ATHLETICS AT TUSKEGEE IS BIGGER THAN SPORTS

Success in football – and all sports – is in Reginald Ruffin’s hands

By Jenny Zimmerman

Church is in session, and Tuskegee University’s new head football coach is perched on the mount.

As Reginald Ruffin explains his coaching philosophy, his audience will soon realize this is not only a sermon they should hear, but one they’ll truly, deeply want to hear.

“So what we’re going to do here,” Ruffin starts out, “is … we’re going to always do the things that it takes for us to be successful. That means we’re going to love each other. We ain’t gonna complain. We’re gonna work our tails off. We’re gonna be accountable. We’re gonna be transparent. We’re gonna respect each other. We are gonna work extremely hard. We’re gonna control the things that we can control.”

“That’s by you being great students in the classroom,” he goes on, “and that’s by you being great athletes on the field. And it’s going to show in the greatest sportsmanship, being a great, disciplined football team and doing the things that it takes for us to turn this all around without any excuses.”

Ruffin, hired in December to assume a dual role as athletics director and head coach, can speak with conviction because Tuskegee University is home. A former Golden Tigers defensive coordinator under the departing Coach Willie Slater for about five years (2006-10), Ruffin learned the ins and outs of shepherding a heralded football program that is one of the most prolific in Historically Black Colleges and Universities history.

And while times have changed – and Ruffin knows that – he’s hardly accepting it.

RETURNING THE TIGERS TO THEIR FORMER GLORY

As the second annual Boeing Red Tails Classic prepares to kick off the 2022 college football season, the nationally televised game is an opportunity to showcase every aspect of life at Tuskegee and what Ruffin wants for these student-athletes.

He will lead the Golden Tigers against the Fort Valley State Wildcats in the 2022 Boeing Red Tails Classic at 7 p.m. ET/6 p.m. CT Sunday, Sept. 4, at the Cramton Bowl in Montgomery, Alabama, live on ESPNU.

Ruffin isn’t only at Tuskegee because he can turn heads with the best of coaches by giving a speech. At Miles College, he filled an impressive trophy case as the head coach for more than nine years. Now, returning to the place he knows well – where his son was born and where he learned what he needed to succeed as a head coach – makes his role feel more like a mission than a task.

“It’s a blessing to be back,” Ruffin said. “We’re trying to get things changed back on the athletic side. Over the years we struggled a little bit, and that’s not Tuskegee. So the pressure’s on to restore the winning ways and winning tradition.”

The Golden Tigers have been busy since Ruffin arrived, through spring ball, then strength and conditioning while off campus this summer, and he has set his sights on developing these young men.

“It’s amazing that our student-athletes get a chance to play in this Boeing Red Tails Classic that symbolizes or puts us in a position that, hey, this is the Tuskegee Airmen [who made] this happen,” Ruffin said. “And you can see the resemblance with the Tuskegee Airmen – what they had to endure, trying to get an opportunity to showcase their ability, their talents – with some of the things that these student-athletes endure at HBCUs, what we call the haves and have-nots.

“I am grateful [for] the history and paying homage to these guys that really set the footprint for us to have an opportunity. The history of Tuskegee, and the history of the airmen, man, this is so big for our guys to be able to tell their kids, their children’s children, years from now, that they played in the airmen’s Boeing Red Tails Classic,” he said.

It’s also an opportunity for Ruffin to return his Golden Tigers to their former glory.

In 2007, he directed a Golden Tigers defense with the SIAC’s top scoring, pass and rushing defense. In 2008, his squad finished second in scoring and among the leaders in most defensive categories, and in 2009, the Golden Tigers were the league’s top defense.

When he took the top job at Miles College, he applied that experience to one of the most successful runs in its history, and the SIAC, going 59-39 through nine seasons, with three SIAC Coach of the Year awards and two NCAA postseason appearances.

He led Miles to the league’s first back-to-back titles in the SIAC Championship Game era, among the Golden Bears’ four titles overall with him. In 2019, they led the SIAC in total offense and finished second in total defense after a 9-2 season and Ruffin’s second berth in the NCAA Division II football championship.

Throughout his career – and his four years as a starting linebacker at North Alabama – Ruffin has worked according to a simple philosophy: Don’t be about yourself. Be about the team. There might be no better example Ruffin would offer than the late Reginald Summage, the Golden Tigers wide receiver who, at 20 years old, was shot and killed in March.

The pain for the head coach is obvious, and hits quite close to his heart as it lingers – Ruffin lost his wife to breast cancer in 2017, and one of his assistant coaches to brain cancer a short time later. Recalling Summage, someone he knew for only a brief time, weighs on him. But Ruffin knows the young man is an inspiration for this team.

