Playboy Interview: Jon Gruden

He is a freckle-faced maniac, dissecting opposing teams, browbeating his players and drilling holes through reporters with his laserlike eyes. In last season's NFL blockbuster Chucky's Revenge, he used a lethal mixture of sweat and brains to dismantle his former team, the Oakland Raiders, in Super Bowl XXXVII. Are you ready for the sequel?

Jon Gruden certainly is. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers' coach has been working 18-hour days to prep his team for a new challenge: to avoid the now common post-Super Bowl swoon. Gruden, whose sideline scowls earned him the nickname Chucky for his resemblance to the devil doll in the Child's Play movies, turned 40 on August 17--he is still the league's youngest head coach--but he swears he isn't mellowing. "I'm in here all the time," says Gruden, sitting in his cramped office across the street from a Tampa shopping mall, surrounded by playbooks and cassettes of game film. "I'm watching film. I'm strategizing. I want to work better, think better, get after it more."

That's scary.

The son of a college coach, Gruden dreamed of being a pro quarterback. But he was never a serious prospect as a QB at the University of Dayton, so after graduating in 1985 he decided to channel his fierce drive into coaching. He signed on as a graduate assistant at Tennessee, where he met his wife, Cindy, a Vols cheerleader. Gruden began to climb the coaching ladder--wide receivers coach at the University of the Pacific and later at the University of Pittsburgh. He held the same post with the Packers until 1995, when the Philadelphia Eagles named him offensive coordinator. In 1998, Raiders owner Al Davis made 35-year-old Gruden the baby of NFL head coaches. In four seasons in Oakland the kid went 40--28, a record that included a controversial playoff loss to the eventual Super Bowl champion Patriots (the Raiders got robbed by the zebras). Then Tampa Bay, desperate for a coach after Bill Parcells and Steve Spurrier turned down the proposal, offered Oakland owner Davis a king's ransom for the right to sign Gruden.

You know the rest: Gruden leads the Bucs to the Bowl, where they face Oakland in a grudge match for the ages. And on the sweetest Sunday he could have imagined, Gruden's intellect and demonic drive combine with Tampa Bay's talent to demolish his old team 48--21.

That victory made Gruden a crossover star. In an age of celebrity football coaches, when Parcells' arrival can overshadow the rest of what was once America's Team, the youthful Gruden may be the biggest celebrity coach of all.

What's next? More late nights, and if all goes well, another scary victory dance. Writer Kevin Cook met with Gruden in the coach's office during preseason, down the hall from a sign that reads How about a nice cup of shut the fuck up?

Playboy: How does this season shape up?

Gruden: Philadelphia looks good. In the NFC South, our division, I'm leery of Atlanta. They're on the verge of being a great team. The Saints are on the verge, too, and John Fox is doing great work with the Panthers. We're in a bear of a conference now.

Playboy: Are you different this year? Did winning the Super Bowl change you?

Gruden: No. I have people around me who'd throw me in a Dumpster if I did: my dad--who was a coach--guys on my coaching staff, players, too. They wouldn't tolerate any ego from me.

Playboy: Who'd be the first player to straighten you out?

Gruden: Warren Sapp. He'd be the first to dump me in the trash. He'd be followed by Brad Johnson and Derrick Brooks, then a band of others.

Playboy: It didn't make the broadcast, but one highlight after the Super Bowl was Sapp dancing in your locker room in nothing but his jockstrap. Is that a scene from a fright flick?

Gruden: Yeah, that's horrifying. But it was appropriate. Winning the Super Bowl--it's the best feeling in life. And I will dance in a jockstrap on Dale Mabry Highway if we do it again.

Playboy: Everyone dreams of winning the Super Bowl. Is the reality as good as the dream?

Gruden: Every bit as good. The week before the game, it's all you think about. It's like having a lottery ticket that's either the jackpot winner or nothing, just paper. And when that lottery number comes across the screen and it's you, man--that's as good as I ever dreamed.

Playboy: After Sapp, which Buc is the scariest naked?

Gruden: I can't say I study our players carefully when they're naked, but we've got some candidates. It's got to be one of the offensive linemen. I'll go with Kerry Jenkins.

Playboy: Jenkins is about 6'5", 305 pounds---

Gruden: He's probably got the funkiest body naked. You would have to see it to believe it.

Playboy: How's your health? Bucs fans must worry about your blood pressure.

