OPPONENT SPOTLIGHT: Former NFL player Glueck heads Rams

Could anyone imagine Mike Ditka coaching anyone other than the Bears? Even more so, could anyone imagine Ditka coaching Fordham? Probably not. In fact, definitely not. But if it were not for some good breaks here and some bad breaks there, Fordham's head football coach Larry Glueck might have had Ditka's job and Ditka might have had Glueck's job. "My rookie year [playing for the Chicago Bears], we had a great defense," Glueck recalled about the 1963 Bears. "I played with Mike Ditka, who everybody knows, Richie Petitbon, the head coach of the Redskins, and Doug Adkins, who is also in the Hall of Fame." The bad break for Glueck, however, came when he tore his knee up. This may have been the single-most important event that relegated Glueck to the Patriot League while Ditka and Petitbon have gone on to coach in the National Football League. · Glueck's playing career blossomed as he helped lead Villanova to the 1962 Sun Bowl and the 1963 Liberty Bowl. Glueck remembers the Wildcats' 16-7 victory over Wichita State in '62 with great joy. However, his senior-year loss to Oregon State in the Liberty Bowl does not conjure up the same memories. "The Liberty Bowl was quite a challenge because Terry Baker was the Heisman Trophy winner and the quarterback at Oregon State," Glueck said. "He unfortunately ran 99 yards on a quarterback run. I happened to be the last guy that had a chance to tackle him. So, needless to say, whenever I go to any reunions with my teammates, they always bring that play up." Although Glueck failed to make the saving tackle, his football career was still on the way up. In the summer of '63, he was selected to play in the annual Chicago College All-Star Game. This game consisted of the premier graduating collegians in the nation challenging the defending NFL Champions. In 1963, the Vince Lombardi-led Green Bay Packers were the defending NFL champions. When Glueck saw the game films from the previous year and saw the Pack destroy the all-stars 42-20, he was more than a little bit unsettled. "I was excited to play some of the top players of the game at the time," Glueck remembered. "I happened to be a defensive back, so my job was to cover Max McGee and Boyd Dowler, who were for that time pretty outstanding receivers. "I was a little nervous. Then I watched the film from the previous year where [the Packers] destroyed the college all-star team 42-20. I was watching all the long passes that went over the defensive backs' heads. Then I was extremely nervous." Not to worry, however. The collegians came through with a terrific game to beat the legendary Packers 20-17. After this thrilling cap to a superb college career, Glueck was drafted by the Chicago Bears, where he played on the 1963 NFL Championship team with the likes of Ditka, Petitbon, Adkins and Hall of Famer Stan Jones. After his brief three-year stint for the Bears, Glueck returned home to begin his coaching career. Glueck returned to his alma mater of Villanova to earn his masters degree and coach the freshman football team. From there, he moved on to the Ivy League. His first varsity assistant coaching job came from Bob Odell at Penn. After this four-year relationship, Glueck moved on to another Ivy program – Harvard. Glueck spent 13 years as an assistant coach under Joe Restic for the Crimson, beginning in 1973. He spent his first six years coaching his former position – defensive backs. However, the job began to grow dull, so he moved to the other side of the ball to coach the offensive backfield. "Sometimes you get a little stale when you only coach one area or one side of the ball," Glueck explained. "I was looking for a new challenge. I thought it was a good move for me professionally. I was excited by the challenge and it gave me the perspective that I felt I needed on both sides of the ball." This new understanding helped to prepare Glueck for the new challenge that awaited him when he became the head coach at Fordham in 1986. "I was the basketball coach up at Harvard for eight years," Fordham Athletic Director Frank McLaughlin recalled. "Larry was an assistant coach for the football team, so we knew each other. When the coaching job [at Fordham] opened, we went through a search. We interviewed a number of people and as we narrowed the field down, I kept comparing the other guys to Larry. I just felt comfortable with him." Glueck's ability to build a football program from the ground up was evident almost immediately. In his first season at the helm for the Rams, he led the squad to a 4-5-1 record. Although his initial campaign was not extremely successful, the following season things began to turn around. Glueck led Fordham to the Liberty Conference Championship and the NCAA Division III East semi-final with a 10-2 record. Glueck's 1988 team repeated the success with a 9-2 record, good enough to take the conference title and make it to the playoffs once again. After successfully turning the Fordham program around, Glueck embarked on a new challenge – moving the Rams from Division III to Division I-AA. "I felt very good that we had changed the whole program around and suddenly the Patriot League invited us in," Glueck said. "We have basically struggled since then. That's been frustrating, but certainly from a challenge stand-point, I have the biggest challenge in the world." Glueck may be understating Fordham's lack of success in Division I-AA when he says that his squads have "struggled." In fact, the Rams have amassed a less than stellar 6-35 record since the move to the Patriot League in 1989. Although the future of the Fordham football program looks bleak now, Glueck is in this for the long haul. "I'm determined that we're going to try to get this thing done," Glueck said. "I think we're making progress, we just haven't seen it up on the scoreboard. We've lost some tough games. I see the light at the end of the tunnel, we just have to get to the end of the tunnel. Hopefully it's going to be soon." One thing is for sure. Glueck still has a head-coaching job while Ditka is now watching games from the media booth. Although this may not make up for the different paths their careers took, Glueck seems happy where he is. "I don't have any regrets," Glueck said. "Everybody goes down a different path in terms of their coaching experience. I've always coached at academic schools. I think that's where I belong."