Sports
Hunter Prepares For Opener
By PIERCE W. HUFF
Sports Editor
It’s 9:15 a.m., two weeks
before Clark Atlanta Universi
ty’s season opening game
against Morris Brown College
on Sept. 3, and 30 minutes after
the team breakfast at the
Crogman Dining Hall. First-
year head coach Willie Hunter,
wearing a red short sleeved
CAU coaching staff shirt, leans
back in the chair behind the
desk in his office and starts to
talk about the football team.
To the right on the wall
behind Hunter is an untitled
poem called “Attitude,” which
was given to all the members of
the football team. The poem
starts: "If you think you’re
beaten, you are; (End of first
line) If you think you dare not,
you don’t; (End of second line)
If you’d like to win, but you
think you can’t, (End of third
line) It’s almost certain you
won’t. (End of fourth line) If
you think you’ll lose, you’ve
lost....”
“I emphasize tough disci
pline, conditioning, weight
training because the football
team in order to win has to be
family-oriented,” he said. “In
doing this everything becomes
a team effort instead of an
individual effort.”
Hunter started his coaching
career in 1962, after playing
football and graduating from
Fort Valley State College, as an
assistant coach on the defense
at Carver Vocational High
School. He holds the distinc
tion of being the first Carver
graduate to go to a four-year
college and return to be a
member of the football staff.
He was an assistant coach at
Sylvan High School during the
intergration of the Atlanta
Public School system, an
offensive line coach at Georgia
Tech, the head coach at Fulton
High School a'nd the Panthers
defensive coordinator before
accepting the head coaching
job as the replacement for
coach William Spencer in
January .
Hunter says his tenure as the
offensive line coach at Georgia
Tech under Pepper Rodgers
best prepared him for being a
head coach at the college level.
“Pepper Rodgers was.a
technician, he knew all facets of
the ball game and as a result I
found out all I needed to know
to do if I was going to be a head
coach. I had to learn all facets
of the game, so if I was going to
talk to my coaches and my
players I would be intelligent,”
he said. “Tech making me an
offensive line coach was the
best thing that could have
happened to me, because I
learned offensive line tech
niques, offensive backfield
techniques and became
well-rounded.”
Entering his first season as a
head coach on the college level,
Hunter has been working hard
since his hiring to prepare the
Panthers for the upcoming
season because of his belief that
the football season doesn’t start
in the fall and end in the winter.
The first thing he did after
accepting the job as head coach
was to call a team meeting, to
tell players of their various
roles and start a new weight
training program.
“I started preparing because
football is basically a year
round sport.” he said. “In order
to be successful a team has to
have its’ athletes in their weight
programs in study halls, and
continue the discipline and
curfews, because if you don’t
do that then you aren’t going to
win.”
Last season the Panthers
were 3-7 and in July were
picked to finish the season in
eighth place by a football
coaches poll during the
Southern Intercollegiate
WILLIE HUNTER
Head Football Coach
Page 4
Clark Atlanta University Panther
August 24, 1990
Tough Year Ahead In NFL
By PIERCE W. HUFF
Sports Editor
Before Sports Illustrated and a lot of other
sports publications come out with their National
Football League predictions, let me get mine in
first. Don’t forget, you saw it here first. Let’s
start with the National Football Conference.
In the Eastern division, I like the Washington
Redskins. Last year the Redskins were 10-6, but
still failed to make the playoffs thanks to a loss to
the Dallas Cowboys. This year the Redskins will
atone for their mistake. Mark Rypien is one of
the best quarterbacks, Joe Gibbs is one of the
coaches, and the defense is underrated, which
are just the things a future division champion or
champion in general needs.
In the Central division, 1 like the Chicago
Bears. Chicago Bears head coach Mike Ditka’s
my kind of type A personality, and defensive
lineman Dan Hampton is back. Last year the
Hampton-less Bears were 2-10, which says a lot.
Defense wins divisions and with Hampton back,
expect the Bears defense to follow suit. It should
also be noted that people with a type A
personalty are used to getting what they want,
and Ditka, obviously a type A personality, wants
to win the division.
In the Western division, I like the Los Angeles
Rams. I would pick the49ers, but Joe Montana
agreed to the dreaded “t-word” in an L.A. Gear
comercial with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and we all
know what happened to Kareem’s team when
the “t—word” was said. The Rams have some
talent and John Robinson is a great coach. The
team that beats the 49ers is the team that wins it
all, and who knows the 49ers better than the
Rams? The 49ers are getting old, and the young
Rams are going to eat them alive. Would I lie to
you, don’t answer that.