Gruden: I don't check it. I've been tested, and it was high. I've taken medication; now it's under control. I'm really very composed.

Playboy: You're wound pretty tight.

Gruden: But I run and work out. I'm in good shape; it's just that I'm a type A personality. There was a time when I thought I might be sick and looked for help. I was concerned about my health because I rarely slept. I saw a lot of doctors, until one of them finally told me I have a gift. I don't require sleep like other people. "That's an edge," he said. "Use it." So instead of sleep I'll study the Rams' redzone offense or the Eagles' nickel-blitz package. I'll write some letters, listen to music, read a book, read Rolling Stone. I also read Playboy, but just the articles. I barely look at the pictures.

Playboy: Were you a hyperactive kid?

Gruden: Out of the crib early, up before dawn every day of my life. I wanted action. One Christmas Eve I stayed up all night, watching for Santa. The guy never came. Finally my parents came out and I said, "OK, there ain't no Santa. Let's talk about the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy." Solved the puzzle that night.

Playboy: Were you ever on Ritalin?

Gruden: No, I wasn't a spaz. Not that people who use Ritalin are, but I wasn't clinical. I just had a hard time resting. I'd lie down and close my eyes, but nothing would happen.

Playboy: Some football people say you're too tough on rookies.

Gruden: I've been accused of liking veteran players more, but there's a reason. You can learn from them. A veteran quarterback like Rich Gannon or Brad Johnson--those guys have been in a lot of battles. They're a good resource if you're willing to listen. Football isn't just games, it's planning. It's meetings all week, and we don't just twiddle our thumbs in those meetings. We deal with facts, with information, and a veteran offers more information than a rookie.

Playboy: How will the Bucs be different this year?

Gruden: Nothing stays the same; you get better or worse. We've lost players to free agency---

Playboy: Super Bowl MVP Dexter Jackson got $14 million to bolt to Arizona.

Gruden: But we've added players, too. John Wade from Jacksonville and Jason Whittle, a guard from the New York Giants--potential starters in the offensive line. We've added Dwayne Rudd from the Browns, an outside linebacker. We're looking at some options at safety to take over for Dexter Jackson, and we have some players from the draft.

Playboy: Every Bucs fan knows you set your alarm clock to go off at 3:17 in the morning. Why? Is that Sapp's weight?

Gruden: No, we've got him at 303. A lot of people think 3:17 is a Bible verse.

Playboy: Exodus 3:17--I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt. . . unto a land flowing with milk and honey.

Gruden: But it's not some cryptic message. It's just this: An alarm clock I got when I was with the Raiders happened to be set that way. First night it goes off at 3:17, and that fit my schedule. It gave me time to shower and get to work by four. So I left it that way.

Playboy: Is there anything special about the clock?

Gruden: Yeah, it had the Notre Dame fighting leprechaun on it, and it played the Notre Dame fight song. I love that song. Now I have a new clock--the leprechaun didn't go with our bedroom decor--but I set it at 3:17, too.

Playboy: Why Notre Dame? You went to Dayton.

Gruden: Notre Dame was where I fell in love with football. My dad was one of Dan Devine's assistant coaches. I went to high school in South Bend. Those were great Notre Dame teams. Joe Montana was the quarterback. Just walking around the campus jacked me up every day.

Playboy: Did you have football heroes before Montana?

Gruden: Doug Williams. When I was a grade-school kid in Tampa--my dad coached the Bucs' running backs--Doug was the man. I had an I DIG DOUG T-shirt and I'd pretend to be him. Later on, my dad joined the coaching staff at Indiana and I was a ball boy for Bob Knight. He's another hero.

Playboy: You were surrounded by big-time sports, but you never made it big yourself.

Gruden: I wasn't very big. But mainly I wasn't good enough.

Playboy: When did you realize you would never be a star?

Gruden: I was a backup quarterback at Dayton, which is a Division III school. That was a clue. When I was in college my little brother, Jay, was already bigger than I was.

Playboy: Jay Gruden went on to be an Arena Football League legend, a quarterback and coach for the Tampa Bay Storm, and is a member of your staff.

