By John Brice
Special Contributor
The head coach, young in his own right, couldn’t resist finding his way to a certain spot on the practice field, Tuesday after Tuesday, week after week.
Jason Simpson, then mid-30s and early into his still-ongoing record-setting tenure atop the formerly nascent University of Tennessee at Martin football program, remembers this relentless young coach, Gerad Parker, instilling a tenacious physicality into his wide receivers daily.
Especially in a drill Simpson continues to use today for the defending Ohio Valley Conference champion Skyhawks.
“When I hire a new receivers coach, I’ll ask them, ‘Have you ever heard the name Gerad Parker, because I want you to do his blocking circuit that he did when he learned it from Joker Phillips at Kentucky?’,” says Simpson, with the distinction of having given Parker his first-ever full-time coaching post in college football. “It looks a little outdated when we pull it up on film, but the fundamentals of it are correct.
“He used to do his block-technique on Tuesday, and wherever I was, I’d make my way over to his side of the field to see that.”
Even nearly 15 years hence, Simpson sees in the drill a visual of Parker the person – newly minted Notre Dame offensive coordinator.
“It’s a physical drill, you’ve got to be tough,” he says. “There were different things, chin-shots, basically just taking a running drive-block from the receiver. You have to partner up, the guys would have to cross their arms and take the brunt of his partner just coming at him, bending at the ankles, knees, taking the hits and the guy shooting his hands into the hairline of his hat (helmet). For those receivers to absorb that contact, that’s not always the most physical group, but Gerad played receiver and was coached by a physical coach, and I just thought that was neat.”
Simpson’s faith in Parker includes entrusting the former University of Kentucky wideout with the keys and responsibility of handling operations for UTM’s filming of practices.
Geep Wade, similarly at a fledgling stage of his career more than a decade ago at UTM, remembers toiling through various other chores with absolutely no bearing on a game plan or its execution.
A young coach’s rite of passage.
“We painted offices, cleaned out locker rooms, pressure-washed stadiums,” says Wade, Georgia Tech’s offensive line coach and owning experience as a colleague to Parker at both UTM and Marshall. “We had a nice grass practice field there at Martin, and we’d change from the game field to practice field to work, and at that level, you don’t get many angles to film (practice) and you don’t have a built-in tower. We all had little duties like that. Gerad was in charge of video, and we were all young and naïve to the pressure of the game.
“We just had fun, worked our tails off. Got there early, worked late.”
Parker’s 18 years of coaching, including his start at small, 300-student Raceland-Worthington High School in Kentucky, bring him to his standing as offensive coordinator of the Fighting Irish, a team in present form eyeing a 2023 College Football Playoff berth and a program whose historical placement in the sport carries few equals.
None of this is lost on Parker, who during his introductory press conference Monday intones an earnest, everyman-yearning to success because, of course, he’s a competitor but likewise because he knows he’s in Notre Dame’s top offensive chair through a series of events that in football parlance stem from off-script moments.
Parker doesn’t care. He’s continuing forward in all facets – admittedly dreaming along the way – since the departure of previous play-caller Tommy Rees.
“You transition to what is the direction and the times and the conversations you get to have with Marcus,” says Parker, native of Louisa, Kentucky, the state’s eastern-most community before the confluence of the Big Sandy, Levisa Fork and Tug Fork rivers gives way to West Virginia. “’Where are you headed with it? How can I help?’ And I mean that, and he knew I’m in it.
“Then there’s a little piece where you let your mind drift because I’ve always been ambitious. We all are, and ambition has a price. But also put a plan together. If my job were to maybe help with how we’re going to construct certain interviews, and I want to provide help that way. But then when my mind would drift late at night when I was wondering, I put notes in my phone.”
Notes still present in the iPhone of Parker, a father of four with wife, Kandi, a Kentucky High School Athletic Association Hall of Fame inductee for her dominant prep basketball career.
“I would constantly have things that I would put in, and if those things were just things that I kept in my phone for next year or the year after the year after, so be it,” says Parker, who in addition to Freeman considers former Tennessee national championship-winning offensive coordinator Randy Sanders and the one-time Notre Dame wideouts coach Phillips, also a former Kentucky head coach, along with Simpson among his key mentors. “My phone is decorated with those (notes), and when you put those in, you always stay prepared because what a sin it would have been if Marcus Freeman calls my number to do an interview and I’m not ready.
“That’s how I feel. That’s how I felt about it and what a shame had I not been ready for this opportunity.”
It is Valentine’s Day, and Freeman is feeling it during an extended, formal interview in which Parker is evincing ownership over his opportunity to grab the reins of the Notre Dame offense.
“To me, halfway through it, I said, ‘This is the guy,’” Freeman shares, moments before turning over the podium to Parker beneath the north end zone of Notre Dame Stadium, mere steps from the Irish locker room. “The way he talked about installs, the way he talked about developing our staff, the way he talked about developing the culture of that offense. I mean, it was so many different points, I said, ‘Man, this guy is it.’
“I might have not paid too much attention towards the end of it because I knew at that moment, I said, ‘I found our next offensive coordinator.’ And again, you don’t want to make emotional decisions. That’s why I didn’t stop the interview right then and there and say, ‘Hey, let’s hire him.’”
A former car-pooling partner of Freeman stretching to their days together at Purdue in 2013, Parker allows himself a glimmer that he, too, believes he is similarly crushing the interview in a process overall short on time – really, two weeks to find a coordinator is absolutely nothing when other programs are just wrapping up months-long searches – but ripe with twists.
Like a game itself, Parker is riding a seesaw of emotions; momentum swings back and forth.
“I’ll say this, I know (Freeman) very well, which is good to know; now, that’s good and bad,” Parker says. “That also means I know that when it’s getting ready to erupt a little bit, I know it’s getting ready to come at us. But I will say this, being able to communicate, look directly at him and see something halfway through that interview, I felt like I did, just to know that he liked where it was headed, and a genuine approach.
“I think I felt that energy, but more than anything, you just want to put out more of who you are. Then also have a clear, very clear and concise way of portraying, ‘Hey, this is where we’re at. This is where we want to continue to find ways to grow and push it forward.’ And I believe I did a nice job of being able to push that message to him.”
Joking he’s self-aware about potentially talking too much, Parker also shares he’s already communicating with the Irish offensive players – more than just his tight ends room and including ballyhooed transfer-quarterback Sam Hartman, an ACC record-holder from his career at Wake Forest, and returning starter Tyler Buchner.
He isn’t ready for spring camp to open today, but Parker doesn’t have to be; it’s coming in mid-March.
Still, the former college walk-on isn’t strolling leisurely into his new role.
“Well, if we dialed one up tomorrow, I’d be in there a little bit late tonight in the ‘Gug’ (preparing),” Parker laughs. “But we’d get it done. The beauty is this place, these guys, how they study, and being able to overcome a huge hurdle, which is half the battle is lining up. …
“So, to really answer your question, if we did it, we’d be able to get the job done. I probably wouldn’t sleep much, but our guys would have confidence to be able to go out there and line up in base formations and do some things, and that is going to help this transition be somewhat smooth.”
No doubt, Parker’s already making additional notes in his phone for the occasion.