I doubt that an American Football
Conference team will win the Super Bowl, but
I’ll pick the division winners anyway.
In the Eastern division, I like the Buffalo Bills.
This is clearly the worst overall division in the
NFL, but the Bills do have some talent. 1 would
love to see the Miami Dolphins win this division,
because they’re my favorite team, but they won’t.
As long as the Bills’ defense stays healthy, and
the offensive line keeps Jim Kelly in one piece,
the division is theirs for the taking.
In the Central division, I like the Pittsburgh
Steelers. Last year the Steelers showed me
something in their 24-23 loss to the Denver
Broncos in the AFC Divisional Playoff, and I
think they’ll show that exact same thing to the
rest of the NFL. The Steelers have character,
talent, and a great coach in Chuck Noll. Another
thing that will help them is the fact that
Cleveland won’t be able to recover from their
loss to the Broncos in last year’s AFC
Championship.
In the Western division, I like the Denver
Broncos. This is my only easy pick. Again the
Broncos are the best team in the AFC, because of
John Elway. I just don’t see any other team
winning this division, unless Kansas City
quarterback Steve Pelleur or Steve DeBerg does
a heckuva Dan Marino impersonation, and
believe me, that’s not likely to happen. Expect
the San Diego Chargers and maybe the Los
Angeles Raiders to have solid seasons, with the
Raiders playing Denver better than any team in
the AFC.
May I have a drum roll, please. There will be
no “t-word” for the 49ers. Look for the
Washington Redskins or the L.A. Rams to beat
the Denver Broncos to win the Super Bowl.
These teams are clearly the class of the NFL.
Hey, you have my word on it.
Athletic Conference’s annual
summer meeting held in
Atlanta, but Hunter remains
realistic about the upcoming
season and expects the same
from the fans. He maintains
that the team is in a rebuilding
stage and that it will be
competitive in three years.
“I can understand why (the
coaches polled) picked us that
low,” he said. “I believe that
this year we will become
competitive in the sense that
people will enjoy watching us
play. The fans just have to be
realistic and realize that we’re
rebuilding.”
One thing that Hunter has
gotten from his 28 years of
coaching is a strong belief that
in order for a football team to
win it has to have a strong
running game. This season he
predicts that the Panther
offense under offensive
coordinator Robert Haygood
will run the ball 60 percent of
the time, even though he feels
that the team has the best trio
of wide receivers in the S.I. A.C.
in senior Millard Hamilton,
senior Felix Lewis, and junior
Ed Jones.
“1 think you have to run the
ball before you can throw the
ball. Last year we were a
passing team, this year we’re
going to try and move the ball
on the ground so the defense
won’t be on the field too long,
because last year they were on
the field about 75 percent of the
time. In running the ball you
can control the tempo of the
game.” he said.
Last season the Panthers
defense allowed a conference
high 379 points. Hunter says
that large number can be
attributed to a large number of
lapses on the special teams and
not indicative of the play of the
defense.
This season Hunter points to
the play of four freshmen
defensive players from Metro
Atlanta: Sehdrick Austin from
Harper High School, Terry
Beckham from Southwest
Dekalb High School, Eric
Wilson from Southwest
Dekalb, and Mark Howard
from Southwest Dekalb, as the
key to how the Panthers will
fare in the upcoming season,
and how much playing time of
senior Millard Hamilton will
receive. If the freshmen
perform to his expectations in
the season opener against
Morris Brown, Hamilton will
continue to play offense. If they
don’t perform to expectations,
Hamilton will be forced to
return to the defensive
secondary.
“The freshmen are playing
real well. Early in the year we
had planned on playing
Millard Hamilton on both
sides of the ball, but because of
the way the freshmen are
playing we plan of having him
play offense,” he said.
Hunter finishes talking
football, gets out of his chair,
reflects upon the mentality
needed for his football team to
excel and points to the poem on
the wall. He reads the last line
of the poem; “But sooner or
later the one who wins is the
one who thinks he can.” -
“I think if the coaching staff
can get the players to believe in
themselves, the wins will
come,” he said. “It’s just like the
poem, because football is 90
percent mental and 10 percent
physical.”