Gruden: But then he was just this big lug. He was about to become the sophomore quarterback at Chamberlain High in Tampa, and he would just lie on the couch eating crackers and drinking Rondo sodas, watching MTV. It drove me crazy. There I was, a backup at Dayton, spending my summer getting up early, lifting weights like a madman, running, throwing hundreds of balls every day while he sat there with a mouth full of popcorn. One day I said, "Get off your butt, lazy ass. Let's run. I'll race you." I had a mile run I'd do in our neighborhood, finishing with two tenths of a mile up Old Saybrook Avenue. So we were neck and neck to that point. Then we turned left on Old Saybrook and Jay just left me. Beat me by 200 yards. Then he danced in our driveway. He did the Rocky dance, waving his arms. That's when I knew I would never be more than a Division III backup. I was crushed.

Playboy: Did Jay know how much that hurt you?

Gruden: Oh, he beat me up, too. That summer my little brother beat me in a race and beat me up in a fight. That's the exclamation point on my athletic career.

Playboy: What was the fight about?

Gruden: Miscellaneous things. "Give me the remote!" We fought all the time. Body blows only, no punching in the face--that was the Gruden rule.

Playboy: What a warm family. You threw full-force body blows?

Gruden: Repeatedly. We'd play basketball and dive for a loose ball or argue over a double dribble, then throw the ball at each other and start punching. But only away from Mom and Dad. If we fought at home, Mom would smack us with a big wooden spoon.

Playboy: When did you and Jay stop fighting?

Gruden: We didn't. One summer we were busting each other up on the front lawn when a car pulled over. A lady got out and told us to knock it off or she would call the police. The next day I felt like I'd been in a car wreck. I was so sore I couldn't lift weights.

Playboy: How did you handle knowing that you would never be more than a second-stringer?

Gruden: I threw myself into coaching. I don't want to sound weird, but I love this game. In college I couldn't wait for football season, and when I wasn't any good I couldn't wait to get into coaching.

Playboy: Don't Americans make too much of football?

Gruden: No. Football is important. For one thing, it's the ultimate team game. Americans like to compete. Football is physical competition, strategic competition. It's bands and fans and excitement. There wouldn't be 70,000 fans in the stadium if it weren't important. It's my passion. There are lots of people who don't have a passion or never find one, but I'm lucky--I found mine.

Playboy: You haven't changed much since high school.

Gruden: Maybe that's a fault. Maybe I should expand my horizons, learn what's going on in the world. Outside of football, I'm not very functional. I can't change the oil in my car or put together some of my kids' toys. I like to hit golf balls, but I'll shank my six-iron. I have a hard time memorizing phone numbers--I'm terrible at numbers. I can tell you my address but not my zip code. My wife's cell number? That gets mixed up in my head with 22 Scat Z-Spot Option. In everyday life, I'm not the most astute guy. If not for my wife, the bills would never get paid.

Playboy: How can such a scatterbrain win a Super Bowl?

Gruden: Football is different. I come to the office at four in the morning and I'm disciplined. I'll put together a tip sheet for our quarterbacks that's 12 to 14 pages long. Well documented, precise, with seven or eight critical points--blue-chip looks at our next opponent's personnel and the defenses they play.

Playboy: The ordinary defensive fronts and the ones they'll use to rush Brad Johnson. How detailed is the tip sheet you give Johnson?

Gruden: Which one? The quarterback gets a tip sheet on Wednesday and another on Thursday. Wednesday's might preview the other team's base blitz. I might preview a weak link in their defense, then we'll go out and walk through a way to attack it. Thursday's tip sheet might be on the opponent's nickel defense, short-yardage and goal-line situations. I've talked a lot about situational football. A game is like the layout of a house: You do different things in different rooms. Base blitz, red zone, short yardage, goal line, two-minute drill--they're different environments.

Playboy: You watch so much game film--ever go to Blockbuster and rent a movie?

Gruden: Sure. But I fast-forward a lot. I can't watch the previews. They take too long. And I like videos I've seen before, so I can zip through to the cool scenes. Then it's like football film--you fast-forward to the important play. And when you get to that cool scene, you might watch it and rewind and see it twice. That drives my wife crazy.

Playboy: Would you watch an adult movie that way?

Gruden: I'm an American male--if there's a good-looking girl, I'll fast-forward to her best scene.

Playboy: As an American teenager, did you like football more than girls?

Gruden: I wouldn't say that. I was well aware of Playboy and what it's about.

Playboy: How did you learn about sex?

Gruden: I had a big brother. I had friends. I liked girls at a young age, and I explored. I was like Christopher Columbus, finding a new world.

