Sports

Arena football

Center of the Storm

By FRANK PASTOR
Published January 28, 2006

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[Times photos: Ken Helle]

Tim Marcum watches practice outside the St. Pete Times Forum. He won't coach the Storm's first two games this season because of a league suspension.

	Marcum runs through a video of a practice session. He doesn't hesitate to hand out praise -- or a stern word -- to any player.
	Marcum shows displeasure after his club allows a kickoff return for a score in 2004.
	Veteran backup quarterback Pat O'Hara, left, is one of the players Marcum turns to for input during meetings.
	Wife Lynn says, "He's the most caring, sensitive human being I've ever met."

TAMPA - Tim Marcum is big game hunting, and he has a target in sight.

As he speaks with reporters outside the dressing room after a preseason scrimmage, the Tampa Bay Storm coach and general manager notices a player leaving the mandatory postgame autograph session.

"Where are you headed?" Marcum bellows, stopping the player in his tracks. "Get your a-- out there and sign autographs. As long as somebody's out there, you sign them."

Marcum turns back to the assembled media.

"I ask them not to drop the pens," he grumbles. "Maybe we can hang on to the pens during our autograph session."

The exchange was vintage Marcum: Funny. Profane. Always selling the game.

"He's the "Don,' " said Storm assistant Dave Ewart, who has shared an office with Marcum for four seasons. "He's the Godfather of Arena Football."

Marcum has won more games (177) and hoisted more championship trophies (seven) than any coach in league history. He was a charter member of the Arena Football League Hall of Fame.

But he also leads the league in controversy. He has been reprimanded, fined, suspended and arrested, accused of doing anything he can to win, even if it means manipulating the rules of the game.

So Marcum won't be there when his team opens its 16th season Sunday in Philadelphia. He will watch from the second-story theater/game room in his Apollo Beach home, serving what remains of a four-game suspension (split over two seasons) for violating the league's salary cap.

He can return for the home opener against Georgia on Feb. 10, his 62nd birthday.

"He's been very good for the league in some ways," said Jim Foster, the inventor of Arena football. "But he's been a problem at times."

* * *

The man Foster calls "the Bobby Knight of Arena football" is seated behind his desk at 7:15 a.m. on a Thursday. Clad in a Storm polo, shorts and tennis shoes, he props his feet on the desk. Assistants Ewart and James Dunn sit at nearby desks. Quarterbacks Shane Stafford and Pat O'Hara take seats at an oval table in the center of the room.

Marcum wants to discuss personnel - in particular the four players battling for two spots in the secondary - and plan the day's practices. He has his thoughts but wants input from his players.

"He's giving me more freedom now to give my ideas, and I think he's respecting them a little bit more," said Stafford, in his fourth season. "Before, he'd be like, "Shut up, son, and do what I tell you.' "

The first nine practices since the start of camp have been in full pads. Marcum would like to dress out his players in helmets and shorts in the afternoon if they work hard during the morning practice.

"Let's go, boys," he says as they adjourn. "Let's go get 'em better."

No coach in Arena history has gotten better results from players than Marcum.

He has coached in 10 ArenaBowls in his 17 seasons, winning seven titles with three franchises (Denver Dynamite, Detroit Drive and Storm). He has won three titles in 11 seasons with the Storm and never has missed the playoffs.

"You would have to say at this point he is the greatest coach who has ever coached in the history of Arena football," commissioner David Baker said.

In a sport of continual change, where players are signed to one- or two-year contracts, Marcum is a constant. His likeness appears alongside the Lightning's Vinny Lecavalier and rock stars Bono and Jon Bon Jovi on an outside wall of the St. Pete Times Forum. His slicked-back silver hair topped bobbleheads given to season ticket holders a few years ago.

He is, literally, the face of the franchise. Mayors attend parties at his home. He is on a first-name basis with four-star Gen. Tommy Franks. He once received a pen from President Bush.

Marcum is respected around the league as a pioneer, great defensive mind and shrewd talent evaluator. He also is considered a bit of a nuisance, working officials and rulesmakers with equal parts humor and intimidation.

"When you coach against him, you feel like he's getting all the calls because he's working the refs so hard," Predators coach and former Storm quarterback Jay Gruden said. "It seems like he's always whining to the refs and falling on the ground, and he's got the clock operator in his back pocket. But it's fun to play and coach against Coach Marcum's team, because you know it's going to be a battle."

Everything Marcum does is directed toward a single purpose: winning.

"What's impressive with him is that continual drive as a coach to win the championship, and that's our focus every year," said Storm receiver/linebacker Lawrence Samuels. "A lot of people think that, "Oh, well, the Storm just might have a down year.' It doesn't matter what the circumstances are, how many new people you bring in. We have one goal and one goal only."

