| The
Auburner Interviews Al Borges By: Mark and Ryan 4-8-07
What brought you into football and coaching? Well, that man on the wall over there was a huge influence in my life, my mother’s brother, he played professional football with the Raiders, 49ers and was a coach, my coach from little league and later on in junior college. He had a big influence on me and I knew I didn’t have a future in MLB or the NFL or major league basketball but I loved the game – I loved playing in the sandlots. I figured the next best thing to if you really didn’t want to be a great player was to coach. So, I kinda learned how to do it from the ground up from a young age. I was a coach before I graduated college, so that’s what really got me into it was the passion of the game. But that’s it – that’s how I got into college. What kind of team did you first coach? The first team I coached was baseball, coaching 17 and 18 year olds when I was 19 believe it or not. Then I started coaching varsity football at Selinis High School and I was a little too young for that, so I coached some jr varsity football without any realistic aspirations to coach at the college level – maybe to be a high school coach someday, which would have been fine with me. One thing lead to another. You never know where life is going to take you with twists and turns. We saw you were a coach in that crazy California Stanford game with the kickoff return for a touchdown at the end… That’s how I got into college football – my uncle knew Joe Capp, Joe was a pro player in the NFL – played with the Vikings - He was from my hometown and my uncle and he talked to him about getting me a job as what they call a restricted earnings or part time assistant coach at Cal-Berkeley, and he brought me in there in 1982. I had just graduated college in 1982. I had a round about way, I come from 7 kids, I graduated HS in 1973 but I was trying to find myself for 4 years, I didn’t graduate college until 1981. That was 8 years which set my career back but I was always coaching in that time which helped me find my passion. So in 1981 I accepted this job. That’s how I got in, that was the year of the play - you know in 1981. Compare the differences between working in Cal and AL The working isn’t much different but the environment is much different. There is a tremendous passion in Alabama. The difference is that football season is year round. In Cal, it’s a seasonal thing. Here’s it’s a year round proposition. The football isn’t too much difference – it’s just what’s outside with the press and media and all the other stuff. Does the media play up the differences between how football is played on the west coast and in the SEC too much, or is there really a difference? I have found that the SEC, after coaching in the Big 10 and Pac 10, has the best talent and best speed. From the coaching position, I don’t see much of a distance. You can tell when they play each other. The difference is with the speed level down here. Even on the teams which aren’t great. On the west coast, you don’t see nearly that many teams with that speed. A team like USC has that kind of speed, they can play anyone top to bottom and you don’t usually see that in college. What kind of stuff do you do in the off season? It’s tedious. It’s not as bad as in season, but we go from August to the bowl game in January… then the recruiting is in November to February and you are out all the time. Then you start your winter conditioning programs, then you get to review what we call cutups from the season which is all offense and defense from the season. We look at it and look at the differences we want to make which runs to Spring ball which is in late February which will run a few weeks. It’s really non stop except for Christmas break. Now we have a 3 week window where we are doing clinics. After that we go out to spring recruit which is a four week deal. That runs up to June which is where we start our camps. That starts at the end of May and goes to June. We vacation from the middle of June to July. We then come back and start for fall camp and start all over again. It’s a year round proposition. Some guys always go around the clock but we don’t do that here. It’s a little more normal job now than in the middle of the season. I never come in at 9 in the middle of season when things are rolling, but it’s a nice break at the moment. What game – other than the first game – do you look forward to the most? Well, I’m just looking forward to the first game. Coaches won’t talk about another game until that next game. We were trying to dodge that answer. We thought we were being clever. No. That didn’t work. You guys don’t understand, I’ve answered every question known to man. Good try though. I don’t go for trying to answer the same question in another way. I’ve seen every media trick known to man. A guy will try to ask the same question to me a second time and I’m like “That’s the same freakin’ question you just asked” and I’m like “I’m not answering any way than the way I just did.” Who do you interact with more, players or coaches? Oh coaches. Players you’re only around 20 hours a week, coaches you’re around with all the time. Even in pro football, you’re with the players all day, but still you’re with the coaches more. That 15,000 laptop which was stolen - why was it worth so much? I wasn’t worried as much as the expense than what was on it. The whole game plan was on there. That’s better than the playbook. It’s all so finite, you can cut it up into individualized anything you want. I can dial up anything I want. [[He shows an example of the video capabilities of his laptop on his desk. Basically, he can do a search for any play Auburn or an opponent has run in the past few years and instantly watch a string of videos of that play. Very impressive stuff ]] How
long have you had this technology available where you don’t
have to switch out tapes? |
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