Playboy: Tell us about your first time.

Gruden: First girl, first prom, first hot date--it's like your first Super Bowl. Those were insane times, brother.

Playboy: What was your first hot date?

Gruden: My wife. She was a Tennessee cheerleader. That was a truly hot date. I went to her house, and I was so nervous. I needed to have a good first date so there would be a second. I wanted to have a sustained drive.

Playboy: By then you were a graduate assistant helping the Vols' football team. But you were no virgin. Give us a tip sheet on your first sexual score.

Gruden: Do I have to?

Playboy: America wants to know.

Gruden: I've lied about this before. I've told some fibs. OK--I lost my virginity to the Notre Dame fight song.

Playboy: There was a band?

Gruden: No, not even music. But it was in my mind.

Playboy: How old were you?

Gruden: Seventeen. In South Bend. On a waterbed.

Playboy: We've seen all your Chucky expressions on the NFL sidelines. Is it safe to say that's how you look during sex?

Gruden: No. There are a few faces you could tie into that situation, but I don't show everything. There are some looks I haven't shown America.

Playboy: Faces only your wife has seen?

Gruden: Sure. This face moves in many directions, man. Only one person knows them all.

Playboy: Are you getting sick of the whole Chucky thing?

Gruden: It's all in fun. I saw Raiders fans at the Super Bowl carrying Chucky dolls with nooses around their necks. They were yelling "Traitor!" at me. I was a little amazed by that. I mean, I understand football fans--with them you're either friend or foe. But I have feelings, too, and you've got to remember--they traded me. For me, that game was never about revenge. My coming from Oakland was just a nice sidebar. Playing for the world championship was enough motivation for me. But let's get back to movies for a minute: Those Child's Play videos are definitely worth renting.

Playboy: Does your wife get called Bride of Chucky?

Gruden: Not by me.

Playboy: These days people call you a genius. If you are, why didn't you take Oakland to the Super Bowl?

Gruden: I won't say we didn't play good enough defense or had too many injuries or missed a field goal or got ripped off by a referee. I have to take responsibility. I didn't coach well enough.

Playboy: You left that team suddenly. Did you call any of the Raiders afterward to say goodbye?

Gruden: There are rules against talking to other teams. It's called tampering. And you need to remember how my Raiders career ended. They traded me in the middle of the night. By phone. So I left quietly. I didn't want to be quoted. I didn't want to call around and say something personal and have it leak out, because it will leak out. In my opinion, that wouldn't be professional.

Those Raiders guys--I was with them every day for four years. They knew what I felt for them. But my objective was to come to Tampa Bay and replace Tony Dungy, a guy who'd done a hell of a job. I had to join forces with Sapp, Derrick Brooks and Keyshawn Johnson. I had to hire an offensive coaching staff to go with [offensive coordinator] Bill Muir, who was already here. I knew Monte Kiffin, the defensive coordinator, and I wanted to keep his defensive staff together. So I'd better have called all those guys, called them a lot.

Playboy: Who was the first player you called?

Gruden: Sapp. He's a great player, a magnetic personality, always a target of rumor and gossip. There were rumors of him being traded for me! But you couldn't trade 25 Jon Grudens and all his playbooks for half of Sapp. We ain't trading him for a small continent. I had to tell him I needed him.

Playboy: Did your stars have to warm up to your cuddly personality?

Gruden: You can't win those guys--Warren, Brooks, Keyshawn--over in five minutes. You can't brown-nose them. But you can earn their trust. I asked them to keep an open mind, because I had a plan I knew would work. "I respect the job Tony did," I said. "Now it's our job to finish it."

Playboy: And now?

Gruden: It's our job to defend a world championship. I'm going to be leaning on Sapp and his friends.

Playboy: When Al Davis traded you, what time was it on your alarm clock?

Gruden: One A.M. I was groggy, man. Just got back from a Hawks-Warriors basketball game. My wife answered the phone and handed it to me. It wasn't a long conversation. He wanted to know if I was interested in talking to Tampa Bay. I said, "Most definitely." And he gave me the phone numbers for the Glazers [the Buccaneers' owners].

Playboy: Later, Davis said you were "pretty green" when he made you the league's youngest head coach. "Jon Gruden learned a lot here," he said.

Gruden: I'm still green. And I am respectful of Al Davis. I owe him a great deal, and I'm still learning. The minute I stop learning, this league's wild bulls will trample all over me.

