Jim Gladden and the 'Lunch Bunch'

By Jim Joanos and Jerry Kutz

Jim Gladden

Every Tuesday at lunch time, a group of men and women get together at a local Tallahassee restaurant. Several of those who attend are retired FSU coaches in different sports. Some others are retired from other jobs at FSU. Some were previously doctors, lawyers, judges, preachers, teachers, military veterans, salesmen. All are serious FSU sports fans. In addition to having lunch, the group is there to have some serious discussions about FSU athletics and to enjoy memories of the past. Usually, there will be a speaker. There are no membership dues although on a few occasions a hat may be passed for the speaker who might be a non-scholarship student or for some benevolent cause. The only required cost is to pay for your own meal. Although most who attend are regulars, there is no roll call or official membership list as the doors are open to anybody that enjoys sharing stories and information about FSU athletics.

While first eating lunch, those in attendance enjoy talking with the folks seated near them. An invocation is then given, as some in the group are devoted members of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. This is followed by the speaker whose identity is not disclosed until the meeting. That is because the purpose of the group is mainly on getting together and enjoying the fellowship rather than who the speaker is. It is more important that the size of group be relatively constant each week rather than rise or fall because of the popularity of the speaker. If you are there just because of the speaker, you are in the wrong place.

One week the speaker might be one of the FSU head coaches and that be followed the next week by a current or former athlete and the next it might be a sports journalist or historian. You do not know until you get there.

The leader of the group is Jim Gladden who along with his wife, Patty, make the arrangements with the restaurant and with some help from others take care of all the logistics from week to week. Jim grew up on a cattle ranch in the Ozarks of southern Missouri that had been homesteaded by his grandfather. He attended elementary school in a one room schoolhouse and then attended high school in the small town of Rolla, Missouri.

“I came from a little country town. It was so small we called it a poke and plumb town,” Gladden said. “You poke your head out the window and you are plumb out of town.”

Gladden excelled in high school football where he was coached by his father. For college he attended and played football at William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri.

Jim’s desire since childhood was to be a football coach. Following college, he followed that path and became a high school football coach. For fifteen years thereafter he coached high school football, four as an assistant in Missouri and then the next eleven as a head coach in Tennessee, Kentucky and Florida. During that time, he was quite successful, winning a couple of conference coach of the year awards.

When he was coaching in Kirkwood, Missouri, his mother, a school secretary in a nearby school, introduced him to one of the teachers at her school. Soon he and Patty were married. They have made a wonderful team and they have enjoyed having a close-knit family. Their family includes three adult children, eight grand and two great-grandchildren.

He was coaching at Hernando High School in Brooksville, Florida, when he got the attention of FSU assistant coach Gene McDowell who recruited the area and head football coach, Darrell Mudra. Mudra asked him to come to FSU as a graduate assistant in 1975. Mudra was let go at FSU after the 1975 season but the new head coach, Bobby Bowden, kept three members of Mudra’s staff including Gladden and elevated him to a full-time assistant coach position where he spent 26 more years on the staff at FSU.

From 1976 through 1995, he coached outside linebackers. From 1996 until his retirement in 2001, he was the defensive ends coach. He also coached the punt-blocking unit which holds the record for most blocked punts (8) and touchdowns off those blocked punts (5) in 1984, records that have held for 40 years.

In his later years Gladden bore the title of Associate Head Coach at FSU.

While many college coaches chose to chase dreams from one college to another Gladden never left FSU. Instead he bought into a Bobby Bowden philosophy: “If you yearn for a better job, put more effort into the one you’ve got.”

Most of the years that he was on the staff were “glory years” for FSU. During that time FSU played in five national championship games, winning two in 1993 and 1999. The fourteen years from 1987-2000 are referred to as the “dynasty years” when FSU for fourteen straight years finished in the top five of college football. In 1992 FSU became a member of the Atlantic Coast Conference and dominated it by being either the outright conference champions or in two years, co-champions from 1992 until he retired. He was an excellent recruiter of talent as well as a good coach. Among the players he recruited or coached included some all-time FSU greats, Derrick Brooks, Peter Boulware, Reinard Wilson, Andre Wadsworth, and Jamal Reynolds, players Gladden would describe as: “Collission experts with intelligent intensity.”

Look in the record book for most sacks in a season and Gladden’s boys hold three of the four top spots nearly 20 years later. 1. Peter Boulware, 1996 19.0 2. Andre Wadsworth, 1997 16.0 DeMarcus Walker, 2016 16.0 4. Reinard Wilson, 1996 13.5. The top two for career sacks are 1. Reinard Wilson (1993-96) 35.5 and 2. Peter Boulware (1994-96) 34.

“On a blitz, I wanted to hear shattered glass,” Gladden told his players.

His philosophy was simple: “Let a hunting dog hunt. If a hunting dog can’t do what you want, let him do what he can do.”

For a short time after retiring from coaching Gladden served FSU in an administrative position. He and Patty acquired a ranch property nearby just east of Tallahassee and raised long-horn cattle until recently. In 2018, he was inducted into the FSU Athletics Hall of Fame.

I look forward to Tuesday. Do not know who Jim and Patty will have as a speaker but whoever it is I expect it to be very interesting.

About the author:

Jim Joanos

Memories of Garnet and Gold

Jim Joanos and his wife Betty Lou have deep roots at Florida State University. Avid sports fans, they have literally seen, and done, it all. Fortunately for us, Jim loves telling first-hand accounts dating back to FSU’s first football game, a 1947 clash with the Stetson Hatters on Centennial Field, where Cascades Park is today.

The Osceola will run a series of these colorful stories written by the former Tallahassee lawyer and judge, which we feel our readers will find enlightening and/or nostalgic.

Jim and Betty Lou, who was Associate Director of the FSU Alumni Association (1991-2003), have been married 65 years and are each listed as one of FSU’s 100 Distinguished Graduates. The couple were enshrined in the FSU Hall of Fame in 2015 as Moore-Stone Award Recipients. Ironically, both Deans Moore and Stone were instrumental in the Joanoses career development.

“Both Jim and Betty Lou Joanos have been exemplary fans and supporters of Florida State University, both academically and athletically,” said Andy Miller, retired President and CEO of Seminole Boosters, Inc. “You can’t go to an athletic event of any kind that you don’t see both Jim and Betty Lou Joanos together. They love their university as much as they love each other.”