Other Media:

• Zoumboukos explains the difference between coaching offensive linemen and tight ends
• Zoumboukos describes winter conditioning agility tests

External Links:

• University of Oregon Athletics
• ESPN.com UO football clubhouse
• Pac-10 Conference home page

Other Stories:

• Tom Bollag brings his style of five-star cuisine to Eugene through his Chef’s Kitchen.
• Linda Burden-Williams, an actress who lives in Veneta, teaches her students that acting is self-exploration.
• John Canzano gives the scoop about journalism, sports and life outside his Oregonian column.
• JR Gaddis, like his father and grandfather before him, knows a lot about printing.
• Giancarlo Guerrero is helping make magic every time he picks up the baton to lead the Eugene Symphony.
• Toby Hill-Meyer, a University of Oregon student, is an activist in the area of gender identity.
• Rick Hogue finds that salesmanship and guidance are the elements of success in financial consulting.
• Carl Hosticka juggles a university teaching position with a political career spanning 20 years.
• Bill Hunter's long journey has led him to satisfaction, working for the parks department in Eugene.
• Mona Lindstromberg has a lot to say about the land watch groups she’s involved in and development issues.
• Thaddeus Moore owns and operates Sprout City Studios, a recording studio in West Eugene.
• Lesley Neufeld, who has designed costumes for movies and television, now owns a boutique in Cottage Grove.
• Robert Parrish wouldn't give up after an educational setback, and in four months he will be a paramedic.
• Rick Pettigrew's Archaeology Channel is a well-visited Web site devoted to bringing archaeology to the masses.
• Catherine Reinhart has watched Sweet Life Patisserie grow from a small garage shop into a well-known bakery.
• Neal Zoumboukos, longtime offensive line coach, has been molding bodies and minds in Eugene for a quarter century.

A Duck for the Ages

Longtime Oregon offensive line coach Neal Zoumboukos has been molding bodies and minds in Eugene for the last quarter century.

By Greg Schindler

At the end of a maze of glistening trophies, larger-than-life yellow and green action photos and other relics of legendary Duck victories is a tiny, unspectacular office. Here, deep inside the University of Oregon's plush Casanova Athletic Center, a slight man sits with remote control in hand, peering intently at poorly focused videos of mammoth 16- and 17-year-old boys, hoping to find his next diamond in the rough.

This man, affectionately known to his pupils as “Papa Smurf” and “Yoda,” is UO’s longtime offensive line coach and resident blocking professor Neal Zoumboukos. He has devoted a quarter century to molding young bodies and minds and inspiring future leaders, and he is busy evaluating future talent.

Zoumboukos illustrates the blocking patterns of one of Oregon's offensive plays.

Over the years, Zoumboukos has found and polished many jewels. In an era when the average college football coach is fired or relocated before the players he brought in as freshmen have become seniors, the reign of 58-year-old Zoumboukos is rare, if not astonishing. As the dean of Pacific 10 Conference football coaches, He has become a fixture both in the world of Duck football and within the Eugene community he adores.

Zoumboukos attributes his career longevity to a combination of external and internal motivators. "This university believes in letting employees prove themselves over time,” he says. “The culture of instant gratification that exists elsewhere has not yet reached the University of Oregon.” He is also thankful that head coach Mike Bellotti has been at Oregon for the last decade, saving him from the jeopardy even the best assistant coaches can find themselves in when there are changes at the top.

Zoumboukos considers himself privileged to be part of the UO community and has no plans to work for another school. He waxes philosophical about the odd love affair between liberal, serene Eugene and the often violent spectacle of Division I football. But he doesn't want to oversimply. “Eugene is a diverse community," Zoumboukas says. "You have a liberal, university atmosphere but also lumber and agricultural industries in the valley and the various businesses that serve those industries.” Zoumboukos believes that many of the Oregon football team’s most rabid fans are blue collar workers who can appreciate the physical toil of the athletes. He notes that with only one major professional sports team in the state (the Portland Trailblazers) and none in Eugene, the University’s fan base is undivided.

