Tracking proCanes - Steve Walsh -

proCanes.com is continuing our “Tracking proCanes” feature with former starting quarterback and National Champion Steve Walsh. After graduating from Cretin-Derham Hall High School in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Steve Walsh attended the University of Miami. He posted a record of 23-1 in his two seasons as the team's starting quarterback and led the Hurricanes to the 1987 national championship. Walsh held the school record for career touchdown passes from 1988-2002 before being surpassed by Ken Dorsey. Walsh was selected by the Dallas Cowboys with the first pick in the 1989 NFL Supplemental Draft where he was reunited with his former UM head coach Jimmy Johnson. Walsh went on to have an 11-year NFL career, playing for the Cowboys, Saints, Chicago Bears, St. Louis Rams, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and Indianapolis Colts. Please read Read below as Steve talks to proCanes.com about how he was recruited out of high school, his days as a Hurricane, pro and more!

proCanes: So you're head coach at Cardinal Newman High School in Palm Beach, can you talk a little bit about how you became the head coach?  Were you always interested in coaching? 
Steve Walsh: I’ve always had a kind of secret passion to coach because it’s something I stayed involved in with the University of Miami and the various quarterbacks , mainly Kenny Dorsey. As I got out of the league and I knew enough of the coaches on the staff like Rob Chudzinski and Butch Davis and all those guys, I spent some time around Kenny as I explored coaching back in 2000.  I decided to enter the business world through a mortgage company called  Home Bank and decided to not pursue the coaching industry but it was something I always had a passion for and love and I continued to stay around some of the Miami qbs.  I then started to do radio broadcasting for FAU and over the last three years got involved in some sports through a weekly college football show called Tailgate Overtime as well as University of Miami football specials called Grilled Iron Gate. Over the last year the mortgage industry has gone through major transitions and the company shut down so I joined Country Wide and over the last year the coaching opportunity evolved. I went down to talk to Randy Shannon about coaching and possibly coming to the University of Miami and coaching.  In the end though, I just felt like it was easier for me to stay in West Palm Beach for my family and explore coaching at the high school level and see how much I do love it and then make a decision over the next five years and then decide if this is something I want to do for the rest of my life and at what level.  If this is something I do love, then I’ll explore coaching at the collegial level. 

pC: Did you have an opportunity at UM? 
SW: After I talked to Randy I think there would have been an opportunity in a graduate assistant position.  With some of his changes, would there have been another opportunity?  Maybe, maybe not.  I was exploring a graduate position with him. 

pC: You said you had a great relationship with Dorsey, do you have a relationship at all with Jacory Harris? 
SW: Not so much.  I saw [Harris and Robert Marve] before the season and talked to them on the sidelines a little bit but I wouldn’t say there is a strong relationship.  Nothing like what I had with Ken Dorsey. 

pC: Are you going to continue your stint with QAM for next season?
SW: No. That’s not going to be able to happen. 

pC: Going back to your Hurricane and NFL days what would you say was the hardest for your transition from UM to the NFL?
SW: Well I think when you go into a different system and different personnel there were a lot of challenges with the level of play.  It becomes that much better and more intense and when I didn’t feel comfortable in some of the offensive systems that we ran, that really didn’t take advantage of my skills, that was probably my challenge. You know the one system that I really felt comfortable in was in Chicago and that’s where my greatest success was. 

pC:What was the most uncomfortable system?
SW: St. Louis or New Orleans.

pC: So would you say that the Bears was your favorite stop?
SW: Yeah. My last year in the league in Indianapolis working with Peyton [Manning] and Tom Moore the Colts was really an unbelievable experience because they had a really unbelievable offensive system and Peyton and I had a relationship from my days with the New Orleans Saints so that was a real good relationship and him and I worked well together. That was a lot of fun and we were successful but certainly for me as a player personally, it was Chicago. 

pC: What was your favorite memories from the UM days?
SW: The comeback victory against Florida State, the comeback victory against Michigan.  Everybody remembers the Norte Dame loss. That’s something I‘d like to forget and then the National Championship against Oklahoma was a great memory of course. Those were just memories that every once in a while you think about a certain play or part of the game. The thing that people most talk to me about was the Michigan comeback. 

