CARSON, Calif. — Before what inadvertently became the XFL’s final game, Norm Chow and Jerry Glanville held an unusual impromptu meeting.
Glanville, the former NFL coach serving as the Tampa Bay Vipers’ defensive coordinator, met Chow, the Los Angeles Wildcats’ offensive coordinator, on the field at the Dignity Health Sports Park in Carson, California, to show the former BYU assistant his play-calling sheet.
“It was all color-coded and laminated and everything,” Chow recalled. “He said, ‘Here’s my plan. Can I do anything to help you?’”
Then Glanville told a story.
“He said, ‘Our players keep coming up to me and saying, ‘Hey, the opponents know exactly what we’re doing,’” Chow said. “And Jerry’s response was, ‘Well, that’s not possible because we don’t know what we’re doing.’
“I said, ‘Hey, join the crowd. Do you want to see my sheet?’”
That exchange illustrated the kind of relaxed atmosphere that made the XFL one of Chow’s most enjoyable experiences in his career, one spanning five decades that included stops at N.C. State, USC, UCLA, Utah, Hawaii and the NFL’s Tennessee Titans.
“The XFL ranked right up there with the total package of having fun coaching, having fun putting up game plans and having fun working with people. It was an absolute blast. An absolute blast.” — Norm Chow
“The XFL ranked right up there with the total package of having fun coaching, having fun putting up game plans and having fun working with people,” Chow said. “It was an absolute blast. An absolute blast.”
In the process, Chow helped the Wildcats develop one of the league’s most potent offenses. Los Angeles finished second in points (129), passing yardage per game (250.0) and touchdowns (17). Quarterback Josh Johnson — a 33-year-old veteran of camps with 13 NFL teams — ranked second in total passing yardage (1,076) and touchdowns (11) despite not playing the season opener.
“Norm really trusted him to run the offense,” said wide receiver Nelson Spruce, who led the Wildcats with 20 catches. “Norm was great. He just let us have a lot of freedom within the offense, giving us the space to do what we do best. I don’t know if it was surprising, but it was different. He’s a legend offensively, as a coach, so it was cool to get to work with him.”
Johnson attributed his unprecedented success to Chow’s influence.
“I feel like I improved a lot under him,” the quarterback said. “I loved working with Norm. He was very understanding and a great teacher. He was just an amazing person to be around in general.”
BYU influence
Even after 21 years away from Provo, BYU’s influence remained pervasive. During Chow’s tenure at the university, head coach LaVell Edwards and staff devised the passing attack that nurtured such quarterbacks as Steve Young, Jim McMahon and Heisman Trophy winner Ty Detmer.
“I still have notebooks from Doug Scovil, for example,” Chow said about the Cougars’ late offensive coordinator. “Certainly that experience helped.”
Yet Chow never let his vast experience turn into aloofness.
“He always treated the players with respect,” Spruce said. “He appreciated the players. He’s been around and doing it at such a high level forever. But every day, he would just say how honored he was to work with us, even in a start-up, first-year league like the XFL.
“He always treated the players with respect. He appreciated the players. He’s been around and doing it at such a high level forever. But every day, he would just say how honored he was to work with us, even in a start-up, first-year league like the XFL.” — wide receiver Nelson Spruce
“Sometimes, you get other coaches who were yelling and screaming and talking down to you. But he looked at us as a friend, as well as a coach.”
Chow had been away from high-level coaching since 2015, when the University of Hawaii fired him as head coach. Returning to his home in Manhattan Beach, a suburb of Los Angeles, Chow helped a local high school team as a volunteer assistant in 2016 before retiring.
Unexpected offer
Last year, Chow received an e-mail “out of the clear blue,” he said, from the Wildcats’ new head coach and general manager. Winston Moss, the Green Bay Packers’ associate head coach for 12 seasons before being fired in 2018, wanted Chow as his offensive coordinator.
“So I met him up in L.A. at a hotel,” Chow said. “We talked, we met a second time and we decided to do it.”
With the Wildcats, Chow molded an offense that could react to any contingency.
