What do you like? What would you like for me to hear? What would you like for me to say?
This is what Ashley Ambrose asks high schoolers when he sits in their living room with their parents and recruits them to come play football at Cal.
It’s not an easy job, convincing an 18-year-old to play football in Berkeley instead of Los Angeles or Baton Rouge or Eugene, or getting a scared kid to trust you. But Ambrose makes it look easy. Then again, maybe that’s because Ambrose is not one to take the easy route.
“What do you want to know about me?” he always asks his recruits, first and foremost.
How about how he started just like them, a teenager unsure about his future. He wound up roaming the NFL secondary for 13 seasons before eventually becoming Cal’s defensive backs coach a year ago.
He didn’t start playing organized football until junior year of high school. Before that, the future Pro Bowler had only competed on the streets of New Orleans with friends. He was always picked first and was pretty good, so he thought to himself, “I love the game, I’m always watching on TV, I might as well just go out and give it a shot.”
He starred at Alcee Fortier High School and gained a scholarship to Mississippi Valley State. Ambrose was going to redshirt his freshman year, but the team wasn’t doing so well, so the coach started him the fifth game of the season. Ambrose intercepted two passes. He started every game from that point on.
The Colts plucked him out of the small Southwestern Athletic Conference school with the 29th overall pick in the 1992 NFL Draft. Lots of high schoolers think they need to play in the SEC to reach the NFL, he says, but that’s not true. It doesn’t matter where you go.
“They’ll find you,” he says. “You can go anywhere you want to.”
That’s why he tells you to play for Cal. Besides football, you get a world-class education. He says it’s “killing two birds with one stone.” He mentions that it’s the best public university in the world, reiterating the point over and over again.
“It’s No. 1,” he says. “You can’t beat it.”
***
Ambrose laughs. He has one of those familiar chuckles. He laughs as if he can’t believe someone wouldn’t understand and wouldn’t laugh with him. It’s as if he is in disbelief — what could possibly be better than No. 1? But it makes you relate to him, his confidence, the fact that he believes every single word he says — and so do you. It’s because Ambrose speaks the truth. He doesn’t tell you what you want to hear; he tells you how it is.
“He was down-to-earth when he talked to me,” says freshman cornerback Stefan McClure, one of Ambrose’s first recruits at Cal. “He didn’t fill your head with lies, ‘Oh yeah, you can come here and start.’ He said, ‘You can come here. We need guys. We can develop you, and you have a chance to get into the rotation.’”
Ambrose and McClure have a special relationship. Ambrose said that the two of them were meant to be together. And that sentiment comes across as completely, unequivocally genuine. He’s not just saying it to get on a player’s good side or give a good quote. He really, truly means what he says.
“Whenever he talks to me, I really listen, because he knows what he’s talking about,” says Kameron Jackson, another one of Ambrose’s recruits. “He knows what he’s doing.”
Jeff Tedford interviewed him five years ago, but Ambrose was just getting into coaching and not yet ready to leave his family to work in Berkeley. Last season after the Bears played Colorado, where Ambrose was coaching, he was surprised that Tedford remembered him. Ambrose was even more surprised when Tedford offered him the job after the Buffaloes’ staff was let go during a program overhaul.
“To me, it was in God’s plan,” Ambrose says. “It’s funny how it happened … you get fired, who calls? So it’s amazing how things happen.”
He smiles. It’s the kind of grin that lights up a room, the kind that people respond to, the kind that inspires.
***
Ambrose is a teacher, educating his players to be students — in the classroom, on the field, in film sessions, you name it. He knows from experience it’s not about how fast you can run or how high you can jump. You have to know coverages. You have to know routes. You have to know the game.
And he makes sure his players know that.
“You got to know your technique, you got to know your fundamentals and you go to be a student of the game,” McClure says. “Just being … coached by him, I can soak all that in.”
Adds Jackson: “I’m learning how to be a better defensive back, I’m learning the game more and a better IQ of the game.”
That’s what it’s about for Ambrose — the next generation of football players, the ones he is trying to mold into the right shape, the right path, the right way. His way.
“When I sit there and talk to the parents and talk to the kids, I let them know, ‘Look, I’m here for you, and I’m gonna do whatever I can to get you to go through school, to do the right things, to stay out of trouble,’” Ambrose says, “because I can be a mentor for these guys. I’ve been where they’re trying to go. And I did it the correct way. And I feel like I can get them to do the same thing.”
You’ve heard Coach Ambrose’s story now. You know he’s looking out for you. You know he wants you to graduate. You know how far he’s come and how far he’s still willing to go — and that he wants to take you with him.
So, who do you want to play for?
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