pC:How was it having Jimmy Johnson as your head coach?
SW: Jimmy was extremely passionate about being  a champion and being the best.  He would always say be the best and at the end of the day can you say you were the best? That doesn’t happen often in life.  That was what his passion and what he was about and that transcended to the players and we had that thought process and he was able to further it along with his passion. Jimmy was an incredible motivator and gifted speaker and really knew how to push the buttons of his players and that’s what I’ll take from Jimmy.   

pC: What do you think UM needs to do to become the best again?
SW: The playing field is so much more leveled than it was in my day.  You’re going into situations where if you don’t play really good you’re going to get beat and that’s the biggest thing they see about the ACC.  I think they thought they were just going to walk over the ACC and that’s really tough.  They just need to get the confidence back that they can be champions because everyone has talent on both sides of the ball and everyone has scholarships on both sides of the ball.  The difference maker is having the confidence and that confidence comes with success. It’s a fine line having that confidence and that creates success and having success creates confidence.  But when you get both of those things and you obviously mix in the talent there, that’s when you get the national championships.  There was a need for them to upgrade their talent and there is still a need for that but now they have to play with confidence, they have to have the coaches that are going to help instill and coach them on how to make the plays and then you have to go out there and do it. 

pC: So what was then the downfall the program? Do you think it was a lack of talent? Coaching?
SW: I think it’s a combination. When you bring in talent  it doesn’t matter how good they were in their highschool careers, they have to get better.   If they come in saying okay I’m at the University of Miami I’ve made it now, let’s walk over some teams, they’re going to lose.  They have to come in there with the hunger and passion to be the best like Jimmy preached and it doesn’t come easy.  You have to work hard at it and it’s not to say that they don’t work hard but when teams become champions it’s a combination of talent and hard work. 

pC: How did you come from Minnesota all the way down to Miami?
SW: Mark Trestman was the initial guy that was on me. Mark played college football with one of my highschool coaches. I was not getting recruited very heavily and he called Mark and said you want to take a look at this kid, he’s pretty talented and Mark came to take a look at me and immediately Miami started recruiting me. He mentioned me to Howard Schnellenberger at Louisville and Howard started recruiting me but I really didn’t have a lot of options.  Iowa State was always recruiting me but none of the Big Ten schools were really on me. Miami, Louisville, Iowa State, Northwestern were my choices, but it was pretty easy choice at that point. 

pC: Were you a Hurricane fan beforehand? 
SW: Oh no, I had no clue. The only Miami Hurricane game I remember watching was the Boston College game and I just thought that was an unbelievable game on both sides. I was a Kosar fan but it was an unbelievable game Boston College pulled out. I just left the game thinking I’d love to be part of a college that treated the ball like that. 

pC:I say a word and you tell me the first thing that pops in your head:
Randy Shannon: Intelligent
Larry Coker:  [Pause] Solid guy.
Orange Bowl:  A great place to play.
Dolphin Stadium:  Unbelievable facility.
Jimmy Johnson:  Motivational
The Fiesta Bowl:  Forgettable
Nortre Dame:  Intense Rivalry
 
pC: Do you wish that rivalry came back?
SW: I do.  I think both schools need it actually. 

pC:Which school do you think is in better shape?
SW: They [Notre Dame] are just financially. They’ve always been in a better position than Miami.   But as far as quality of the team I would say Miami. 

pC: What do you think of the move to Dolphin Stadium?
SW: I think it needed to happen.  You know Miami could not support what the facility needed done from a long term revenue standpoint for the University.  So I think it’s fine.  As a player, you had that commonality of that field that drew everybody back full circle but bottom line is the facilities are a weak link on campus and from a game day standpoint you’re not going to play in a better stadium than Dolphin Stadium so I think they solved that with one move.  Financially it was a smart move. Though financially it’s been very successful it’s just the field isn’t the same but I guess what are you going to do. 

We at proCanes.com would like to thank Steve Walsh for giving us his time to be our second interviewee for our new feature: "Tracking proCanes."