“We were able to do a lot of stuff at the line, depending on the looks the defense gave us,” Spruce said. “As a receiver, a lot of our routes had options built into them, depending on what coverage we saw or how a defender was playing. A lot of offenses have that incorporated in it, but it was very prominent in ours, I would say.”
Chow found an audience that was more than receptive.
“The nice part was that it was fun to be around the players,” he said. “That part was probably as much fun as I’ve ever had. The players only wanted a shot at the National Football League. With guys out of college or in the NFL, in my experience, if you prove to them that you’re trying to help them, they’ll do whatever they can to make themselves better.
“These players are good players, really good football players. Most importantly, there were a lot of good people. In fact, if there’s one regret that I have, it’s that we don’t get a chance to work with these players because they were outstanding.”
Coaching camaraderie
Chow also enjoyed brainstorming with his fellow assistants. Among them were receivers coach Mike Wilson, who won four Super Bowls with the San Francisco 49ers, and offensive line coach Jerry Fontenot, an assistant with the Packers for 10 years.
“Every day as we sat around, we said, ‘What about this? Let’s try this,’” Chow said. “I learned a lot. I used to run a certain route and ran it for years at BYU. I ran it a certain way. Mike said, ‘Why don’t we try this?’ Mike’s route actually was pretty good. It was easier and we ran it that way. Mike taught me something new. That part was fun.”
The Wildcats’ environment provided a stark contrast to the atmosphere in the NFL and NCAA.
“The NFL was a lot of work — tons and tons of work, and tons and tons of pressure,” Chow said. “Everybody wanted to win, and everybody wanted to win immediately — no ifs, ands or buts. Right after the game, I went right back into the office, graded the tapes and got ready for the next one. It was a grind. I did go to USC and it was almost like the NFL as far as the pressure, and UCLA.”
Not all fun and games
But even in the XFL, the pressure during a game proved powerful, as ESPN captured during the Wildcats’ final game March 8.
A frustrated Johnson took a call from the press box and told Chow, “Y’all are doing way too much arguing and complaining. Call plays.” After a brief pause, Johnson told Chow, “Stop that! Stop it.” Earlier in the game, ESPN showed Johnson calling Chow an “idiot” after another call.
The confrontations took place as the Wildcats recovered from a 24-6 deficit to earn a 41-34 victory, the largest comeback in the league’s brief history. Johnson threw a career-high four touchdown passes while completing 20 of 36 for 288 yards and an interception.
“That’s normal stuff,” Spruce said about the incident. “I’ve seen that happen a lot of different places. In the heat of the moment, that type of stuff happens. It just happened to be in the XFL. With more cameras and more access, it got picked up.”
Chow offered his perspective.
“One of our tight ends got hurt, and he was hurt badly,” he said. “So (Johnson) heard what the coaches were trying to figure out what to do next. He heard a lot of confusion, if you will.
“When I met my wife and my son to go home, they said, ‘People are telling us about how this quarterback got after you.’ I told them, ‘Hey, don’t worry about it. I knew I was going to get a phone call.’
“Sure enough, by the time I got home, Josh called. He had heard about it and felt so badly because that’s not him. He’s very, very competitive. I told him, ‘Hey, whatever I was called, I’ve been called a lot worse in my career, so don’t worry about it.’ We had a good laugh about it.”
That postgame phone call, Johnson asserted, will not be the last.
“We will stay in touch,” he said two months later. “The bond that we created is a bond that will last for a lifetime now. I check on him and he checks on me. I have a great amount of respect for him.”
Four days after the game, the XFL suspended its schedule due to the coronavirus outbreak.
“They sent us all home with the idea that the season was going to finish,” Chow said. “They were planning on playing the championship game and they were talking about next year. They were talking about facilities. They were talking about how things were going to get better. They were talking about how many guys they were going to bring back, and all that kind of stuff. It was very, very promising.”
But the promise died on April 10, when the league ceased operations. Three days later, it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
“It was tough to see that happen because we had a good program,” Chow said. “We had a good administrative staff, good coaches and it was exciting. It was fun.”