PARK CITY - The man who once traded Brett Favre has come to the Big Sky Conference.
Jerry Glanville, the colorful and at times controversial former NFL coach, took over Portland State's football program in February. He'll be a head coach for the first time in 14 years.
It wasn't exactly a lifetime goal for Glanville to coach in the Big Sky, but the conference that includes Weber State - the Wildcats play at Portland State on Oct. 27 - is one he said he has always followed. When he was a coach for the Houston Oilers and Atlanta Falcons, Glanville said players would read the newspaper during their pre-game meals to find out how their alma maters fared on Saturday. He was the only one who wondered about the Big Sky.
"Here are my defensive ends looking at the Big Ten, this guy's looking at the SEC and I'm the only guy going, 'What happened to Montana State?' " Glanville said while addressing reporters who cover the Big Sky on Tuesday.
After serving as an assistant coach for 12 years, Glanville got his first head coaching job in the NFL at the end of the 1985 season in Houston.
Glanville was a part of a legendary feud when he coached in the AFC Central against Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and Cleveland. Then-Steelers coach Chuck Noll once confronted him at midfield after the game, angrily pointed his finger at him and made threats. Sam Wyche's Bengals once beat Glanville's Oilers 61-7, kicking a late field goal just to add to their point total.
Glanville said he found some potential candidates to replace Wyche and Noll in the Big Sky in Montana's Bobby Hauck and Eastern Washington's Paul Wulff. The three spent some time together at a golf tournament on Monday.
"I was with two guys last night - the guy from Montana and the guy from Eastern Washington," Glanville joked. "Maybe we can get a hate going, you know."
In some ways, the 65-year-old coach hasn't changed.
Glanville still dresses all in black, and sometimes wears shades indoors. His quick wit can still floor you, like the time he told a referee when disagreeing with him about a call, "This is the NFL, which stands for Not For Long when you make calls like that."
Glanville won't be giving anything away for free at Portland State, as he did when he left tickets for Elvis Presley at a preseason game in Memphis. That was years after Presley had died, of course.
Glanville will make $165,000 this year and has already boosted season-ticket sales for the Vikings. That was part of the reason why he was hired at Portland State.
"It's crazy to think that the coach can bring so much more attention," said Vikings linebacker Jordan Senn. "As a player, I'd like to think that what we do would bring more fans."
After getting fired from Atlanta following the 1993 season, Glanville took a long break from coaching. He bought a stock car and raced it, and he worked as an NFL analyst for Fox. He returned to coaching at Hawaii, where he served as June Jones' defensive coordinator the past two seasons.
Glanville is one of four new coaches in the Big Sky, along with Idaho State's John Zamberlin, Montana State's Rob Ash and Sacramento State's Marshall Sperbeck.
Nothing Glanville will do at Portland State can possibly match what his career is most known for. After the 1991 season in Atlanta, when the Falcons advanced to the divisional round of the NFC playoffs, Glanville traded Favre to Green Bay. Glanville said Favre's talent was not in question. It was his hard-partying ways that forced the Falcons to deal him.