Zoumboukous is no stranger to the West Coast. A San Francisco native, Zoumboukos attended nearby University of California, Davis, where he played football as a running back and wing back while earning a degree in history. His first coaching post was as an assistant for the now defunct freshman team at his alma mater. Grateful for the protection his linemen provided him as a 175-pound ball carrier, he requested and was granted permission to coach the team’s offensive line. A career was born.

Zoumboukos demonstrates the ideal over-the-shoulder pass-receiving technique for a tight end.

Though he would tutor a variety of offensive and defensive players during stops at University of San Francisco, UC Davis and Oregon State University, Zoumboukos would ultimately land in Duck country, adopting Eugene as his new home while mentoring UO’s offensive lines for all but one season when he coached tight ends. Zoumboukos was recently reassigned to coach tight ends at UO. This should prove a smooth transition as tight ends are an extension of the offensive line and perform many of the same duties as the linemen.

Rather than feeling a sense of entitlement based on his long tenure, Zoumboukos emphasizes that he is lucky to be a Duck. But former Oregon lineman Scott Shepard, who played guard and tackle under Zoumboukos from 1980 to 1983, indicates that the school is fortunate to have the consistent presence of a coach of Zoumboukos’ caliber. “He’s definitely a perfectionist with just about everything he does. Even trimming his mustache – there’s not a hair out of place,” says Shepard. “He’s the type of guy that makes sure all the i’s are dotted and all the t’s are crossed.” Shepard, who now coaches high school football in Arroyo Grande, Calif., continues, “I know the respect I have for him as a coach and a human being has a lot to do with me coaching. He’s just so enthusiastic.”

Zoumboukos has built a legacy at Oregon that is impressive to his players and opponents alike. Stanford defensive line coach Dave Tipton, who starred as a defensive tackle for the 1970 Stanford squad that beat Ohio State in the 1971 Rose Bowl, appreciates Zoumboukos’ longevity, having spent the last 17 years in Palo Alto, Calif., himself. Tipton marvels at the quality product Zoumboukos assembles year after year. “I think the world of him. Twenty-five years is so long, especially when the average stage in a coaching career is three years,” says Tipton. “People think I’m crazy for being here 17 years.” Tipton continues, “His offensive lines have always played very, very well. Sometimes he’s got great talent to work with and sometimes not, but he really gets those guys to play very well within their system. They’ve always competed and played with a lot of intensity. He’s very well respected within the Pac-10 and across the country. He’s seen Oregon grow throughout the years.”

Over the last few years alone, Zoumboukos has orchestrated balanced lines that have done everything from keeping the trademark grin on Joey Harrington’s face to paving the way for 1,000-yard rushers Maurice Morris, Onterrio Smith and, most recently, Terrance Whitehead. He has even managed to help some of his usually anonymous linemen garner rare publicity. Most recently, Zoumboukos shaped star left tackle Adam Snyder into a two-time All Pac-10 selection who was named conference player of the week on offense – unusual for an offensive lineman – for his dominant performance against Michigan in Oregon's 2003 home victory.

Watching Zoumboukos on the field with his players is a novelty act of sorts. Though athletic and sturdy enough to play college football in the 1960s, the trim Zoumboukos is a mere sliver of a man compared to his hulking players, who routinely tip the scales at more than 300 pounds.

	Zoumboukos speaks with one of his players as the Ducks perform power cleans during a recent afternoon workout. Strength training is an important part of Oregon's winter conditioning regimen.

Despite the differences in size and age, Zoumboukos relates well with his charges, keeping meetings and practices lively by applying heavy doses of his famous “self deprecating humor.” “I let the guys have fun and pop off,” explains Zoumboukos. “I keep it pretty loose, but when we get into team settings it’s totally different – coordinators are uptight.”

Stern when necessary, Zoumboukos does not see the various roles he plays in his players' lives as separate entities but rather some of the qualities that a person must have to be a teacher. Zoumboukos, who holds a master’s degree in Physical Education from San Francisco State University, explains, “A teacher should be a leader, a motivator, a mother or father, a disciplinarian – all those things. If they’re not, they’re cheating the kids they teach. As a teacher you have an obligation to get that student to learn somehow, some way. Too many teachers say, ‘If they don’t want to learn, too bad.’ That’s a cop-out.”