Playboy: Be a fan for a minute. Who's your favorite quarterback? No fair saying Johnson or Gannon.

Gruden: Brett Favre. Blue-chip ability, charisma, the greatest competitor alive. He's a bitch. I just love that guy. And now you have the new-wave quarterbacks--Michael Vick and Donovan McNabb--who make football exciting.

Playboy: In practice before the Super Bowl, you pretended to be Gannon so your defense could get used to his moves and his mannerisms. You even did his voice, barking signals.

Gruden: Rich and I got along. Hopefully when we're done in football we can float down the river and be best friends. In the Super Bowl I had a pretty good idea how he'd look and what he'd say. You can't be sure, but I basically knew they'd go no-huddle at some point. So in practice, I wanted to give our defense an image to concentrate on, an audio-visual stimulus. It loosened our team up when I went out there as Gannon.

Playboy: One of your players said your passes went so high they looked like kickoffs.

Gruden: That's really nice. Actually, I stuck it right in there.

Playboy: In your pregame speech, you mentioned Viagra.

Gruden: Geez, how does this stuff get out? That was a private team meeting. We'd beaten Philadelphia and I said, "You think last week was exciting? This is the Super Bowl, and you shouldn't need any Viagra. Don't be limp out there, be fired up!"

Playboy: We're told that baseball is a thinking man's game, but football is far more complicated. How many decisions will a quarterback make in one play?

Gruden: It's complicated just to get out of the huddle. Call the formation, call the play, be ready to audibilize, vary your snap count, signal the play because it's so loud you can't hear. Now the play starts. Be ready to change your setup, change your footwork, throw with people bearing down on you. There are 22 players moving fast, collisions on every play. I've played baseball--good game, but it's a lot of standing around.

Playboy: Before the game you told your players not to bite on Gannon's pump fakes. So they stayed home and intercepted him five times.

Gruden: We didn't know for sure what the Raiders would do. But we had our clues. Before the game we're like Ellery Queen, searching feverishly for clues. We take them to [safety] John Lynch, who's the judge. He makes the decisions out there. Monte Kiffen had some good clues that week. I had a clue or two.

Playboy: Were you surprised when everything went your way? Lynch was miked on the sideline. He said, "This is going exactly like we practiced it."

Gruden: He says that at practice, too--about our offense. Lynch is an amazing student of football, a Hall of Fame player and a future coach. Or governor of Florida. He crunches information and takes it to our guys on defense. It's more than physical--it's collective knowledge and energy. Our defense makes very few mistakes. They think, they anticipate and they pounce.

Playboy: Are football players smarter than people think?

Gruden: Yes. I don't know anyone playing in this league who isn't smart.

Playboy: Come on.

Gruden: I mean it. Maybe they didn't excel academically because they were focused on their sport. I didn't do well in algebra and trigonometry myself.

Playboy: But you practiced drawing perfect circles on blackboards.

Gruden: That's different. That's for drawing plays. If you're going to be a coach, you can't draw hacker circles on the board.

Playboy: You were thinking offense. Circles represent offensive players.

Gruden: Yeah, when I got into coaching I couldn't draw any defensive alignments. My head was just a vacant lot.

Playboy: Didn't one of your mentors tell you not to overemphasize the game?

Gruden: Bob McKittrick was the 49ers' line coach. One of my football fathers. He calls me up one day and says, "Jon, I've got cancer. I'm going to die soon." I didn't know what to say. Bob was telling me there's more to life than football. He regretted things. "Jon," he says, "you don't want to be a 65-year-old offensive line coach with no friends and no life." That was a lot for me to handle.

Playboy: McKittrick died three years ago. Did that change you?

Gruden: Well, no. The way I see it, if you're a professional football coach, that's what you do. You don't think about the stock market or your pension plan. You have a duty to put together your most creative game plan every week, something that stimulates your guys and wins the game. It ain't easy.

Playboy: After you won the Super Bowl, did you relax? Sleep in until, say, 4:17?

Gruden: There are usually at least two sons in bed with me and my wife. We've got three: Jon II--we call him Deuce--Michael and Jayson, from three to nine years old. It's a full bed. We wrestle around and watch the big-screen TV. We'll watch SpongeBob SquarePants.

Playboy: Your running back Mike Alstott has some square pants. Is Alstott the most rectangular man alive?

Gruden: He's a truck. Tough dude, an old-school ballplayer.

