Luca Evans (OC Register)  —  As a cyclone of red drowned out blue, a furious storm of Trojan celebration erupting and swirling and whisking away any USC patron within close radius of the Rose Bowl, Alex Grinch’s feet stayed rooted.

This was the November pinnacle of the Trojans’ turnaround, the new era ushered in for USC since Lincoln Riley brought defensive coordinator Grinch, quarterback Caleb Williams and a host of staffers from Norman, Oklahoma, to Southern California. This was jubilation, Williams clenching his fists and roaring to everyone and no one in particular after USC’s 48-45 victory over crosstown rival UCLA. So on the sidelines, former longtime University of New Hampshire head coach Sean McDonnell walked over to congratulate Grinch, who once oversaw UNH’s cornerbacks in his first coaching gig.

He was happy, McDonnell remembered, a smile crossing Grinch’s face as he watched his players rush the end zone. Yet Grinch was pensive as he turned to McDonnell, arms crossed, his defense having bent to the point of breaking under a Chip Kelly-led onslaught.

“Boy,” McDonnell remembered Grinch saying, “how ’bout that, Coach?”

How ’bout that? Grinch, described by staffers and players across his coaching rise as a genuine, analytical motivator, always had a way of saying the world in precious little. And McDonnell knew Grinch, and he heard hurt in his words.

“He’s got a standard that he wants to see USC’s defense playing,” McDonnell said. “And probably didn’t get it that night.”

That standard will be under the microscope this fall at USC, Grinch entering a make-or-break season in the defensive coordinator’s chair. After the Trojans’ defense imploded late last season to leave a stain on a massive program turnaround, a mob called for Grinch’s head.

Internally, though, Grinch has inspired immense trust within every locker room he’s been a part of – and Riley trusted him enough to bring him back for a pivotal second season. The coordinator is no larger-than-life figure, no visually commanding presence. Yet he carries a spirit and deep care that galvanizes men to “follow him through hell,” as former Washington State receiver Gabe Marks said.

“He’s a grinder – he’s a fighter,” Riley told the Register, answering a question about his trust in Grinch. “Listen, there’s not any 100 percents in any of this world. So that’s why you get the best people. You trust their work ethic, their expertise, you give them the necessary support, and you let ’em grow.”

“It’s what he’s always done,” Riley continued. “And he’s going to do it again.”

‘On task all the time’

Push a button at a kiosk inside the University of Mount Union football center, former longtime coach Larry Kehres said, and a program highlight tape will cycle through the clip that ensures Grinch will live forever in Alliance, Ohio.

2000 Stagg Bowl – the crowning game of the NCAA Division III season. Purple Raiders attempting to fight off a late drive by Minnesota’s Saint John’s University. Tie ballgame. And safety Grinch flashing into the middle on a pass, cutting off a receiver, and returning an interception 33 yards.

It’s remembered in a national championship win because Grinch had the foresight, as safeties coach Jeff Wojtowicz recalled, to mental gymnastic his way through three progressions before baiting the quarterback into an interception. Remembered because Grinch, his former coach Kehres said, was the safety who was in the exact right place at the exact right time for the biggest play of his life.

“You could almost say Alex is boring,” Kehres said. “But that’s not the word. Alex is on task all the time. And if you don’t wander away, you almost appear boring.”

Grinch grew up in Grove City, Ohio, the son of a father who served in the Marines, the son of a mother who his uncle, longtime Missouri head coach Gary Pinkel, called “my hero.” When Kathy Grinch was a teenager, Pinkel said, she lost her ability to walk due to a rare genetic disorder called hereditary spastic paraplegia.

Kathy never complained through life in a wheelchair, Pinkel said with audible awe. Not once. She was beloved everywhere she went, Kehres said – by Grinch’s teammates, by Mount Union fans, by Kehres’ own father, who told his son after one game that the opposing quarterback was a “jerk” because he’d rolled too far out of bounds and accidentally bumped Kathy’s wheelchair on the sidelines.

Grinch rose quickly through the ranks after Pinkel encouraged him to coach: staff roles at New Hampshire and Wyoming, working under Pinkel at Missouri, orchestrating a defensive turnaround under Mike Leach at Washington State, and later teaming up with Riley at Oklahoma. Coaches across those various stops often point to Grinch’s time at Mount Union, where he won three national championships in four years, as the impetus for a winning pedigree and his climb up the ladder.

But Grinch’s Mount Union coaches reach back even further. Back to the days, as Pinkel remembered, when Kathy would wheel around with a young Grinch perched on her lap, the boy nurtured in the courage of a woman who never made an excuse and never took no for an answer.

“You’re a different person with that,” Pinkel said. “Understanding people. Caring about people.”

‘He cares about his players’

Muji Karim still repeats the message to himself sometimes, 17 years after Alex Grinch changed his life at New Hampshire.

You’re one of our best recruits. And you’re not playing like it.

Ask Riley, and Grinch is one of the fieriest coaches he’s ever been around. But others, beyond USC and Oklahoma, don’t remember Grinch as a yeller. He simply operated with no frills and no B.S., former players remembered, demanding cutthroat expectation that pierced at the heart of his disciples’ motivation.

