Will he stay or will he go? In the rapid mobility world of college football coaches, ASU fans can’t help but wonder how long Antonio Pierce will remain in Tempe? In our third and final part of our interview, he explains exactly why he hasn’t sought out seemingly greener pastures, talks about his media career stint and why he values the coaching profession above all.
DevilsDigest: There may not be an athlete that has had a better second act than Michael Strahan. What he’s doing in media is almost more impressive than what he did on the field.
Antonio Pierce: “He’s making more money. Not even close. And we joke about it because he was a guy who -- when I met him, he was going through personal things with his family, with a divorce. I thought he was disgruntled. He was grumpy. I called him, ‘Old, grumpy man.’ I said, ‘You’re an old ass grumpy man.’ Always told him that.
“But I didn’t realize how much he had going on on the back end. He’s a guy when I first got into media, he was the first person I went to. When I retired, I went to him and was like, ‘Stra, can I do this media?’ and he’s like, ‘AP, you’ll knock it out of the park, man. Here, call Fox, call ESPN, do this stuff.’ And I was like ‘Ok.’ Then I was with him the day when he got the Regis job (replacing Regis Philbin for the morning show 'Live! With Kelly and Michael’ in 2012). I’ve never seen him so happy. He was like, ‘I got it!’ And then he left that, and he’s so much bigger and has his own brand and production.
“You’re happy for a guy who had the career he had and then he thought about retiring right before we won a Super Bowl. He came back that season, we won, he retired as a champion -- never played another down -- and then had better careers we’ve seen from a football player off the field and in the media. A lot of guys have done better (financially), but to watch him go through it -- he’s a bi-coastal guy … Nobody knows he’s a football player (anymore). Like you’ve got soccer mom fans, it’s cool.”
DevilsDigest: Did Strahan help you get to ESPN after you retired?
Antonio Pierce: “Yeah, he plugged, he made some calls for me to gain some interest before I decided to retire. Because I still wanted to play -- I feel like I could have played -- but I had a neck injury. I thought it would go away and it didn’t. He was like a mentor for me from that standpoint. To be honest, he was the one who put me onto media. We both were living in L.A., this is when ‘The Best Damn Sports Show’ was on with Tom Arnold, John Salley and all of those guys. And (Strahan) couldn’t make it one day, something happened. And he’s like, ‘AP, I need you to go to Culver City and shoot this for me.’ And I’m like, ‘What!? What show?’ I didn’t even know the show. I show up and start doing it and then the days he couldn’t do it, they would replace him with me.
“In (2009), I was down in Tampa for the Super Bowl with them and I did the whole show that week, that was like my real intro into media. And then I did Howard Stern the following year and then, all of a sudden, it was like, ‘He can do media.’ I never thought I would do that in a million years. If you told me, ‘You’re going to be on television,’ I would have been like, ‘No way, I won’t do it.’”
DevilsDigest: Wait, you were on the Howard Stern show?
Antonio Pierce: “Oh, you’ve got to listen to this. They still play it. I was the intern for two days and he beat me up.”
Pierce goes online and tries to find any video or audio from his time on the Stern show
“Supposedly they still play it. They did bust my (expletive).”
While trying to find click on YouTube -- most of them had been taken down or banned by YouTube -- Pierce clips on an article about his appearance. When he scrolls to the bottom, the last line of the article reads: “Fun fact: Pierce revealed that while he was invited to the White House last week, he decided to take his kids to the Baltimore Aquarium instead.”
DevilsDigest: You skipped the Giants’ White House invite to go to an aquarium!?
Antonio Pierce: “I had been (to the White House) so many times with the Redskins that I was like, ‘it’s the same thing.’ Now that I look back, it’s like, ‘Damn.’ But, you know, again, that just being young and dumb.
He’s still scouring the internet to find a video of his appearance -- to no avail.
“If you listen -- you’ve got to listen to it. Like (the listeners would) call me and I answered the phone like, ‘Hey…’ and (the person on the other side is like),” ‘It’s Tom the drug truck driver.’ ‘I’m like, ‘What!?’ And I’m like, ‘What do you want me to ask Howard?’ (They’ll respond), ‘Tell Howard I want to…’ It was like crazy stuff. And I'm calm. I didn’t know at the time they were pranking me at the time. Yeah, so, I did that stuff. Whatever year that was, what was it -- ‘08. I did so much stuff.”