Because his players differ in the way they physically develop and how they are internally programmed, Zoumboukos looks for a couple of things above all else when evaluating future talent and determining which players will get the most playing time. “You must have intelligent offensive linemen,” says Zoumboukos. He says he’s annoyed that “people always think of the quarterback as the cerebral entity of the offense.” Besides the obvious size and strength requirements that an offensive lineman must possess to be competitive in a world of agile 350-pound defensive tackles, Zoumboukos says, “The best offensive linemen I’ve seen have great spatial awareness…they understand angles and leverage.”

Zoumboukos is constantly challenged by a game that evolves dramatically from year to year, week to week, and even offensive series to series. He must constantly re-evaluate his strategies and blocking schemes because today’s defenses are ever-morphing monsters, unrecognizable compared to those of his playing and early coaching days. “When I began coaching, defenses played like real men, standing in there to hold their gaps,” Zoumboukos says. “Now they’re zigging, zagging and stemming,” he says, referring to how they shift from one alignment to another before the ball is snapped in an attempt to confuse the offense. “Defenses are moving all over the place. We’re constantly working to pick up movement.”

But scheming is just one piece of the puzzle that needs to be solved if an offensive line is to be productive. No matter how talented an offensive line coach is, it is ultimately the young men on the field who justify their leader’s

paycheck. In an age when complex schemes often render players little more than overly specialized cogs in a mechanical system, Zoumboukos keeps his personnel philosophy simple: “I try to find the best five players and get them on the field.” Such a statement might sound obvious to the fan, but many modern coaches tie their own hands by grooming players to fill only one specific slot on the line. Zoumboukos believes in simply making his football players into better players, demanding that they all master the techniques and nuances required for every position on the line so he can flip players from side to side or shift them up and down the line when injuries, graduation and unsatisfactory play occur.

Because offensive linemen are not allowed to touch the football other than when the center snaps the ball to the quarterback to start each play, there is little in the way of statistics or tangible evidence to let Zoumboukos know when his lines are performing up to par. Instead, he judges his success as a coach largely by the most important, bottom-line statistic in the game: wins and losses. “There’s no such thing as a bad win. Fans want you to win, win big, and win entertainingly, but there is always satisfaction with a win. At the same time, we look at how we protected the quarterback and ran the ball to determine our level of satisfaction.”

Just as Zoumboukos applauds UO for its willingness to let coaches prove their worth over time, he knows that he must exercise the same level of patience with his players. Because most freshman offensive linemen are as soft psychologically as they are in their midsections, Zoumboukos sums up the main quality that separates linemen from the other positions in the game with one word: “Perseverance.” He elaborates, “It’s not easy to be an offensive lineman. It takes time to gain the confidence and physical skills and to learn the offense so that calls come out in a reactive fashion. It’s the ultimate team experience because if one of them messes up they all break down. It’s not like basketball, where one man can carry a team.”

Because offensive linemen are not the ones scoring dramatic touchdowns or gracefully slinging the ball downfield, they are categorized differently from the rest of the offensive players, who are traditionally labeled as “skill players.” This bias irks Zoumboukos, who says that “the only difference is who touches the ball. Of course linemen are skilled. Look at centers – who else could start a play with one hand between his legs?”

When the day comes to hang up his whistle, Zoumboukos plans to retire as a Duck. “The people in this community have treated my family and me very well. I’m honored to have coached here as long as I have,” he says. Still, Zoumboukos understands why others are packing and decorating new offices every few years. “Most coaches are competitive individuals, driven by egos and monetary gain. They think that the grass is always greener somewhere else. They think, ‘I’ve got to get from Division II to Division 1AA, to Division I to the NFL.’ I came to a school where I realized I could have a unique lifestyle in this profession and that the grass is not always greener. So when I’ve been contacted about other jobs, I just say, ‘Thank you, but no thank you.”’