Playboy: How do you handle Keyshawn Johnson? He's considered one of the biggest head cases in the sport. You yanked him on one play last year, and he made it clear he didn't like it.

Gruden: We have some good receivers on our team. Key is one, but Keenan McCardell is a good player and so is Joe Jurevicius. On some plays we have only one receiver on the field. The play I pulled Key on was one of those. He got mad. I'll say this--he's a great competitor. He's a key to our offense. A player like that, you have to earn his trust, and I'm still earning it. Our job is to defend our championship; Key is one of the guys I'm going to lean on. I could do a better job stimulating and working with him. I'm working on our relationship--it's getting better.

Playboy: How could you use Keyshawn better?

Gruden: Get him better looks.

Playboy: Get him the damn ball?

Gruden: Yeah. We'd like to be more explosive, convert more third downs and get 10 to 12 more plays every game. That's at least 160 more plays in a year. Key could catch a lot more balls.

Playboy: How much of your job is Xs and Os, and how much is relationships?

Gruden: Xs and Os are key, but you've got to sell your approach. You don't want to be some rigid guy with blinders on. Football players are emotional--they have something wild and crazy to them. They get their asses knocked off every play. You have to be one tough dude to play in the NFL. I respect that.

Playboy: Would you like to calm down?

Gruden: I'm trying. But the heat of the moment is a powerful thing, brother. It gets you going, and sometimes the most descriptive word is one I reach for.

Playboy: Wasn't "fuck" the first word you said to the Bucs on your first day?

Gruden: Not so. I said, "Good morning, men." That's still how we start every day.

Playboy: After college you interned with the 49ers. What was that like?

Gruden: The players called me Uncle Buck. For a while I ran a few miles to practice every day, but finally I bought an old Delta 88 for $500. It was 17 feet long and white, like John Candy's car in the movie. Jerry Rice started calling me Uncle Buck, and it caught on.

Playboy: What do you drive now?

Gruden: I don't own a car. I'd probably lose it. The Buccaneers supply one--a silver Mercedes-Benz.

Playboy: Is it true that you can't stand to hear people chewing gum or tapping a pen, and that you hate it when people walk in front of the TV?

Gruden: I can be a little irritable.

Playboy: [Tapping feet] What else bugs you? Somebody tapping his feet?

Gruden: Yes. People stirring, moving around. People whose eyes wander when you're talking to them.

Playboy: How about road rage?

Gruden: The red lights in Tampa are the longest in America. I have a hard time with that. I'll sit there steaming, talking to myself.

Playboy: But for all your foibles, People named you one of the 50 most beautiful people in 2001. What did your wife think of that?

Gruden: She was stunned. I was probably a sympathy case--they wanted somebody from football. But I sure let everyone know.

Playboy: You sent Seattle coach Mike Holmgren a note signed Jon Gruden, One of the 50 Most Beautiful People.

Gruden: I still remind the team that they shouldn't upset me. We don't want to disrupt the beauty I've established. Our cornerback Ronde Barber was also one of the most beautiful, so Ronde and I keep an eye on each other. We make sure we're on top of our looks.

Playboy: Is it true that you can't grow a beard?

Gruden: I can get a little stubble going, but that's it.

Playboy: You quote rappers in your pregame speeches. How do you keep up with the genre?

Gruden: I'll grab a player's headset and listen. Sometimes there's a lyric I can use to connect with the guys. Tupac, I like what he did. I'm not on the cutting edge of rap, but I know Eminem, Snoop Dogg---

Playboy: You like Eminem?

Gruden: He is an amazing, explosive talent. But if I'm listening for myself, it's old-school rock and roll. Bon Jovi, Earth, Wind and Fire, AC/DC, Metallica. And I like Prince. He's strong, a real competitor. I like Raspberry Beret and Little Red Corvette.

Playboy: Those are sexual references, you know.

Gruden: What music isn't? That's entertainment, man.

Playboy: Do you dance, too?

Gruden: I'm not the best dancer. I get a little embarrassed out there, but I do make a bold attempt on occasion.

Playboy: You go clubbing?

Gruden: No, but if there's a team function with a band, I'll cut the rug. Slow-dancing with my wife's the best, but if it's a fast beat I'll flop around.

Playboy: What do your players think of your style?

Gruden: Lynch might be critical of my dancing, but if so, I'll critique his, too. Alstott, same thing. Neither of those guys can dance.