DevilsDigest: Have you watched (Howard Stern’s movie) ‘Private Parts?’
Antonio Pierce: “Oh, I’ve got the whole thing at home on DVD. I can’t show everyone. There’s some stuff going on that’s (not appropriate).
He’s still trying to find a clip of his appearance. He’s tried about 15 different links, articles and YouTube videos that have since been taken down.
“People always -- I’ll literally get some stuff (from people) on Twitter.
DevilsDigest: So, did you go into the studio a few times?
Antonio Pierce: “Oh, I was there for like a few days (as an intern).”
Two minutes later, he gives up on the search.
DevilsDigest: How did you interning on the Stern show get set up?
Antonio Pierce: “So, every week I used to do a weekly radio show on Sirius XM Radio (which Stern’s show is broadcast on) called ‘The Fierce Pierce Report,’ on NFL Radio. I won a Super Bowl so I did Jamie Foxx and then I ended with Howard Stern. I just went up there -- it was in New York -- so I went across the water and, hell, I sat there for two days and just did a bunch of stuff.”
DevilsDigest: How cool was that?
Antonio Pierce: “I learned a lot about the media from him -- how to set things up, the behind-the-scenes, the conversations, how to keep everything like just how we’re talking now, just natural and with a flow. I didn’t realize -- I’m thinking this dude is like a weirdo that is like all over the place. Very educated. Very articulate. Very well-rounded with everything that’s going on in the world. Has a good, solid opinion about a lot of stuff.
“But he’s a money guy on TV. Everything he does -- he’s 10 steps ahead of the producers and everything. I was young, I was 29 at the time. I was just getting introduced to that world and behind-the-scenes and I was shocked. I didn’t know that much went into it. It kind of gained my interest in going into the media.”
DevilsDigest: Did you know the show before you went on?
Antonio Pierce: “I knew Howard Stern. I knew the show but I never listened to it. Some of the stuff was whacky. I’m like, ‘Man, this is crazy. What are they talking about?’ When you’re there, it’s cool. When I got off the show, I listened to it for about a month or two. It wasn’t my normal routine; I usually listen to my radio station or music.”
DevilsDigest: Do you miss being on ESPN?
Antonio Pierce: “Nah. To me, it was a good buffer. It was something that you don’t remove yourself from football. It was great talking about it. You’re up there with a lot of great minds -- you look at the people you’re working with at ESPN and the people who come through there for interviews and that you meet. You pretty much see everybody because everybody goes to Bristol for their interviews and stuff.
“But you want to be around the guys a little more. The suit and tie are cool, it’s classy, it’s business casual -- and people think you look good in a suit. But, man, there’s nothing like a locker room. (ESPN) gave you a locker-room feel but it wasn’t ‘us,’ it wasn’t just all of us. You had your makeup people, you had your producers, you had your behind-the-scenes people. It really wasn’t your locker room where it was closed doors. And there were a lot of good conversations in the times there was (the closed doors), in that green room. That’s really where me and Herm probably bonded the most over that time period.”
DevilsDigest: Is that why you went to go coach at Long Beach Poly, because you wanted that locker-room environment again?
“Antonio Pierce: “Yeah. And then being around kids. I just love kids. I love being around them. I just wish someone, when I was younger, would have shown me the yellow brick road. Tell me what’s about to happen. If you can really tell me what's about to happen in front of me, in a couple years. Ok, it might be off a little bit, but pretty much lead me on the path of what’s going to take place -- I found that fascinating that I could do that for someone else. That I could give them basically all of the resources -- now, once again, if they’re going to listen to me or not. There are some things that are different.
“I’m off a little bit here because each situation is different. But for the most part, most athletes talk the same language about how the ups and downs of their lifestyle and their play was. I think we all are very similar. There’s only a few of us who are Jerome Bettis, John Elway or Strahan -- have a 10-year career, same team maybe, but play a long time, make a lot of money and then retire a champion. The rest of us get kicked out. The rest of us get removed. The rest of us (can be) struggling financially now. The rest of us struggle with family. And I’m not just talking about your wife or your significant other but brothers, sister, relatives, your mom and dad.
