won 21 in your first season – what do you remember about being a first year head coach, what can you impart to a first year coach like Rodney Terry? BD: Well it kind of scared me, I picked up a magazine as I was on a plane coming to Fresno and it had 105 teams and we were rated 105! But, I was happy to bring in a player named Art Williams and (some people) credit Williams with being the guy that changed the program. I think the thing that happened is we had such cooperation from the kids. We asked them if they would practice every morning at 5:30 and we wouldn’t do anything but defensive drills. We would teach them the total fundamentals of a man-to-man defense and they were willing to do this and also have an afternoon practice, they paid a tremendous price. I loved all my kids the same, I really did, and I appreciated every one of the teams I coached because with out them I wouldn’t have had a job. But, this was a team that started the Red Wave. They wanted to win because they had lost 17 of 18 games at the end of the (previous) season. I’ll tell you in February I was tired, I said to them one day I said ‘maybe we better not come in in the mornings and to a man’ every one of them said ‘Coach, we’re winning let’s don’t quit coming in’ and so we didn’t take one day off of practicing in the morning and that changed the program. GH: Were you able to keep up the 5:30 AM practices in the following years? BD: No. No, no… and then the NCAA changed things too because of academics and so we didn’t, but I think that the teams that I coached told the kids we were recruiting if you 36
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come here your going to have to play defense and I think that it was the start of people feeling like if they came to Fresno they were going to have to be a good defensive team. Of course it isn’t the most exciting way to play but I was always so proud of the fans… I would go to the booster’s club I’d tell them, we’re great on defense but we’re still trying to figure out who’s coaching the offense! Grant finished his coaching career at his alma mater, Colorado State, but finished the conversation with this: “When Jim Sweeney won the Freedom Bowl (over USC in 1992) we were watching in Twin Falls and my wife got up and was dancing around that room like you wouldn’t believe. She wasn’t sick yet with cancer, and I said ‘what are you doing? I’m not the coach of the Bulldogs, or the football team.’ And she said ‘I don’t care I’m a Bulldog all the way.’ And that’s the truth.”