Thrill seeker

Glanville mixes series -- and tales -- for adrenaline rush

Jerry Glanville still runs and guns, even though it's from behind the wheel.

He's still funny and outrageous, devil-may-care. The wardrobe remains a monochromatic black, but his sense of humor isn't, and neither is in his on-track intent.

"If I hit you, it's an accident," he says, laughing.

The former coach darts in and out of racing series these days. One week he's laying down NHRA rubber in his 1949 Ford, the next he's trotting out his Torino for the National Muscle Car Association. He was in Charlotte last week for the ARCA event, where he finished a forgettable 18th, but it's the thrill as much as the result that lures him.

"We've been pretty good the last couple of years," Glanville said of his ARCA dabbles. "We have a shot, you know? We get to run up front. Have led laps, led races. Just about every time we get out there, we get in the lead. And keep going pretty good."

He fits the stock-car events around the drag racing, picking a handful every season. Prior to 2002, Glanville had 18 career ARCA starts, and five top-10 finishes. He's got three starts under his belt (and signature buckle) this season, including a 19th at Kentucky on May 11, and a fourth-place at Nashville on April 12. The latter presumably cancels out the 18th and 19th-place disappointments.

Sort of.

Running second with 12 laps to go at Nashville, Glanville was chasing his first ARCA victory until the leader, a youngster, missed third gear, causing the coach to bang up the nose of his Ford. He managed to work back to fourth, but the final three laps came under caution, meaning another victory for points leader Frank Kimmel.

"Well, from fourth to third in ARCA is a huge difference in money," Glanville said. "Just huge. It just changes your program. And so that hurt us. If we could have just kept green, I know we were third and maybe we get up to second.

"Kimmel was gone. I don't think we would have caught him. But it would have been fun having Kimmel try to pass me. That's what everybody thought was going to happen. Everybody said, 'This is going to be something.' But it didn't happen, you know?"

He may get more chances. Glanville has spent the last several years working first as an NFL game analyst, then as a studio regular with CBS, and the network announced this spring it wouldn't renew his contract. The shake-up leaves Glanville with more time, and that may or may not be good for his race funding or his calendar. He knows only one speed, whether it's racing, football or life.

"Robert Yates made me feel good," he said. "He said, 'Jerry, you're the first guy in the gas. I watch you and nobody gets in the gas quicker.' And Yates says, 'I always watch the guy that has the longest straightaway,' and they all say I turn it into the longest straightaway, because I'll be in the gas way before the apex.

"I'll be in the gas way before I'm ever down in the bottom line. And Kimmel says, 'Jerry, when are you out of the gas down there?' I say, 'I get out of it, but you've got to have a fine ear to know that I've been out it.' "

When he's at the track, the 60-year-old former head coach of the Houston Oilers and Atlanta Falcons hangs out in the garage with hangers-on, younger guys eager to learn the grass-roots business; friends, family and peers. Laughter comes easily, the stories unbidden. His trailer is functional, not fussy. Both it and his cars are black, of course, and adorned with a cowboy hat-sunglasses logo. The NFL logo sits astride the hat.

"A University of Georgia art student did that for me, on a computer," Glanville said, pointing to the image on the trailer's right flank. "A graphic artist."

He still lives near Atlanta, although he's escaped its metropolitan grasp. Dawsonville is home now, Bill Elliott country; Ernie Elliott builds Glanville's engines. Glanville's brother Richard was his engine builder back in the early 1960s, when Glanville was a fresh-faced 21-year-old. In fact, the engine he blew while running a 1963 NHRA event was his springboard into coaching.

Aghast at ruining his brother's '61 Ford, Glanville was surprised by how fast the news traveled -- and a call from the local high school, Lima Central Catholic.

"They said, 'If you'll come coach this football team, we'll buy you a new motor,' " Glanville recalled. "And I said, 'You will?' And the guy -- he was a monsignor, a priest; I'm not even Catholic -- and he says, 'Wait a minute, how much does a new motor cost?' And I said, $4,800. He says, 'We'll give you 48 to coach football,' and I went off and coached for 30 years. And then finally, I told my mom, 'I'm going fulltime racing,' and she says, 'About time!'"

Coaching wasn't his only specialty as a college football assistant, however.

"When I recruited for Georgia Tech, I drove all through the state of Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee and Ohio," Glanville said. "And I would wear out three Buicks a year. And at that time Dale Earnhardt was a big guy. Well, guess what? I was king of the road.

"And there was a [dealership] named Hanson Buicks in Atlanta. Well, guess what? They'd come get 'em with a hook. I'd be somewhere and say, 'Oooh, she quit. Bring me another one.' "

Glanville remembers former Georgia Tech head coach Bud Carson riding with him once, then swearing off all future trips. Carson's successor, Pepper Rodgers, himself a football character, was Glanville's next passenger.

"I was in Cleveland, Ohio, and we were darting and moving," Glanville said of that recruiting trip. The way he tells it, Rodgers "rolled down the window, took his pipe out the window, banged it on the roof. He said, 'My pipe's empty, pull over, tell somebody to come get me.' I said, 'Pepper!' He says, 'Jerry Glanville, I flew airplanes and never went this fast.' He said, 'I don't need this. From now on, you're recruiting on your own.' He said, 'In fact, you ought to quit coaching and go drive a race car.'"

Glanville didn't take that advice until he'd retired. And it hasn't been all fun and games. He broke four ribs and his left ankle during a 1998 Winston West series crash in Phoenix, and even now, spiraling costs sometimes limit his competition.

But there have been moments, like the banquet hosted by folks in Blairsville, Ga., to laud his clean driving style.

"I mean, it was unbelievable," Glanville said. "They said, 'We love you. You do everything [we] did, but you don't hit anybody.' I think that's kind of nice, you know?"

Denise N. Maloof covers NASCAR for CNNSI.com.

 

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