“Nobody told me, all of a sudden, that was going to happen to me at 35 -- or happen to me at 31. I heard a little bit of it but they didn’t give me the details. To me, I just want to educate them on that part. To me, we’re in the school of football.
“I’m a professor of football. I’m giving you life lessons in football. I can teach you X’s and O’s -- and most of these guys can do that part, but it’s the other stuff that comes with it -- the lifestyle, man. The stuff that you have to deal with that only athletes understand. Like we can talk about it all day and you can be like, ‘Yeah, I get it.’ No, you don’t, because you don’t live in it.
“I don’t live in your world. I don’t know what it’s like to fight and jockey for a spot to be in the front of the press room. I don’t know because I’ve always walked to the front. Do you get what I’m saying?”
DevilsDigest: Of course. And I heard other athletes describe that and say like when they get drafted, all the sudden they have 150 cousins.
Antonio Pierce: “Oh everybody, everybody comes out of the woodwork. Everybody comes out of the woodwork.”
DevilsDigest: How many times have you had to say ‘No?’
Antonio Pierce: “I just don’t answer my phone anymore. Don’t answer the phone anymore. Done. Once they ask me, it’s kind of like, ‘We’re not friends anymore.’ Especially now that I’m done. I’m going into my 11th year of being out of football. Those days are done. I’m not making $5 million anymore. You make good money but you’re not making five a year. No. Not like when you didn’t even cash checks. You just let checks build up and then you finally cash them. You don’t do that. That’s not the average American’s lifestyle. That's fantasy world. That’s Disneyland.”
DevilsDigest: You mentioned family, how cool was it to be able to coach your son, DeAndre, at Long Beach Poly?
Antonio Pierce: “Really cool, really cool. I mean, I was saying that the other day, I missed a lot of his Pop Warner games, I missed a lot of his birthdays because of the sacrifices that they had to make for me to play football and do what I need to do, you know what I mean. I had to, you can’t be a professional football player and make everything. It’s not going to happen, especially when your kids all of a sudden want to play sports, and then they play the same sport as you. They play on the same day. Saturdays or Sundays. Friday, you got practice, so you’re screwed. You get the bye week, you know, you get, ‘Oh my god, you got a home game and it’s later,’ Ok cool, you can make it. So, you don’t even make 50 percent of your kid’s games, you miss half of all the stuff they do in everything. So, it sucks.”
DevilsDigest: You have younger kids now, have you been able to make a lot more of their games and activities?
Antonio Pierce: “Yeah, I try my best. Obviously, recruiting takes up a little bit of that. I realized that later like, ‘Oh,’ and I think you look back like, ‘Damn, I missed all this.’ But the good part about it is the environment we have here, coach Edwards is pretty lenient with that kind of stuff in the sense he’s like ‘Hey man if you got to go, go.’ It’s one of those kinds of conversations. ‘If you got to go, go. Go do that first and then …’ Just even making your presence there and not making it the whole time. Sometimes I only make it there with five minutes left, sometimes I catch the whole hour. But the important part is that they know I’m there.”
DevilsDigest: Was one of the reasons ASU hired Zak Hill because you had watched his offenses while watching your son at Boise State?
Antonio Pierce: “I felt we were about to go with another coach and I just said, ‘Coach, you got one more phone call.’ And I just kind of -- I’m watching from a different set of eyes. Not the coaching eyes; as a parent, as a coach, you know, as somebody whose son is there I’m invested into their program and what they’ve done.
“And I’m like, ‘Coach, these guys are dealing with the same stuff we’re dealing with, to a degree. They’re playing a young freshman quarterback, look what he’s done with this guy. They run the sets we run. Coach they’ve got tight ends.’ (And he says), ‘They’ve got tight ends?!’ Once I said that it was over. Zak came in he did a hell of a job, and it fits what we want to do. It’s not to knock anybody else, it just fits where we want to go with Jayden and our offense.”
DevilsDigest: Just watching his offenses at Boise State, he seems to call some creative, out-of-the-box stuff.
