He was the most instrumental in developing my game and developing the mental toughness I would need. I didn’t like him at first. No I didn’t like him, I thought the dude was a jerk, he was pretty much in our face, but I learned to love the guy afterward. When I left and came to Miami I kept in touch with him for several years. Actually when we went to the Sugar Bowl he came down to the hotel and met me at the hotel and we talked, he earned my respect.

pC: Your favorite NFL team?
CW: I don’t root for NFL teams anymore and there’s a story behind that. I grew up a big LA Rams fan. Don’t ask me how growing up in New York. I guess I liked the colors. They had Eric Dickerson. I loved Erick Dickerson. Loved him. And when they decided to let that guy go to the Colts over a million dollars I said okay I’m done rooting for teams. You know I like Eric Dickerson so I’m going to root for Eric Dickerson wherever he goes. I’m done with the Rams and I’m not rooting for any NFL teams. I root for players and I’d say last year the team I probably followed the most was the Ravens. I really love what they do.

pC: Do you follow baseball at all? Do you have a team in baseball?
CW: Yeah, I’m a huge, huge Yankee fan.

pC: Favorite Food?
CW: I don’t really have any. I like Italian.

pC: Band or Group we would find on your iPod?
CW: I like a lot of Busta Rhymes stuff.

pC: A movie you could watch over and over?
CW: Every football player you talk to likes Scarface but I like Training Day. I like Denzel Washington and I thought that was a great performance by him.

pC: A TV show you can’t miss?
CW: That changes over time. The whole family has gotten in love with Operation Repo Man. We watch that a lot.

pC: What do you do on your spare time?
CW: Spare time is not something I have a whole lot of. I like to read. I’m reading right now a book by Malcolm Gladwell it’s called Blink. And it’s about the power of thinking without thinking. It kind of talks about how you’re subconscious mind allows you to make snap decisions about when you meet people or when you’re in a situation. How that takes over without you even knowing. It’s very interesting.

pC: Two websites you have to check daily?
CW: GridIronStuds.com of course and I go on Scout a lot and ESPN.

We at proCanes.com would like to thank Chad Wilson for being so gracious with his time to do this very insightful interview for our new feature "Tracking proCanes." We would also like to thank JC Ridley for his help in tracking down photos of Chad Wilson. You can see more of JC’s photos at www.caneshooter.com and follow his blog at jcridley.blogspot.com. Click here to check out our past interviews with Leon Searcy, Steve Walsh, Frank Costa, John Routh and more!