Let’s just say Mike Tomlin’s coaching career had nowhere to go but up. Once a wide-eyed assistant at Arkansas State, his first task of running a group ended in the opponent running one back. In a training camp interview with ESPN’s Kevin Clark, Tomlin still remembers the early flub.
“The first time I was responsible for a unit,” Tomlin told Clark. “We were playing the University of Minnesota, I was at Arkansas State. And I was in charge of the kickoff team. We gave up a kickoff return for a touchdown on the opening kickoff of the game. That was the first unit I was responsible for.”
Tomlin’s coaching career began at VMI in 1995, pushed into coaching by the late Bill Stewart. After a year at Memphis, Tomlin was hired as Arkansas State’s receivers coach in 1997 before transitioning to coaching the defensive backs the following season. There, he worked alongside future Steelers coordinators Randy Fichtner and Keith Butler.
With coaching staffs smaller than today’s, positional coaches played roles to help out on special teams, pieced together to spread the workload. Tomlin’s mission to have his guys ready to cover kicks went up in smoke.
Sadly, I couldn’t find footage of the play despite my best efforts. There are no highlights of the game on YouTube, in a Google Search, or Twitter. Even more-desperate attempts like looking up season highlights of the ’98 Golden Gophers, clips of Tyrone Carter at Minnesota, searching future games that year in the hopes the play would be rewound and referenced. Even SportsCenter’s Top Plays of that week (which does exist but focuses almost exclusively on baseball – thank the steroid home run era for that), come up empty.
The only thing we have is the written word, like this UPI recap from the game. Turns out, that Carter touchdown was badly needed in preventing an upset.
“Adam Bailey kicked a 17-yard field goal with four seconds to play Saturday, almost 60 minutes after Tyrone Carter returned the opening kickoff 86 yards for a score, as Minnesota survived a scare to edge Arkansas State, 17-14.”
Tomlin can’t even find “comfort” in a blowout loss where one touchdown was immaterial to the game. Not that Tomlin is one to seek comfort, anyway.
After the season, Tomlin moved on to take a job at Cincinnati. His final collegiate stop before breaking into the NFL in 2001 with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The two funny footnotes on that story are the fact Tomlin was hired by the Minnesota Vikings as defensive coordinator in 2006 and after being hired by the Steelers in 2007, coached Carter for three seasons. Together, Carter had two pick-sixes, undoubtedly touchdowns Tomlin was much happier to see than the decade before.
