Gruden wears his heart on his sleeve, and also his title. The FFCA stitched on the polo he wears for the show stands for the Fired Football Coaches Association, which, believe it or not, is a real thing. “When Jon was fired by the Bucs in 2009, he was crushed,” says Mark Arteaga, Gruden’s close friend and member of his staff in Oakland and Tampa. “Devastated. It was the first time anyone on our staff had been fired, and we didn’t know what to do with ourselves.” And so for three days a week, at 6 a.m., the staff assembled in a borrowed office at the St. Pete Times Forum, where Gruden would lead mock-coaches meetings. Part of it was that Gruden didn’t know what else to do with his time; part of it was so that the staff could stay fresh if they were ever given another opportunity.
The group jokingly called itself the Fired Football Coaches Association, and the name stuck. Eventually Gruden rented his own office, an 800-square-foot space in a strip mall. The meetings were open to anyone who wanted to talk shop. Other fired coaches, like Mike Sherman, stopped in to stay fresh. Local high school coaches would workshop with Gruden, as would Division I football staffs, usually as a pit stop on recruiting trips. The FFCA has since upgraded its digs, and has expanded into a charitable group that provides support and financial assistant to high school football programs, in addition to being a self-styled “football think-tank.”
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