“When he talked,” former Washington State receiver Marks said, “offense, defense, special teams, turned around and shut the hell up.”

So before one practice in Karim’s senior year, Grinch pulled him aside for a brief conversation. He’d just finished up a film session for cornerbacks. Karim was a safety – not even a part of it. Yet Grinch, Karim remembered, was savvy enough to detect something was simply missing from his effort.

“You’re one of our best recruits,” Grinch said, as Karim remembered. “And you’re not playing like it.”

He turned and walked away.

It was a tiny iceberg of a comment on the surface, a behemoth of history lying beneath. Grinch had unlocked Karim’s game, in part, by advocating for him to play more of a linebacker role to take advantage of his tackling skill. He had constantly checked in as Karim’s mom struggled with health issues and his father passed away his senior year. So Karim knew Grinch cared.

“That motivated me more than anything anybody else said, ever,” Karim said of Grinch’s words, “in my life playing sports, or anything.”

Grinch’s reputation has largely been defined by a forward-thinking defensive philosophy. A mind who took the experience of battling Kelly’s no-huddle New Hampshire offenses and Mike Leach’s Washington State Air Raid and channeled it into a “fast, attacking style” predicated on forcing turnovers, as former Oklahoma defensive line coach Calvin Thibodeaux described it.

Behind the scenes, though, nine of Grinch’s former players and coworkers who spoke to the Southern California News Group described perhaps his greatest strength as his ability to earn players’ trust – finding ways to motivate, Thibodeaux said, that “he’d never seen before.”

“Here’s what sums up Alex Grinch,” said former Missouri linebacker coach Dave Steckel. “Players want to know how much you care before they care how much you know. He cares about his players.”

In 2011, Karim lost parts of his leg and hand after a fiery car crash. He was in and out of a hospital bed for a year and a half, overwhelmed. Unhappy, he remembered, to be alive.

Karim’s immediate circle was tight then, seen consistently by a couple of teammates and McDonnell after he awoke from a weeks-long coma. Grinch was coaching in Wyoming, later Missouri. But Karim’s former teammate Etienne Boulay would visit, and tell Karim he’d spoken to Grinch.

Grinch said he believed in you. Grinch said if anyone could do it, you can. 

It was as effective in its subtlety, Karim reflected, as the coach’s senior year challenge. Short and sweet. Directly to the point.

“He was as big of a factor as with that camaraderie and that self-belief as anybody,” Karim said, now a successful adaptive athlete and business owner.

“When I needed him most.”

‘That assassin’s mentality’

They called it the Noontime Basketball Association, and every member of the mid-2000s University of New Hampshire football coaching staff – from head coach McDonnell to offensive coordinator Chip Kelly – was an active participant.

This was simple afternoon hoops, up on the court above the coaches’ offices. But these were men who hated to lose, fire stoked in the hearth of a competitive McDonnell staff. And as a meeting of this particular NBA came to order one day in April 2007, tensions rose as Grinch and offensive line coach Sean Devine started trading verbal jabs.

“Relax,” a young Grinch told Devine, McDonnell remembered. They finished up, headed back down to the offices, and Grinch went back to work at his desk.

Then Devine burst in. And verbal jabs almost turned literal.

“Don’t ever tell me to relax!” Devine yelled at Grinch, McDonnell recalled, and another coach had to physically restrict the two from coming to blows.

It was a brotherly argument, Devine remembered with a chuckle. Water under the bridge. But the story lingers in memory because Grinch – known more as thoughtful rather than fiery – didn’t back down.

“Almost stone-faced, where you’ll look at him and he’s almost got the eyes of an assassin … you can see that, the way his kids play for him,” Devine said. “They play with that assassin’s mentality.”

Grinch’s track record shows immediate year-over-year improvements: helping Washington State flip from 3-9 to 9-4 his first year with Leach, slashing Oklahoma’s average points-per-game-surrendered from 33.3 to 21.7 two years into his tenure. But progress stalled at USC last season, where the Trojans finished 94th of 131 schools in opponents’ ppg at 29.21. That number ballooned after USC gave up an average of 37.1 in its last eight games.

“You got to coach these guys, and it’s, you know, new scars and old scars and all that, and they have theirs, we got ours, but also those are tremendous opportunities to reference and learn from,” Grinch said Tuesday, when asked about falling short of expectation last year. “Obviously the fourth-quarter deficiencies last year, to think that we haven’t highlighted those and circled that and made a major emphasis – would be inaccurate.”

Buzz has abounded in camp as to the defense’s improvement, particularly on the line, where transfers like Anthony Lucas and Bear Alexander figure to help make life harder for opposing quarterbacks. And Grinch has faced and conquered sky-high expectations before, Riley pointed out after last season.

“Everybody around,” Riley told the Southern California News Group, “feels his intensity, his emotion, his desire to be great.”

Ultimately, then, the Trojans’ season will hinge on the trait that Grinch’s former players champion: to inspire the best, from a unit loaded with talent but also a slew of question marks. To build trust. To show care. 

“We’re behind him,” junior safety Jaylin Smith said. “We’re just going to keep sticking with him, and trusting the process.”

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