Joey Gruden, a sophomore walk-on, was sitting near the far end of the Dayton bench this past December 20th as the Flyers starters were out on the floor, starting to pull ahead of Boston University in what would end up at 78-62 victory.
At the far end of UD Arena, in the Red Scare section, frenzied students cheered and chanted and waved those fathead placards, including one of the more recognizable images:
The tousle-haired, intense-looking face of Jon Gruden, the former UD Flyers walk-on quarterback, who later coached the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to a victory in Super Bowl XXXVII and now is the popular Monday Night Football analyst on ESPN.
As Joey focused on the Flyers game that night, he heard a voice behind him. It was coming from the end of the tunnel that leads from the dressing rooms out to the court:
“Joey! ... Hey Joey!”
“I was trying to watch what was going on and I was like, ‘Who is yelling my name right in the middle of the game?’ ” Joey recalled with a chuckle.
He turned around and there — from cardboard copy at one end of the Arena to flesh and blood now at the other — stood his Uncle Jon.
He was letting Joey know that the beleaguered Redskins, now coached by Jay Gruden, Joey’s dad and Jon’s younger brother, had just upset the Philadelphia Eagles, 27-24.
Jon was here to broadcast the Cincinnati Bengals’ MNF game with the Denver Broncos two nights later. He had spent much of the day in Dayton, first giving away football equipment to area coaches at an afternoon charity event and then going to the Pine Club for dinner with his former UD coach, Mike Kelly.
Although his visit to UD Arena was kept low key, his name carries almost iconic status when it comes to sports here.
Today, on Super Bowl Sunday, as Dayton hosts Fordham at UD Arena, there is one Flyer who knows both worlds.
A 6-foot-2 guard in his first season with the Flyers, Joey Gruden has been around pro football since he was born.
After a collegiate career at Louisville, his dad became a quarterback legend in the Arena Football League. In eight seasons playing for the Tampa Bay Storm and the Orlando Predators, he won six Arena League titles, was the league MVP in 1992, the All-Star Game MVP a year later, threw for over 21,000 career yards and nearly 400 touchdowns, ended up in the AFL Hall of Fame and was recently ranked the fourth-greatest player in AFL history.
He also coached several seasons in the AFL and for a while was the player-coach in Orlando.
“Those days were a blast,” Joey said. “I can remember me and my brothers going to the games three hours early and running around on the field. … I remember it seemed funny watching my dad coach the defense when he had his uniform on.”
Jay ended up a Tampa Bay offensive assistant for Jon, who had taken over the Buccaneers after coaching the Oakland Raiders four seasons. And then, almost as scripted, Tampa Bay routed the Raiders 48-21 in that 2003 Super Bowl at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego.
“I was in the third grade and I remember sitting in the lower bowl on the 50-yard line with my mom, my brothers and cousins. When the game ended, my cousin went down onto the field and got up on my uncle’s shoulders as they celebrated. I was a little jealous that I didn’t get to go down too, but it was fun watching them out there. We still have a picture of that up in our house.”
Yet for all those memories — running around NFL dressing rooms and practice fields, being befriended by players like Joey Galloway, more recently playing pickup basketball with some of the Redskins over the summer — Joey Gruden said he doesn’t first think of today as Super Bowl Sunday:
“No, today is the day we play Fordham.”
Value increasing
Because of his dad’s coaching travels, Joey played sports at three high schools.
His first two years he played football and basketball at Olympia High in Orlando. Junior year, when his dad was the offensive coordinator of the Bengals, he spent two months at Cincinnati Moeller, where he played football, then transferred to Sycamore High, where he ended an all-conference player in football, basketball and volleyball.
Interestingly, he has excelled even though he had to compensate for a childhood fall off the monkey bars that shattered his left arm. He said doctors hit an artery when they did the first surgery, had to re-operate and as a result his arm is now permanently crooked and its reach is some eight inches shorter than the right.
Not that it slowed him. He was a quarterback and then a safety in football. In practice this year he finally dunked — one-handed, of course.
Coming out of Sycamore, he drew interest from several Division III schools, including Denison, Ohio Northern, Centre College and Thomas More. Most offers were to play football. Ohio Northern’s was strictly for basketball.
He decided to check out UD, where the family connections began with his grandpa. Jim Gruden was an assistant on John McVay’s staff from 1969-72. His uncle Jon then transferred to UD from Muskingum and spent three years as a backup for the Flyers before graduating in 1985.
“I visited the campus and really liked it and decided I wanted to try to walk on here,” Joey said.
He had preferred status as a football walk-on, but opted to try to make the basketball team last season. But the Flyers had only two walk-on spots — both of which they filled — so he spent last year as a typical student and played intramural football, basketball and volleyball.
“Our basketball team was called the Average Joes,” he said proudly. “I was the tallest kid on the team. We had two twins who were 5-foot-6. We were small, but we were pretty good.”
He worked the Flyers’ youth camps last summer — to try to “get an edge in making the team,” he said — and it paid off. He started the season as a walk-on and his worth increased when the team’s two tallest players, Devon Scott and Jalen Robinson, were kicked out of the program.
Soon after transfer guard Ryan Bass had his career end with another concussion and junior college transfer Detwon Rogers never has taken the court this year because of injuries and academic issues.
The team is short-handed and in practice Joey gets lots of reps, not only as a scout team player, but as one of the backup guards.
‘Average’ no longer
As he sat in Kennedy Union at lunch time the other day, he went mostly unnoticed by the other students.
“I still don’t get recognized too much, probably because I’m not 6-foot-10,” said the smiling Gruden, who admitted his 6-2 listing in the game programs is probably exaggerated by an inch or two.
But the first time he came out of the UD Arena tunnel onto the court, he said he felt his stature grow:
“I was shocked. The place was packed, the fans were screaming. I got nervous in warm-ups. I was worried I was going to miss a layup. But it’s really cool to have all these people really care about Dayton basketball.”
As the season has progressed, some of the students in the Red Scare section have picked up on him.
“It’s pretty funny,” he said. “Sometimes I’ll hit a 3 in warm-ups and hear ‘Gruuuu…den!’ ” They’ll hold my uncle’s head up and point at me. They make me laugh.”
He has played just six minutes over six games and has not taken a shot, a point that has gotten him chided by guys like starting guard Kyle Davis, who set him up with a good late-game pass earlier this year.
He also gets tweaked by his dad, who watches the games online and afterwards sends a text, Joey said: “He’ll tease me and say, ‘Hey, nice clapping Joey.’ Sometimes he’ll just go, ‘Shoot the ball.’ ”
Joey said his experience isn’t defined by a line in the box score: “Sure, I’d love to work up into the rotation somehow, but I just love being a part of the team, being around the guys, practicing every day.
“I want to coach basketball one day, so I’m trying to learn as much as I can from Coach Miller. He’s very intense. It can be fun, but every day is a hard day.
The team has fed off its depleted ranks, and it shows in the Flyers’ 16-4 record.
“Since everything happened, we play with more of an edge now,” Joey said. “Everyone thinks we can’t do it and that makes us play harder. We play with a little chip on our shoulder.”
While almost everybody celebrates the Flyers “True Team” bond, Joey grinned and said there are some who wish his walk-on tryout hadn’t gone so well this year.
“Yeah I think the intramural guys are mad because I made the team,” he laughed. “Because I’m not allowed to play with them anymore.”
Then again, how could he?
He’s no longer an Average Joe.
He’s a Dayton Flyer.
He’s “Gruuuu….den!”
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