* * *

There was never a doubt Marcum would be a coach. His father, D.V., coached high school teams in west Texas and at McMurry University. One of eight children raised in a one-room dugout in Paducah, Texas, during the Depression, D.V. graduated from high school at age 20 because he missed so much school while his family traveled harvesting crops.

He took a chance on football, packing everything he had in a paper bag and hitchhiking to Abilene, Texas, in 1936 to try out for the Hardin-Simmons team. He started four seasons at offensive/defensive end, after which the Detroit Lions offered him a contract. Marcum's father turned it down to devote his life to coaching and teaching.

When D.V. was stationed in Madison, Wis., during World War II, Marcum's pregnant mother drove to Roscoe, Texas, so her boy could be born a Texan. The oldest of three children, he attended six schools in 12 years as the family followed his father's coaching career.

Marcum's father taught him the importance of discipline and structure. Whether it's keeping to a schedule, parking where you're supposed to or keeping your locker room clean, Marcum says all have a role in winning.

Pragmatic enough to recognize that the NFL had little interest in a 5-foot-10, 165-pound quarterback, Marcum, who starred at McMurry in 1965 and '66, followed his father into coaching. He made $303 a month in his first job at Eldorado, Texas, in 1967.

Helmets in his game room track Marcum's coaching career: from the high schools of west Texas to Ranger College, Rice University, the San Antonio Gunslingers of the United States Football League, the New York Knights of the World League of American Football, the University of Florida, the Atlanta Falcons and the Denver Dynamite, Detroit Drive and Storm of the Arena Football League.

Marcum was selling cars when Darrell "Mouse" Davis, whom he knew from the USFL, brought him to the Arena League to coach the Dynamite in 1987. After winning the first ArenaBowl, Marcum won three titles in five seasons in Detroit. He was working as a defensive assistant with the Falcons when Peter C. "Woody" Kern brought him to Tampa Bay in '95.

"Tim and I and Jack Daniels and Johnnie Walker spent an evening together (after an owners' meeting in '94), and we had a very good time with each other," Kern said. "He impressed me, and obviously he had a hell of a pedigree."

The Texas businessman paid Marcum $72,000 a year plus $1,000 for every game he won for his first five seasons, then turned over the day-to-day football operations to him.

* * *

Marcum, admittedly, is a zombie during the preseason. He goes from coaches' meeting to players' meeting to practice in the morning, then repeats the cycle in the afternoon. To keep his players up, he spices instructions with humor and isn't afraid to hand out compliments.

"Attaboy, attaboy, attaboy," he tells Jonathan Ordway as Marcum watches the defensive specialist break up a pass during a practice review.

But Marcum's mood can sour quickly, as Ordway found out later that day.

"You know what, Ordway?" Marcum said, after watching him blow a coverage assignment. "It takes a million "attaboys' to erase one "oh, s---.' "

Players live with the barbs. But not everything Marcum does sits as well.

Former players have complained that paychecks have come up short. They say the practice field (two thin layers of turf over concrete at the St. Pete Times Forum plaza) is dangerous, and training and medical equipment are lacking.

Former defensive lineman/running back Ivan Caesar was so upset he hadn't received an ArenaBowl ring after the '96 season he wrestled Marcum to the ground and tried to pry the ring from his finger during a practice the next season.

In 2004, the AFL Players Association filed a grievance on behalf of 12 players who received rings containing fake diamonds. The association argued that players who left the team for free agency were discriminated against when they received rings with cubic zirconia.

"Maybe that's Marcum's way of getting his last laugh to all his players who left," former Storm quarterback John Kaleo said at the time.

Kern said Marcum decided which players got which rings. Marcum insisted none were singled out.

"It was the owner's (prerogative) to buy the rings or not buy the rings," he said. "You don't even have to."

Marcum drew Gruden's ire when he unretired the former Storm quarterback's No. 7 and issued it to wide receiver Calvin Schexnayder after Gruden returned to the playing field with Orlando in 2002.

"He can burn my jersey at midfield for all I care," Gruden said recently. "It won't change the memories that I have."

Former lineman Rasheid Simmons took Marcum to court for ignoring an arbitrator's ruling to pay worker's compensation for a career-ending neck injury Simmons sustained last season.

"He's always trying to take the easy way out or the cheapest way out," Simmons said.

Marcum's personal life has landed him in court, too.

He pleaded no contest to DUI charges in October 2002 and completed the terms of his probation.

In November 2004, he was charged with defrauding an insurance company. Authorities said Marcum, who faces up to five years in prison, filed a false $10,000 claim on his 18-foot fishing boat. His trial is scheduled for May.

Marcum's most painful experience was the four-game suspension over the 2005 and '06 seasons he received for making improper payments to players during the '03 and '04 seasons.