Antonio Pierce: “Here’s the thing that happened, you need to think, they make a defense think -- with shifts, with motions, they huddle up, they give you personnels, groupings. Every play you’re going to see 10-personnel, 11-personnel, 12, 21, 22. They give you the whole gamut. It’s the only thing I’ve seen closest to the NFL where you’ve got to prep mentally.
“There’s not a lot of prep here for college football, in my opinion. And I’m not saying -- we haven’t mastered it, obviously, because if it is, why haven’t you guys won all the games? Well, I’m not playing. I can give a kid all the information in the world, he’s got to retain it. Some offenses are so simple, that you can already predict what they’re going to do. But when they make you think with shifts and motions, they challenge you mentally with your eyes.”
DevilsDigest: Is it kind of odd to you that more offenses don’t run as many shifts and motions?
Antonio Pierce: “Everybody’s trying to reinvent the wheel, that’s the problem. In the NFL, it’s not that case. You know what you’re going to get. By week six, you see the same thing every week. Different formations or sets, give or take. But, again, like we talked about in the beginning, they attack personnel and people.”
DevilsDigest: There was a Twitter post that stated Herm had turned down other coaching opportunities and you quote tweeted it with the word ‘Integrity.’ I know you’ve had other offers to leave, why have you stayed loyal and stayed at ASU?
Antonio Pierce: “How can I -- I only recruited Jayden for about six weeks, and he committed to ASU. How can I look at him and his mother’s eyes when I told him -- I don’t coach him at quarterback, I don’t call any plays, but I got him. I got him on and off the field, I’m going to make sure we give him every resource. I’m doing the best I can to make sure he’s the best player, but then also giving him the most knowledge I can about off the field, about being a man, being a black man, all that stuff.
“Not only that, I brought in, what, 22 players in 25 months. What do you think those dudes are going to say to me? What do you think? Do you know where they’re from? They’re from where I still have in California. When I go home, I’ve got a home in California still. And whenever I’m done with ASU or done with coaching, I’m going home to California. Like that’s where I’m from. And I’m going to see those people and they’re going to look at me and say, ‘Man, alright cool, he kept his word.’
“Yeah, there’s going to be a point in time where, I don’t know, maybe something comes across that you can’t say no. But I’m not chasing dollar, I know what it’s like to have money. But more importantly, I like what we’re building here. I like my work environment. I come to work happy. I leave work happy. I enjoy what we’re doing because -- and again, I always say I only came here initially because of Herm. I didn’t know about all the other people: Ray Anderson, Jean Boyd, then I met the rest of our staff. But more importantly, I knew what (Herm) was about.
“Our talks in the green room, our talks off the field, our talks with the Jets, briefly in different places. Good dude. That’s what I always say, he’s a good dude. He’s a good man. My parents told me when things came up just even recently this year, they’re like -- I’m just telling you he’s a good person. And it’s hard to find good people. That’s true. We all want money; I want more money. I’m not paid enough here. I’ll tell you that right now, I’m not paid enough. But that’s ok, I’m not going to be greedy, and I’m not going to lie to people and tell them anything different. I know there’s going to be a point where there’s going to be an offer I can’t say no to, and that’s the way of life. But at least I’m having that conversation.
“I tell my guys that up front. I say ‘Look, there are a few things that will make me leave.’ And they know, the guys that I talk to and I recruit, they know. But it’s going to have to still be so much better than what I have here.”
DevilsDigest: What would it take for you to leave? A head coaching job? A defensive coordinator opportunity in the NFL?
Antonio Pierce: “Oh, I’m a D-coordinator now. Hell, like coach said, I’ve got more titles (than anyone). I look around like I do have a lot of titles. But it’s not about that. I like my lifestyle environment. I like to be at peace. I’m not going to come to work on eggshells. I don’t have that personality. We’ll clash.
“I follow the chain of command, and I’ll do whatever Herm and Ray and Jean Boyd want us to do. But I need to walk around freely. They let me control what I can control, and that’s all I ask for from the jump. But I think with me and Herm we just see something, I would like to do something that this school hasn’t done, and one thing I haven’t done -- I won in high school, I won in junior college, I won in the pros. I never won in college. We were good at U of A; we were 12-1 my junior year. We were third, I think we finished fourth in the country. I never went to the Rose Bowl. I am yearning for the Rose Bowl, I’ll be honest to you, I want to know what it’s like to be in the Rose Bowl. I’ve played there, I’ve played against UCLA a couple of times, they whooped our ass there last year. But I’ve never been to a Rose Bowl. I want to know what that’s like.”
