Arkansas coach Gregory continues winning ways

John Gregory already had an impressive coaching resume in the Canadian Football League before he made a phone call in the mid-1990s that would make him an instant success in arena football.

Gregory, head coach of the Iowa Barnstormers of the Arena Football League at the time, was in the market for a quarterback so he dialed up some guy who was stocking grocery shelves at the Hy-Vee in Cedar Falls.

The fella’s name was Kurt Warner.

“I played at Northern Iowa and obviously Kurt did, too,” said Gregory, a member of the Panthers Hall of Fame. “The coach there was Terry Allen, who was a good friend of mine and I would always talk to him about players. He said he had this one guy who just played one year because they had another guy in front of him before that. He had a couple of really good games and I scouted one of his games.

“Terry gave me his number and I called him up. He was looking for any opportunity.”

Warner, who now starts for Arizona, became one of the most prolific passers in AFL history and did the same in the NFL, including the storybook 1999 season when he guided the St. Louis Rams to a Super Bowl championship.

Gregory, meanwhile, has continued to cement his reputation as an offensive guru, advancing to four ArenaBowl championship games before settling into the arenafootball2 ranks with Arkansas. The fifth-seeded Twisters (12-6), fresh from a pair of upset road wins in the playoffs, take on Spokane (15-2) in the National Conference championship game at 7 p.m. Saturday in the Spokane Arena.

“I know our staff has a lot of respect for coach Gregory,” Spokane coach Chris Siegfried said. “We won’t be throwing anything at them that they haven’t seen before. I don’t know if that’s possible. You’re not going to rattle coaches like that.”

Gregory was a head coach for nine years in the CFL, winning two Grey Cup titles, before taking over the Barnstormers. The Iowa franchise was eventually sold to New York, where Gregory guided one of AFL’s most potent offenses from 2000-2003. His quarterback was former Washington State Cougar Aaron Garcia, who set an AFL record with 104 touchdown passes in 2000.

In 2003, Gregory coached the AFL Carolina Cobras, but the team eventually folded. About midway through the 2005 season, he got a call from the af2 office about an opening at Arkansas. Gregory didn’t want to leave South Carolina, where he plans to retire, so he made it clear that he would live in Arkansas only during the season.

“The ownership was really good, that was my first priority,” he said. “When I came here it was in total disarray. (Assistant coach) Art Haege and I changed quite a few players and we kind of played along pretty good.”

Arkansas put together a late push this season, winning its last two regular-season games to finish 10-6. In the opening round of the playoffs, the Twisters won at Oklahoma City – a team that defeated Arkansas 64-25 three weeks before – and then knocked off No. 2 Tulsa 53-51.

“We’re playing really hard, that’s the No. 1 key,” Gregory said.

Gregory knows his team will be heavy underdogs against the top-ranked Shock, who hung a 46-23 loss on the Twisters last month in Little Rock.

“I’ve heard about the (atmosphere) up there, but we’ve gone to some places like Tulsa, it was pretty wild Saturday night, so we’ll deal with that,” Gregory said. “It’s going to be a tough battle for us, but I guess that’s why you play the game.”

History lesson

Siegfried has been to an af2 conference championship game before and the similarities are somewhat eerie. In 2002, Siegfried led Cape Fear to a 13-3 regular-season mark and a pair of playoff wins. In the American Conference title game, Cape Fear lost at home to Florida, which was 9-7 during the regular season.

“Florida came in and handed us our butts,” Siegfried said. “That’s my biggest fear right now, thinking that if we just show up we’ll win. That’s not going to be the case.”

Despite the 23-point win over the Twisters last month, Siegfried said the Shock would be wise not to take Arkansas lightly.

“We played a pretty complete game, probably one of the best all-around games we’ve played this year,” he said. “Their pass rush is every bit as good as Bakersfield’s. We’re talking about an Arkansas team that handled Bakersfield pretty easily (in June). From the outside looking in, people are going to see that we beat them pretty good and assume it’s a no-brainer, but this is a dangerous, dangerous team.”