The suspension and $25,000 fine (part of a $150,000 fine levied against the team) were one thing. Watching from home as the Ewart-coached Storm lost 59-28 to Los Angeles was quite another.

"I've never felt so much pain in all my life," Marcum said. "It was just the worst, most gutwrenching thing I've ever gone through, that we got beat the way we got beat and I wasn't there."

* * *

Marcum's fourth wife, Lynn, knows a different Tim Marcum, one who took her to the Bahamas on a blind date, dotes on her daughters and is humble when approached in public.

They were set up through a mutual friend. They spoke on the phone for a couple of weeks after the 2003 ArenaBowl before Marcum decided it was time the two met face to face.

"We haven't fought yet," Lynn, 43, told him over the phone. "We might as well (meet)."

Marcum suggested a trip to the Bahamas and sent a ticket. He picked her up in a limo at the airport. By the end of the day, people were asking if they were on their honeymoon.

Four months later they married, the fourth time for both.

"He's the most caring, sensitive human being I've ever met," Lynn says. "It doesn't ever show to anybody, but he is. If he's got to fire somebody, you would not believe what we go through in this house. I say, "You have to do this today,' and weeks go by. He comes across way different on TV. If he was like that, there's no way we'd get along."

Marcum and his third wife, Amy, haven't gotten along since their 2003 divorce. She married Thomas Hopper, the Michigan businessman who failed in an attempt to buy the Storm in 2002.

Marcum and Kern sued Hopper, alleging breach of contract (both cases have been settled), and Marcum has suggested his insurance fraud charge stems from calls Hopper and his wife made to investigators.

Last week, Hopper was sentenced to 331/2 months in prison for wire fraud. Hopper's lawyer, Sam Ragnone of Michigan, said Marcum wrote the judge a disparaging letter about Hopper that was read at the sentencing, something Ragnone called "extremely unusual."

"It looks like since Mr. Hopper is married to Mr. Marcum's ex-wife, Mr. Marcum has a streak of vengeance," Ragnone said.

To make room for his new family, Marcum sold his Tierra Verde home and bought a larger one in a gated community in Apollo Beach. He lives with Lynn, her two teenage daughters and three pets: a dog, a cat and a parrott that says "Hi, buddy," in Marcum's voice when he returns home.

Marcum's wife didn't know the first thing about Arena football and wasn't prepared for the first time she saw him on the sideline.

"I thought, "Oh, my God, he's so mad, what's wrong with him?' " Lynn said.

Though she says Marcum doesn't bring his work home, that doesn't mean it doesn't follow him in public.

"When we went to the Bahamas that time, people recognized him and were saying, "Hey, Coach, great game,' " Lynn said. "I'm like, "We're in the Bahamas, I've never even heard of Arena football, and people know him.' I couldn't believe it. But people come up to him no matter where we are. He always gets approached, and he will always sign an autograph."

* * *

It appears Marcum will be signing autographs after games for years to come. He has Kern in his corner, and commissioner Baker understands that when it comes to Marcum he has to take the bad with the good.

"I know sometimes Tim and I are put in an adverse position if and when I have to discipline him, but I will also say when my son (Sam, who played for Southern Cal) made the Associated Press All-American team, the first call congratulating me as a dad was from Tim Marcum," Baker said. "So, I respect him as a competitor. I think he has done as much as anyone to bring this league to the point it is today."

Marcum doesn't aspire to another NFL job. He is proud to be part of the Arena League, loves the bay area and enjoys interacting with fans.

Even with seven championships, there's always room for one more.

"I've got a big house and a young wife," Marcum said. "I better do it for a long time."

Tim Marcum's career highlights/lowlights:

HIGHS

Won seven Arena Bowls, including three with the Storm (1995, 1996, 2003)

Coached in 10 of the league's 19 championship games, including four with Storm

Charter member of the Arena Football League Hall of Fame (1998)

Most wins in Arena League history at 176-69 overall

Received Outstanding Achievement Award from American Football Coaches Association (2004)

Received Arena Football League's Founder's Award (2001)

Two-time league coach of the year (1987, '88)

Has not missed the playoffs in 17 Arena Football League seasons

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LOWS

Attacked by former player Ivan Caesar, who tried to take his ArenaBowl ring (1997)

Arrested and charged with driving under the influence of alcohol (2002)

Unretired Jay Gruden's No. 7 after Gruden returned to play for Orlando (2002)

Team kicked off Northwest Airlines flight for "being severely intoxicated" (2003)

Turned himself into authorities after being charged with insurance fraud (2004)

Handed out ArenaBowl championship rings with fake diamonds to 12 players (2004)

Suspended four games over two seasons for salary-cap violations (2005, 2006)

Ignored an arbitrator's ruling to pay Rasheid Simmons worker's compensation (2005)

[Last modified January 28, 2006, 01:38:21]

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