Bill Curry
Bill Stacy

A few months ago, Carolyn Curry called her husband of 45 years and asked Bill a simple question: “You think we should try to see each other again?”

It wasn’t that they were having marital difficulties. The Currys are as warm and loving and committed a couple as you’ll ever meet, perhaps because, in Bill’s words, “The only thing that scares me in life is her wrath.”

But over those 45 years that Bill played and coached in the NFL, coached Georgia Tech, Alabama and Kentucky and did football commentary for ESPN, the couple had moved 32 times. Beyond that, Bill had spent much of the last two years running Baylor School’s leadership program while Carolyn was tending to her own interests in Atlanta.

So Bill got the message. Fast. He called Baylor headmaster Dr. Bill Stacy and told him he was scaling back his commitment to the school.

“I told Carolyn, ‘We’ll have a simple life for the first time ever,’” Curry said.

He now estimates that theory lasted roughly six weeks. For about the time Bill was settling in to the couple’s Buckhead condo, a phone call arrived from Georgia State athletic director Mary McElroy.

A little background is necessary here. In the days before McElroy called, rumors were buzzing throughout the Big Peach that GSU was about to hire former Atlanta Falcons coach Dan Reeves to start its football program.

Since Curry and Reeves share the same barber, Curry figured there might be some truth to it.

So when McElroy phoned, Curry congratulated her on hiring Reeves.

She corrected him, however, saying that Reeves had only NFL experience and they needed someone who had “coached college.”

Almost instantly, Curry began listing possible candidates.

McElroy quickly stopped him, then said, “I want you to think about the possibility of Bill Curry as our coach.”

The man regarded as one of the nation’s best motivational speakers went silent.

“I literally couldn’t speak,” the 65-year-old Curry said Friday. “But it didn’t take long to say yes.”

It seems a near impossible task. You just don’t start a college football program from scratch these days. Especially at a commuter school located a screen pass from Curry’s alma mater Georgia Tech and less than an hour from the University of Georgia.

The Panthers won’t field a team until the fall of 2010 and won’t sign a recruit until February of 2009.

Asked to name one thing he’s never before encountered at Tech, Alabama, or Kentucky, Curry said, “The first thing was a place to sit. Everybody here has knocked themselves out in a way that I can’t begin to tell you. But as I began to interview staff, there was nowhere for them to sit.”

GSU quickly found offices on the ninth floor of a campus building.

“We helped them take the desks out of the boxes,” said Curry, who will announce most of his staff Monday. “The maintenance folks worked overtime on the Fourth of July to make sure everybody had a work space. Just remarkable people.”

Baylor’s Dr. Stacy believes he may actually have given Curry a reason to leave that had nothing to do with Carolyn.

“Our offices were right next to each other,” Stacy said, “and we developed quite a rapport. One day I told Bill about becoming the first president of California State San Marcos. When I got there it was a 305-acre field in San Diego. But you had a chance to build a brand-new university. It’s the most exciting thing I’ve ever done.

“I think that really appealed to Bill. Here was a chance to to start from scratch and do it right. I don’t think he would have taken another SEC job.”

Curry said the Baylor students also played a role.

“Baylor reminded me,” he said, “of how much I love young people and how much I missed working with them.”

Stacy admits he’ll miss Curry running the school’s leadership program.

“The greatest thing about Bill Curry is that he walks the walk,” Stacy said. “The way he lives his life is the most powerful sort of advocacy. We kept him 100 miles away from athletics, but he did a grand job for our leadership program.”

Unfortunately for Baylor, NCAA rules will now keep him 100 miles away from the Red Raiders’ athletes unless he is there on a recruiting visit, since Curry again is a coach.

“I can come back to speak and I’ve already promised Dr. Stacy that I’ll do that, but I can’t interact with students the way I used to,” said Curry, whose newest book, “The Ten Men You Meet in the Huddle,” will be released next month.

Stacy strongly believes Curry will have no trouble interacting with Georgia State recruits, however.

“He could hold our assembly audiences spellbound,” the headmaster said.

Curry knows he’ll need all that rhetorical splendor to recruit to GSU. It already has locked up the Georgia Dome for home games but has no football practice facility. The Panthers will play in the Colonial Athletic Association against the likes of Delaware, James Madison and UMass — “folks you’re used to hosting for the national championship game there in Chattanooga,” Curry noted — but they don’t yet have a single scholarship player.

“We’ve already got boosters who want to move up to what we used to call I-A,” Curry said, “and we haven’t even bought the first headgear.”

He also quickly concedes that football has changed in the 11 years he’s traded the sidelines for the broadcast booth.

“I’ve gotten a Ph.D. in football,” Curry said. “Coaches have gotten better and smarter. The game’s changed, too. It’s become my quarterback versus your defensive coordinator. I just wish I had had this knowledge when I was coaching at Alabama, Kentucky and Georgia Tech.”

But what he will have by his side every night is Carolyn.

“When I told her about the Georgia State job,” Curry said, “Carolyn said, ‘Oh, good. You can do something you know how to do, and I don’t have to move.’”

The coach apparently has also earned a Ph.D. in wife wrath management.

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