DevilsDigest: The Rose Bowl really means that much to you?
Antonio Pierce: “That’s one of my drives, I’ll be honest. Like look, even (if I left for) the league for a Chiefs job last year, like I won a Super Bowl. Like Ok, they just won their first Super Bowl, they’re happy. But I know what that feels like. I’ve been to a Pro Bowl. I won’t be in the Hall of Fame, but I’ve been to the Hall of Fame. I played with a lot of Hall of Fame players. I feel like I’m a part of it because I actually played with them and those are good friends of mine.
“I’ve never been to a Rose Bowl. As a fan, as a spectator, player, coach, nothing. I’ve never been to the National Championship Game. So, those are things that are missing in my checkbox, my list of things that I want to do. So, at the end of the day when you’ve kind of brought in the players that are the face of this program or leading this program in that direction, you want to do it with them. I don’t want to see somebody else take Jayden, and watch Jayden lift the Rose Bowl (trophy) and I’m not the guy next to him, or on the same team. Because I think the kid might have a chance to lead us to the Rose Bowl, I believe that.
“I think for all these guys to lead our defense, it can be one of the top defenses. I won’t leave to watch another man do the job that I did. Do you know how hard it was to get them here? You know how hard it was, two years to get those kids here when they were like, ‘ASU didn’t even recruit me for two years.’
“We saw Jayden in January, didn’t talk to him again until October. Don’t know how we did it, we did it. But, you know, and he trusted me, and it all worked itself out. But I want to finish what I started. I think that’s where the most important thing is. I’m about finishing. I’m not going to have a puzzle and then do all of it and miss that one centerpiece. Finish it, then we’ll see what happens after that happens.”
DevilsDigest: You mentioned the Rose Bowl at your National Signing Day press conference as to why you feel the need to go recruit better players, even if they’re on the East Coast. I think you said, like the Sun Bowl is great, the Las Vegas Bowl is great, but I want to go to the Rose Bowl.
Antonio Pierce: “No disrespect, those are great bowls. But when you watch another team in the Pac-12 (Oregon) that you played, and that you beat, win, hold the roses, celebrate -- and there are only two or three games on TV that day, you want that.
“I want everything. I want cake, ice cream, cherry on top, whipped cream. I want it all. And until we get that, that’s what I’m chasing.”
DevilsDigest: You mentioned the Chiefs offering you a job. Who else has reached out to you?
Antonio Pierce: “Pac-12 teams. The Chiefs, the Browns, the Giants as of recently. The Giants deal was just this past month, which was tough -- real tough because that’s home. You know, I’m going into the linebacker room, you know, my picture, my name, all that stuff’s there, I’m in the building, I’m in the Ring of Honor, all that kind of stuff.”
DevilsDigest: Has there been any head coaching offers?
Antonio Pierce: “No. More lateral, one DC job.”
DevilsDigest: It seems like you wouldn’t leave for a lateral job because of how comfortable you feel here.
Antonio Pierce: “Why would I build up a linebacker corps, and I have all my guys. Other than Kyle Soelle, who is a really good player and who’s done a really good job for us, that’s the only kid I have not recruited in my room. Why would I leave that to go somewhere else?
“And I got to recruit -- I’ve got to coach somebody else’s kids, and then I got to recruit the guys that I look for, like what I look for in a linebacker. I don’t know if it’s good enough. I hope these guys have done a good job of representing myself in the linebacker room, and we’re not done yet. But, why would I leave my work? You know what I mean? Like, I don’t understand that.
“I’m not going to buy a new car and then give you the keys, and watch you drive down the street in my car. I’m not doing it! No, I’m driving my car, I’m getting it dirty and muddy, then I’m gonna take it up and I’m going to wash it and then we’re going to do it again.
"That’s my mindset.”
Click here for Part I of our interview
Click here for Part II of our interview
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