Vikings' Childress fondly remembers Marmion
Minnesota Vikings head coach Brad Childress owns a degree from Eastern Illinois, but that's hardly newsworthy.
Two other NFL head coaches (Denver's Mike Shanahan and New Orleans' Sean Payton) and a Pro Bowl quarterback (Dallas' Tony Romo) were all produced by the Charleston football factory known as EIU.
However, Childress is the only NFL coach who attended Marmion Academy in Aurora. During a teleconference with Chicago reporters this week, Childress gave the school some credit for where he's gone.
"My preparation at Marmion was great," he said. "It's an all-boys, Catholic military high school. While I probably didn't appreciate it very much at the time, I appreciate it more right now in terms of the discipline that you have to have in life."
Childress played quarterback at Marmion in the early 1970s. He claimed to be an average player with no thoughts of a football future.
"My high school football coach (Chuck Dickerson) always told me I'd be a football coach, which I vehemently denied," Childress said with a laugh. "At the time, I was going to be a psychologist."
Those plans changed when Childress suffered a neck injury in high school, had a relapse in college and saw his football playing career cut short.
"After I got hurt, I wanted to hang around in football, and I was lucky enough to get a graduate assistantship with Gary Moeller at Illinois and continue on with Mike White and kind of move on from there," he said. "I've had some luck involved in the last 30 years."
After spending seven years at Illinois, Childress made the rounds for a few years, landing college jobs at Northern Arizona, Utah and Wisconsin. At Northern Arizona, he was on the same coaching staff as Andy Reid, who later became head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles and hired Childress to be his offensive coordinator.
In two years as head coach at Minnesota, Childress owns a 7-13 record, but nine of those losses have been by 7 points or less. The Vikings (1-3) will try to change their luck Sunday against the Bears at Soldier Field.
Childress probably won't have time to get back home to Aurora, but he has pleasant memories of his formative football years in the town.
"High school football in Aurora-land was great," he said. "Whether it was East, West, Marmion against Aurora Central, those were the memories of my life."
Childress grew up just two blocks from West Aurora but decided to follow his older brother Mike to Marmion. Former Marmion athletic director Neal Fichtel coached Childress in freshman football and track.
"He was very competitive, but very small when I had him," Fichtel said. "He broke his leg when he was a freshman. He played hard. He was not that strong a young man at that point in time. He was a good track athlete. I had him in the hurdles."
Childress insisted it was his own choice to take on the demands of Marmion. He ended up living with Dickerson's family during some of his high school days.
"It was a great learning environment, great values, great education," Childress said of Marmion. "And I learned how to shine my shoes, shine my brass and have a shave for morning school formation."