Soldiers inspire Jerry Glanville back into service

"When we flew out here," he says, "my wife told me, 'Let's keep an open mind,' which meant we weren't taking the job. But the very first day, she loved the city.

"She said, 'I could live here.' "

Glanville loves it too. He and wife Brenda, married nearly 35 years, live downtown in the hip and trendy Pearl District, which is packed with bars, restaurants and art galleries.

"I loved New York," says Glanville, who lived in the city when he was a broadcaster, "but I love Portland even better than New York City. My wife misses New York theater, but we've got everything here -- without the taxicabs and the horns honking."

Glanville too seems determined to make less noise.

"My wife made me promise not to coach these kids like I coached pro football players as far as intolerance and impatience," he notes. "We'll make a mistake here and we'll keep working at it, where in pro football if a guy made those mistakes you'd get him a comic book, an apple and a bus ticket. He heads down the highway and you get somebody else.

"That doesn't happen here, of course, and so you're able to see people grow and get better."

Glanville says his team, 3-8 in his first season and 4-7 a year ago, will continue to improve too, though it concerns him that much of the administrative group that hired him has since left.

"It's my fault we're not better," he says. "One person is to blame, and that's me. You fix that by stringing wins together."

Athletic Director Torre Chisholm remains supportive.

"We probably haven't had the competitive success that we were hoping for," he notes, referring to Glanville's record, "but we're headed in the right direction. He's implemented a program that's built on integrity, hard work and doing the right thing, and he's recruited athletes to fit that approach. . . .

"The reality at the college level is that it takes you a little bit longer to retool a team than it does at the pro level, but we've had tremendous success the last two years in recruiting."

Does name recognition give the coach a foot in the door?

"With the parents more than the kids," Glanville says, laughing. "The parents tell the kids of past achievements, past jobs. These kids weren't around when we were winning games in Atlanta and Houston, you know? They weren't even born."

Glanville was reminded of that in Iraq, he says, when a soldier from Round Rock, Texas, asked him to pose for a photo.

Why him, the coach wondered.

Recalls Glanville, laughing, "He told me, 'You're my grandmother's favorite coach.' "

--

jerome.crowe@latimes.com