Playboy: It's hard to picture Alstott in full boogie.

Gruden: Just stay the hell out of his way. Alstott needs a lot of room. But he's got some beat. He's a lot better than Lynch. Dancing might be an offensive-player thing, although Simeon Rice can really move. He's our best dancer. When Rice gets introduced before the game he does his little shoulder wiggle. Anthony McFarland, too--for a shorter guy with a big, big body, he has a quick wiggle. We've got some guys who can move.

Playboy: You moved one guy early in your tenure with the Raiders. Larry Brown was a Super Bowl MVP. You were the new coach, and Brown came to you with some demands.

Gruden: I wasn't confrontational. I just flew him home. When I got there the team was coming off a 4--12 year, 30th in the league in defense, and we had to change that. It starts with a change of attitude, a change of heart. So when a guy comes to you--a guy who's thought of as a star player--and tells you point-blank, "I ain't playing here if I ain't the guy," what can you say?

Playboy: What did you say?

Gruden: I said, "You ain't the guy. Nice meeting you, but you're going home."

Playboy: Can a placekicker be worth a first-round draft pick?

Gruden: You talking about Janikowski?

Playboy: Your Raiders surprised people by taking Sebastian Janikowski in the first round three years ago.

Gruden: I was in on that pick. Here's a guy who could be your leading scorer for 15 years. He could affect strategy and field position--if he had the right stuff.

Playboy: Was he the right pick?

Gruden: Check back in nine or 10 years. They've won three straight AFC West titles with him.

Playboy: Do you motivate kickers the same way you do other guys? Are there times you need to buck up Martin Gramatica, or give him a kick in the ass?

Gruden: If anything, we need to cool him down. Martin is 100 times more animated than me. When he made a kick to beat Carolina, we almost knocked each other unconscious jumping around.

Playboy: You're a monomaniac. What would you do without football?

Gruden: Be an announcer. I have a degree in communications. Or write fiction--I did some writing in college. I might write a football novel.

Playboy: But you'll probably coach until you drop.

Gruden: I'm so short-term oriented, it's hard to say. My only long-term goals are to be a great parent and a good husband and to get right with the guy upstairs while there's still time.

Playboy: Are you scared of death--is that what drives you?

Gruden: It is. Death bothers me because it's out of my control. I mean, Wilt Chamberlain is dead. Can you believe that? Gone. Payne Stewart, his plane crashed. Gone. Bob McKittrick, a great coach and great guy. Gone. It's hard to wrap your mind around that.

Playboy: At least you're famous. When you die, you'll be one of People's beautiful corpses. Do you enjoy being a celebrity?

Gruden: Hey, I got a fruit basket from Jay Leno. That was cool. I got to meet Letterman, too. He surprised me with how much he knew about football. The other night I gave a speech, and met Dyan Cannon. Great laugh, fanatical sports fan.

Playboy: Does she know your formations and audibles?

Gruden: No, but we'd love to teach her.

Playboy: Does being a celebrity make your job harder? Do players resent the way fans and the media go wild over you?

Gruden: Come on. I'm not playing. I can strategize and maybe challenge a player or two--somebody who needs a little extra jolt to get him going. But they've got to respond to the challenge. You may see me on TV, man, but look at what I'm watching--the game is on the field.

Playboy: What's the biggest misconception among fans?

Gruden: That football just happens on Sunday. We work at it all week, every month, year-round.

Playboy: Sometimes you work 20 hours a day. Is it worth it? Do you ever worry that Bob McKittrick was right--that you are too focused on football?

Gruden: Maybe I am. But there's nothing like it. Everybody in the league gets the schedule and says, "You guys will win this game, you'll win that one," but you know you'll get your block knocked off if you're not ready. Because everybody's good. It's great players and all the best coaches. So when we practice and put Ronde on Keyshawn, Sapp up against our new free agent Jason Whittle in a one-on-one pass rush, yeah! Team togetherness, camaraderie, fighting to win and the feeling in the locker room after a win--this is awesome. It's a rush, a blast. And it was nice meeting you, but I've got to get back to work.

There were rumors of Warren Sapp being traded for me! But you couldn't trade 25 Jon Grudens for half of Sapp.

Everybody in the league gets the schedule and says, "You guys will win this game, you'll win that one," but you know you'll get your block knocked off if you're not ready.