Central's Jamey DuBose has a blueprint for success

There is a box in Central coach Jamey DuBose's office that offers a glimpse into his success as a high school football coach.

Filled with countless folders packed tight with sheets of paper bearing practice notes, schedules, past ideas and words of motivation, the box is a treasure trove of information from the brains that produced four state titles at Prattville High from 2006-11.

DuBose, along with his predecessor at Prattville, Bill Clark, were the architects of that successful run, the foundation for which was laid over the course of five months at a Country's Barbecue.

Despite only two years of moderate success as a head coach at Susan Moore in 2002-03, DuBose was asked by Clark to run his offense prior to the 2004 season.

"I had made the playoffs two years, but hadn't shocked the world," DuBose said on Friday prior to the Red Devils' regular-season finale against Enterprise. "I had been around some good coaches, and Coach Clark called me and told me that if I'd come run the offense at Prattville, we'd win a lot of state championships."

The Lions lost to Hoover in the Class 6A finale that year, the team's first trip to the big game since it won in 1984. Two years later, Clark's prediction came true as the team won its first of three straight state titles, taking the reins from Hoover as the best program in the state of Alabama. It lost one in 2009 and won another in 2011. Two of the four rings came with DuBose as the head coach after Clark left in 2008.

In describing where the success came from, DuBose always points back to those afternoons at Country's Barbecue, where the coaches called upon life experiences in and out of football to map out a blueprint for what they felt built success in high school athletics.

Spend a day with DuBose, and you'll hear the words that form the basis for his programs repeated over and over again: family, motivation, opportunity, humility, accountability, repetition, among others.

That blueprint has proven more than successful in the past and is perhaps the biggest factor in a turnaround that has seen Central go from a 6-4 team outside the playoffs to 9-1 and one of the favorites to claim the big prize at Jordan-Hare Stadium on Dec. 3.

A creature of habit

On this, the final day of the regular season, DuBose stands outside his apartment alone. The sun hasn't risen yet, but the coach, a self-professed early riser, is dressed head to toe in game day attire. The colors have changed, but it's the same thing he's worn for more than a decade on Friday mornings in the fall.

Already this day is a little different. His wife, Tracey, is normally there to see him off at 7 a.m., but today she's in West Point, N.Y., where her son -- Jamey's stepson -- plays football. It is only the second time she will miss one of her husband's games.

"It'll feel a little different," DuBose acknowledges as he drops his bag into the bed of his pickup truck. "We'll work our way through it, though."

In the bag are the same items he brings with him every Friday, including his "uniform." It is the same gray sweatshirt he has worn on the sidelines for years, a Red Devils logo now in place of the Lions and Falcons. He'll swap his red polo for a white one along with the sweatshirt near game time. He'll replace his black pants with khakis. His brown belt will go in the bag in favor of a well-worn black piece, and he'll pull on the same pair of Nike socks he's worn for years. There are a few holes in the side, but he promises he washes them every week.

"Some people can laugh at it," he explains. "It don't mean anything to them, but it does to me. This belt's been through five state championships."

It's the classic rationale for unreasonable superstitions: It's only crazy if it doesn't work.

So far, DuBose's attention to detail, repetition and routine has worked out justifiably well.

The habits are more than just superstition, though. It's one of the things that make his program run so smoothly from day to day.

During morning walkthroughs on the day of Central's game against Enterprise, the players are like trained soldiers. They move without comment from room to room for final film sessions:

Punt team (nicknamed "pride"), punt return ("pride and joy"), kickoff, kickoff return, team meeting, breakfast and a motivational speaker, equipment check, study hall and class.

In the afternoon, it's the same routine:

Pre-game meal, devotional, offense, defense, special teams, a word from DuBose and a highlight video.

DuBose's disposition remains stoic throughout the morning, but shifts dramatically when the team meets one last time in the locker room before final walkthroughs. Likewise, the players take their cues from DuBose and the other coaches. The quiet reservation of the morning is gone, replaced with hungry eyes and uncontainable energy.

"I believe in repetition," DuBose explains. "If we know a team is going to run a certain play a lot, we'll set a mark of about 150 or whatever number and tag that play every time we see it in practice. I think repetition is how you stop things and how you get better at things. Do things and talk about them until they stick in your head and become normal."

Seize the day, boys

The first team DuBose ever coached with was Straughn High in Andalusia, Ala. He was still in college at Troy University but had been given the opportunity to coach the offensive and defensive lines as a volunteer. There were only 21 players on the team and just about six or seven on the line.

"I had to learn how to coach early," DuBose said. "With only six offensive linemen, you have to learn how to do a lot of things."

In his first season, during halftime of a game Straughn trailed against a tough opponent, DuBose took his unit into a side room to try and motivate them to improve in the second half. As halftime neared its end, DuBose tried to open the door to rejoin the team, but found that it locked from the outside.

"I had locked myself in the washroom," he remembered with a laugh. "The head coach (Trent Taylor) left the team locker room, and I've got our entire line locked in a room. Lo and behold, I had to knock on the door and tell him to let us out."

It wasn't exactly Vince Lombardi, but DuBose remembers that time fondly because it was his first opportunity to get into coaching.

It was the opportunity to become Prattville's offensive coordinator and later its head coach that would most define his career. It was an opportunity, though, that many on the outside thought he was crazy for taking.

"When I took the job at Prattville, it was a national job," DuBose explained. "It wasn't just a high school job. A lot of people when I took that job told me they wouldn't want it. That the next guy coming in after Bill Clark can't be successful. If I had been on the outside, I might have thought the same thing. But I was on the inside and I knew that I was a part of what was going on. They gave me a chance, and that's all you need sometimes."

He reminds his team often to seize its chances when they come along, that there's no guarantee an opportunity will come along twice.

He refers to Auburn High coach Tim Carter, a friend of his, and the Tigers. They were in a competitive game against Hoover in last season's state title. They began this season 1-5.

"They've turned it around now (they earned the No. 2 seed in Class 7A, Region 2) and have another chance, but that chance was nearly gone," he said. "They took their chance last year and Opelika two years ago. We don't know what next year is going to be. You can't say you'll be back."

He speaks to his team in the pre-game meeting about seizing the moment and not fearing failure.

"A lot of guys fear failure," he said later. "That goes back to taking the Prattville job. I didn't fear failure. I took it and said let's see what we can do. We try to make sure our program isn't just built on football, but on understanding life and understanding how things are going to happen and what you have to do."

Hungry for more

DuBose doesn't wear any of his four state championship rings, but he does take them out to look at them every Friday before a game. He lets past successes sink in and motivate him for more in the future.

Occasionally, he'll see former players wearing theirs like he did when Central travelled to Prattville earlier this season. One of his old offensive linemen, who was a part of three state championships, showed DuBose that he was wearing all three.

"I told him to remember that no one can ever take that away from him," he said.

Instead of the rings, he sees the state title and state title runner-up plaques that line the top of his desk. He scoffs at the idea of being satisfied.

"I'm not satisfied," he says. "I love them and they're great memories, but there's more to add to it. Everyone always says something about the red (runners-up) ones. The red ones are what really motivate me."

That's another reason he came to Central. He's said from the beginning he believed the program, the school and the city had the necessary pieces to build a winner. All it needed was a guide to pull things together.

"Guys will do what you tell them to do in a program, it's just a matter of what's important to you," he said. "Well (the blueprint) is important to me. And it's worked. Once again, we've come here and we're doing the same thing and it's working. I believe in the process and as long as we get everyone else believing, we're going to go a long way."

This story was originally published November 1, 2014 at 6:58 PM with the headline "Central's Jamey DuBose has a blueprint for success."