The reinvention of Jon Gruden

He won’t be the first coach to go to the broadcast booth only to return to the field, but you have to give extraordinary credit to Jon Gruden for so quickly reinventing himself in both the public eye and the eyes of teams looking for coaches in 2010. And maybe just a bit of credit should go to his agent, Bob LaMonte, in engineering this turnaround.

In a league with five Super Bowl-winning coaches all on the outside and with some eagerness to come back -- Brian Billick, Bill Cowher, Mike Holmgren, Mike Shanahan and Gruden (we’ll assume that Bill Parcells and Tony Dungy have no plans to return, at least for now) -- Gruden has commanded the lion’s share of buzz, whether in Washington or in Louisville at the collegiate level as we reported Wednesday. But just how has Gruden managed to leapfrog a cohort of coaches who have had either more success or went out on their own terms?

APWith the help of Monday Night Football, Jon Gruden is once again a hot commodity.

It’s simple. Every Monday night, he has a chalk talk with America, and he has proven to be a better, more engaging coach to a national audience than he was in Tampa when the Bucs, fearing fan apathy if he returned, blindsided him by firing him at the end of January.

This is a stunning change and may give Gruden his pick of jobs come December or January, or at least give him the option of staying in the TV booth and calling his own shot down the road. But looking back, no one could have foreseen the dramatic reinvention of Gruden, which has taken less than eight months. He is now deemed approachable, engaging and attainable, three qualities the other guys lack.

Cowher, who might honestly lack the fire in the belly to coach again, is thought to be unavailable unless all his conditions are met and a franchise quarterback is in place and that place is near his North Carolina home. Shanahan will coach again, but he’s expected to be very demanding, and that may cool interest. Holmgren, who has taken two different franchises to Super Bowls, may be seen as less demanding, but he also doesn’t make owners’ hearts flutter perhaps as much as he should. Brian Billick is even less exciting, despite having co-authored a visionary new book.

So Gruden comes with potentially fewer demands, and he lets an owner or an athletic director win the press conference announcing his hiring. He doesn’t need a quarterback because, much like Elizabeth Taylor and her husbands, he won’t keep one for long. This combination, along with the exposure he gets on MNF, has vaulted him to the top of the heap.

Whether Louisville can afford Gruden remains to be seen, but as long as he’s hot, watch him get even hotter as more teams in the college and pro ranks target him. Colorado and Virginia would also be attractive jobs should they come open, and in the NFL you can bank on at least five or six vacancies even in the most stable of years.

We should all bounce back from adversity and reinvent ourselves as Gruden has.

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