“Reginald Summage, we lost this kid – a kid who last year tore his knee up. Never missed a practice after his surgery. Asked the coaches, can he film practices, games; can he spot for the SID during the game, being a spotter, holding the chains – doing anything it takes for him to stay around his teammates and to be involved in this program,” Ruffin said. “Didn’t make any excuse about why he was injured or hurt, but just wanted to keep working, worked his tail off. And so that’s the mentality we are taking. What would Reginald do? And our kids have really bought into that. It’s about academics. It’s about athletics. And we talk. We have those conversations about family, about not football but about love, about ‘How’s your family doing?’, about the mental health piece that a lot of coaches forget about.

“Our philosophy is No. 1, be the best football team that we could possibly be each and every day, each and every practice, each and every game by taking one game at a time. Love in contact. Love in effort. And love in work ethic.”

His passion cascades throughout Ruffin’s life. And soon he’ll take the next step in his leadership. In June, Tuskegee announced Ruffin would lead Golden Tigers football for the 2022 season, then step aside  as head coach to focus his attention on his work as AD. Offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Aaron James, one of Tuskegee’s most prolific former players, will assume head coaching duties after the 2022 season.

“In my career, I empower my coaches to be more hands-on with the program … I want each coach to know and run their position as if they’re the head coach.” –Reginald Ruffin

For Ruffin, It’s A Natural Progression.

“I always wanted to get out of the coaching role later on, and that’s all,” Ruffin said. “For me, it’s more of the passion for all sports, all our student-athletes and coaches. That’s hard to do wearing two hats, when you give your heart and soul to both.

“In my career, I empower my coaches to be more hands-on with the program, with not just me being the dominant person. I want each coach to know and run their position as if they’re the head coach. And Aaron is the head coach of the offense and the quarterbacks. And Aaron James has been with me a long time and he’s the all-time winningest quarterback in Tuskegee history, so what better man to have step up?”

Offensive coordinator and QBs coach Aaron James, who led Tuskegee as its star quarterback from 1998-2001, finished his college career with a 42-5 record, including a 12-0 season and an HBCU national championship in 2000, as well as three SIAC championships. He was selected to the All-SIAC team in 2001 and is the Golden Tigers’ winningest quarterback in history, one of their most prolific players of all time. He will succeed Coach Ruffin as Tuskegee’s head coach after the 2022 season.

Right now, the focus is on hitting a milestone: the Golden Tigers’ 700^th win. In not quite eight months, Ruffin has laid a solid foundation as he builds a culture.

“For the most part I’m trying to get this team to understand that it’s a lot of pressure. Tuskegee is the winningest HBCU of all HBCUs, in terms of football wins,” said Ruffin, who recently hired a dynamic strength and conditioning staff, including Andrew “Coach Drew” Williams and Ieasia Walker, the school’s first female strength coach.

Ruffin also organized a spring cookout for all Tuskegee’s student-athletes, letting them know the athletics department is family. And the key in this culture change is that the student-athletes buy in and commit. Ruffin and his staff are pleased with what they’ve seen.

Andrew “Coach Drew” Williams, assistant athletic director for sports performance, arrived in December at Tuskegee University with head coach Reginald Ruffin from Miles College. Williams, a former running back at Miles College and Auburn University, is all in with Ruffin’s priority of showing student-athletes that their coaches are invested in their well-being every day.

“There was a lot of emphasis placed on their well-being,” Coach Walker said as she explained what it was like coming in early in the spring to start turning around the football program. “It was more about strengthening their minds. Coach Ruffin went to Miles College and he changed the culture there. So we showed that we were invested in their mind, and Coach Drew reemphasized that every single day. And it’s kind of cool to see the brotherhood that has been built, and just how culture speaks to them and lets them know that he’s there for them. It’s more than just football.”

The coaches make sure the players are going to class and are successful in the classroom. Moreover, the players are doing the right thing without much prompting, Ruffin said, and are holding each other accountable.

“Everybody’s wanting to put in their work,” Ruffin said. “And they’ve bonded as a group. And that’s what you want. They’re always watching film, they’re always around each other. They always have stuck together. And, man, that’s the glory of that, to see those guys do that on a daily basis.”

Walker, being the first female strength coach among the first group of certified strength coaches at Tuskegee, sees the players awakening to the new approach and to Ruffin’s philosophy.

“Coach Ruffin is … he’s such a great educator,” she said. “And you can see that with the way that he speaks. I think that being able to educate and teach makes a great coach, because you can adapt to the athletes you have around you. And then to see what he did at Miles College, his work is proven. And I’m excited to see how he changes the program every day. I’m really excited about this football season, I think it’s going to show how hard they work, how they made a way with the resources that we have, and I think it’s going to be a big improvement from what it was the previous season. The guys talk about it all the time, and I’ve just got a good feeling about it. I got a really good feeling.”

Longtime writer and editor Jenny Zimmerman has more than 25 years in journalism and newspapers.